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All levels of government should be working for us, not against us |
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Monday, 15 February 2010 17:13 |
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It is a process to emasculate the power of the electorate and replaced it with a confusing bureaucracy of all-appointed citizen-hostile authorities, committees, boards, and commissions that prefer to conduct their so-called “public hearings” during the work day and not in a manner that is convenient to participation from the majority of the very taxpayers these regional bodies seek to fleece. Leading the charge to institutionalize regional bureaucratic governance that pays little more than lip service to caring about the Will of The People are countless regional lobbies such as “Future Hampton Roads”, the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce”, and the bloated and dysfunctional 116 or so member regionally taxpayer-subsidized “Public-Private Partnership” known as the “Hampton Roads Partnership”.
I have worked for many years within the complex framework of the regional labyrinth and state maze of overlapping entities to have our defacto regional government address the true NEEDS for our region’s transportation system. I have worked vigorously to separate the wheat from the chaff, meaning to separate true “needs” from the business lobby’s list of “wants”. Instead of “regional cooperation” growing between the business lobby and our region’s citizens, the politically influential business lobby has chosen to ignore the citizens and instead, they choose to hijack our region's transportation decision-making process and hold it hostage until they can succeed in cramming their list of speculative so-called "economic development" "wants" down the throats of all of us living in Tidewater. It has become a state of political extortion – a tragic game of “chicken” whereby the rules are simple – when it comes to regional transportation, it will be the business lobby’s way – or no highway. We have suffered enough due to this elaborate alphabet soup of institutionalized regional corruption. The poster child being the now defunct “Taxation Without Representation” HB 3202 and the unconstitutional HRTA (Hampton Roads Transportation Authority).
Folks, it took the courage of a few citizens like myself and others to sue the General Assembly to put a stop to this cancer growing within our region. That and the skill of Richmond attorney Pat McSweeney – to whom all of the citizens of Tidewater owe a huge debt of graditude.
Clearly the HRBT needs more lane capacity. There is no debate about this truth. But the PORT LOBBY is hell bent to abuse regional entities as their strategy for forcing local taxpayers to pay the Lion's share of costs for the state-owned PORT's massively expensive ($5B) so-called "Third Crossing". And folks, now we have these same regional rocket scientists sneaking around with their backroom deals, trying to SELL the Port of Virginia – for, get this - LESS than the cost of the MPO/TPOs “crown jewel” and centerpiece pet project, the massively expensive PORT-PORK scam known as the "Third Crossing"! Yes, you read that correctly – the sale price being bandied about is less than the huge bill we local taxpayers would be stuck paying had HB 3202 and the HRTA not been ruled unconstitutional!
Folks, Mr. Gergely is right. It is waaaay past time to end this failed, Norfolk-centric, Frank Batten Sr. (owner of the Virginian-Pilot) initiated experiment known as “regionalism”. Let’s restore our region’s Government decision-making process back to a process that actually serves the citizens that live here and that is accountable to the voters. While we are at it, let’s join together, Peninsula and Southside, to reclaim the true name of our fantastic region – and that name is “Tidewater”, We not the property of the local business lobby we reject their failed moniker and unwelcomed branding of our region as something THEY want to call; “Hampton Roads”.
Reid Greenmun - Virginia Beach
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Letters To The Editor 