Friday, April 3, 2009

How does this stimulate anything?

"Before it doles out federal stimulus money for transit to any municipality, Miami-Dade County has decreed: It's going to cost you. Calling it a ''processing fee,'' cash-strapped Miami-Dade Transit plans to charge 5 percent off the top to the 28 cities in the county that qualify for $13.4 million in federal transportation stimulus funds. . . . ''It is not in the spirit of what the funding is for,'' said North Miami Mayor Kevin Burns, a member of the Metropolitan Planning Organization, which last week passed a 9-3 resolution urging MDTA to drop the idea. . . . The surcharge came as news to members of Congress who voted on the stimulus package last month."

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/miami-dade/story/980084.html

Maybe if they had held hearings on the bill, or debated it, or even read it before passage, this wouldn't "come as news to members of Congress".

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