Published: Wednesday, April 16, 2008 in the Lakeland Ledger.
Inquiry: Train Plan Railroaded Secretly Jeb Bush probably knew of it three years ago In retrospect, a comment at a state Senate committee meeting three years ago was dripping with irony.

Discussing a pending rewrite of Florida's growth management laws, Florida League of Women Voters lobbyist Suzie Caplowe had this objection:

"In this bill, it appears that roads get built first, yet we don't have money for mass transit. The league would like to know when the state's going to begin to see the importance of a state transportation plan that crosses the board for all transportation."

It turns out the state was way ahead of her.

That's one of the findings in a two-month examination by The Ledger of hundreds of public documents, recordings, letters and memos tracing how a Central Florida Commuter Rail project found its way into state approval and funding without any public hearings or open discussion by the state Legislature. Many other documents remain hidden from public view at the behest of CSX Transportation, which made the half-billion-dollar deal with the state that enabled the commuter rail project.

Nobody contradicted Caplowe's assertion that "mass transit" wasn't in the growth management bill. Not Sen. Michael Bennett, R-Bradenton, who presented the bill to the Senate Ways and Means Committee on April 6, 2005. Not Sen. J.D. Alexander, R-Lake Wales, nor any of the 14 other senators who voted unanimously to send the bill to the Senate floor. There is no evidence any of them knew any differently.

But circumstances suggest that at least one high-ranking politician did: Jeb Bush, who was in the final two years of his eight-year tenure as Florida's governor.

Bush's Department of Transportation (DOT) was already involved in secret negotiations with CSX Transportation - a deal that ultimately would commit nearly a half-billion dollars (the figure at the time, since revised considerably higher) of the $1.5 billion growth management infrastructure money to a long-dreamed-of commuter rail line in Orlando and surrounding areas.

There were no clues in news stories about a huge mass transit commitment in the bill, which passed the 2005 Legislature without debate at, literally, the 11th hour before final adjournment. News accounts in The Ledger and elsewhere dwelled on roads and schools and water projects, but said nothing about passenger rail.

Bush even traveled to Brandon, home town of Tom Lee, then-president of the Florida Senate, who had made growth management funding his top priority of the session, for a ceremonial bill signing June 24, 2005, more than a month after the Legislature passed the final version. Among the legislators at the ceremony: Sen. Paula Dockery, R-Lakeland, who had spearheaded the water management portions of the bill.

"It's clear as day," Bush proclaimed at the signing. "If we do not invest in protecting water, building roads, providing adequate education in enough schools, our growth will change and alter, and it will deteriorate, and people won't be able to pursue their dreams."

enormous scope

By November 2005, however, the conversation began to change.

In a press conference announcing a transportation improvements initiative to enhance the new Strategic Intermodal System (SIS), the governor and DOT included these items: "Railroad Construction: Infrastructure for the rail main line in Central Florida" and "I-4 Maintenance of Traffic: Maintenance of Traffic during construction of the I-4 improvements and support for the operations and maintenance of the future Central Florida Commuter Rail." No dollar amounts were included.

In the meantime, CSX was talking with state and local officials about a big move.

In December 2005, a "Proposed CSX Logistics Center" on property owned by the city of Winter Haven showed up on a Polk County Transportation Planning Organization map, along with a proposed access road to it from State Road 60. A month later, CSX and the city announced plans for an "integrated logistics center" on the same property, a deal which the City Commission approved less than a week later.

The scope of the proposed ILC was enormous. But it didn't begin to be fully appreciated by the public until Aug. 2, 2006, when Bush and CSX Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Michael Ward jointly announced the full, $491 million tentative deal. The deal provided the state would pay:

$150 million to CSX to purchase 61 miles of track on the CSX "A" line through Orlando from Deland in Volusia County to Poinciana in Osceola County for commuter rail use. The state would lease the tracks back to CSX for freight use in off hours.

$23 million to relocate operations from the Taft yard near Orlando to the new ILC in Winter Haven.

$198 million for upgrades on the CSX rail "S" line from Baldwin, near Jacksonville, to Plant City, to permit greater freight rail traffic through, among other places, downtown Lakeland. The "S" line, named for its earlier owner, Seaboard Air Line Railroad, and the "A" line, named for the old Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, intersect in Lakeland, just west of downtown. Both railroads became part of CSX through mergers many years ago.

$59 million to build five road overpasses in Alachua, Sumter and Marion counties on the "S" line. (Cost estimates by the Florida Department of Transportation have since skyrocketed by another $100 million.)

$52 million for unspecified improvements on other CSX rail lines around the state.

$9 million to build access roads to the new ILC in Winter Haven - referred to in the announcement as "the mother of all rail yards," but which actually will be a huge transfer point for containerized freight to and from trucks.

Bush touted the merits of commuter rail in making the announcement, but he has never publicly discussed why the state should be spending its money on other projects for a private company. The implication is that CSX wouldn't have sold the tracks without the other inducements - a notion that CSX spokesman confirmed to The Tampa Tribune last year. But it is the official position of the Florida DOT that - regardless of what anybody had said publicly beforehand - the ILC project in Winter Haven is entirely separate from commuter rail.

To all appearances, however, they seem interdependent. Why, for example, would the state agree to pay millions of dollars to facilitate the Winter Haven ILC seven months after the project had already been announced? And what interest does the state have in paying $52 million to upgrade private CSX freight lines elsewhere in Florida?

Sen. Dockery has become the most vocal opponent of the deal because it would dramatically increase freight rail traffic through downtown Lakeland, and increase truck traffic on roads near the ILC site. She says she supports the state subsidizing commuter rail by $150 million but sees no merit in the other expenditures on CSX's behalf. She also complains that the deal never had a legislative hearing and the public had no opportunity to be heard before the deal was done.

In a letter to constituents last month, Dockery said the deal amounted to a state subsidy of a private business: "You might be surprised to learn that the State of Florida is giving $341 million to a for-profit railroad company to make improvements to their tracks. I think most Floridians would agree that it should be the responsibility of that corporation to improve its infrastructure and not the tax dollars of the hard working men and women of Florida. It also seems nonsensical to spend scarce resources in this manner while we are cutting funds for the priority areas."

Bush, who left office in January 2007, isn't talking about the subject.

He recently rebuffed reporters who sought to ask about CSX after he made a speaking appearance in Lakeland and he didn't respond to a subsequent e-mail inquiry from The Ledger. Among the unanswered questions are whether he gave any consideration to projections of greatly increased rail traffic through Lakeland and other "S" line cities before agreeing to the deal.

CSX says it expects four more trains to the 16 already going through Lakeland daily. There are no assurances that the number won't go up in the near future - or that the trains won't be considerably longer once the Winter Haven ILC is fully operational.

strong interest from bush

Although the negotiations with CSX on the deal appear - from available documents and the recollections of CSX officials - to have been conducted by the DOT rather than the governor's office, there is no doubt that Bush took a strong interest in them.

When he was preparing to leave the DOT in December 2006, department Secretary Denver Stutler told the Florida Transportation Commission that Bush had been a visionary boss. Stutler had been Bush's chief of staff prior to taking over the DOT as the CSX negotiations began. "I think his (Bush's) vision will be viewed long-term as very significant," Stutler said. "Every time I would talk to him, whether it was something I brought up or he'd call me, whatever it was, he'd always say, 'and how's the CSX deal, and what about the corridors?'"

The "corridors" referred to the "New Corridors" program that Bush and the DOT pushed to build new toll roads through rural parts of Florida, including the proposed 105-mile Heartland Parkway from near the Winter Haven ILC site in Polk County to the Fort Myers area. The Heartland Parkway has been shelved under the administration of current Gov. Charlie Crist, but it still has strong support from landowners along the proposed route.

One of those interested landowners is Polk state Sen. Alexander, who has also been a strong supporter of the ILC and the whole CSX deal. Alexander says he had no knowledge of either the ILC or the commuter rail project funding until long after the growth management bill passed, with his support, in 2005.

Alexander says the economic benefits to eastern Polk County outweigh the negative impact of increased rail and truck traffic in the Lakeland-Bartow area, and he expresses optimism that those negative impacts can be mitigated.

"My general view is that if we can figure out how to potentially build a tunnel under Miami to move freight from the port to the railhead, we certainly can figure out any issues surrounding the rerouting of freight within the communities along what has come to be known as the 'S' line," Alexander said in an interview. "I still to this day don't understand why the discussion's about stopping the system, not about finding a way to make it work."

Alexander says he visited another ILC in Alliance, Texas, near Fort Worth, after the Winter Haven ILC was announced, to get an idea of what it would be like. He says he was accompanied by "some Winter Haven people" whom he declined to name and he paid for the travel out of his own pocket, rather than from state funds. He also says he continues to support the Heartland Parkway as a private citizen, but has withdrawn from any active role on its behalf because of the potential for conflict of interest.

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