SMART's 'Impartial' Analysis? Surely the Board Must be Joking

The 167-word "impartial" analysis from the Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit board is now available on RepealSMART.org for all to read and attached to this Local Voices post. As expected, the statement from SMART is anything but impartial.   

Test your knowledge of what they didn't say in this key paragraph:

"Since 2008, the slowing economy has resulted in a lower amount of tax revenue from the sales tax than was anticipated. As a result, the Board of Directors of SMART determined in 2010 to build the SMART train in phases, with the first phase providing passenger rail service between Santa Rosa and San Rafael."

What did they leave out?

How about the $150 million cost overrun announced in late October 2010, two years after passing Measure Q? This is the single biggest contributor to SMART's  inability to construct the 70-mile rail line. It was a huge cost overrun this late in the game. And, in case you forgot, it was associated with bridges and tunnels that we can all see.

(How is it that it took two years to identify and announce these costs that contributed to former SMART executive director Lillian Hames losing her job?  The public still doesn't know and this board is not going to investigate itself.  Where is the Marin Civil Grand Jury when you need it?)

Even proponents have wondered about the competence of this agency.

SMART's financial problems have been, are and will continue to be of their own making. They sold the public a pig-in-a-poke in 2008. The project was underfunded from the beginning. A quarter-cent sales tax increase approved by Marin and Sonoma county voters was never enough to fund the 70-mile rail line and operate the trains and shuttles promised to the voters in 2008.

And they can't say they didn't know it, because they did. They were told by their consultants long ago that a quarter-cent sales tax wouldn't be enough. But they did polls in 2006 and knew they'd never pass a half-cent tax. So, they opted to con the voters and taxpayers.

And, we taxpayers are the ones paying the tab and will continue to pay unless this agency is stopped.

The public is witnessing what happens when a local agency misbehaves as badly and frequently as this one does. Rather than coming clean with the public, rather than telling the public the truth, it is PR and spin 24/7 with the most recent example their so-called "impartial" analysis of the measure to repeal the sales tax. 

The public should expect more of the same from this board in the days to come.