O.C. Tollway, Tactics, Financing Generate Broadsides, Warnings
In its short life span, the Transportation Corridor Agency for the San Joaquin Hills tollway has become Orange County’s premier, free-wheeling, bottomless money pit.
Throwing away millions of taxpayer dollars to file/appeal a punitive lawsuit against the public and to successfully lobby Congress to amend a federal law in order to exempt Orange County’s three public tolls from the need to meet its environmental requirements, and loaning money to the projects chief engineer so he could purchase a house are only harbingers of what’s to come.
The San Joaquin Hills tollway is a deep-pockets project designed to benefit billionaire land barons who desire to open up the San Joaquin Hills to high-density development at the taxpayers’ expense. When the TCA big-spending marathon race to force through this billion-dollar boondoggle from the ‘70s fails, the financial burden to bail it out will fall squarely upon the backs of all property owners in Orange County.
JEAN JENKS
Laguna Beach
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