Taxpayers League Refuses to Take a Position on Public Funding of Pawlenty's Pod Boondoggle

Statement from the Taxpayers League:

I spoke with Phil and the Taxpayers League does not have a position on PRT at this time. Please feel free to check back later in the session or when developments on the project arise to see if there has been a change.

How much will the Winona PRT project cost taxpayers?

The Winona PRT plan would couple $20 million in federal grant dollars with $2.5 million in private investment and another $2.5 million in state bonding money, City Manager Eric Sorensen said. The City Council might vote next month on whether to ask local lawmakers to sponsor a bill seeking the state funds, Sorensen added.

"We'd love to see $25 million spent in Winona on job creation," he said, "and hopefully underpin a huge success story for the whole community."

Before Krinkie, David Strom was the head of the Taxpayers League. This is what he said about PRT on the Taxpayer League's Radio Show 1/1/2005:

I'll give you my take on this (PRT) First, Personal Rapid Transit already exists and it's called the automobile. Now, with that said the argument for the PRT system that exists out there is, well this is a way to add capacity very rapidly without... since it's elevated you don't have the same problems with having to knock down houses and various other things, y'know, but if you start looking at the system, the problem is there is no system. It doesn't really I mean, part of their argument is about how it failed somewhere else, "well, it's not really what we got here" and I say, well look, let's build it in Dubai. Let's build it where they want to throw tons of money at it. If it's so great, then we'll see. If not, why should we be subsidizing it?... certainly not to the tune of 600 million bucks... that's a ton of money...uh, it just doesn't make any sense to me..

Listen:

Click To Play

I'm not surprised that the Taxpayers League refuses to take a position... Phil Krinkie voted for former Rep. Mark Olson's PRT legislation when he was in the legislature.

If there is any question whether PRT is pork, give a listen to this video:



More info about the above video at Lloydletta.