Irresponsibility cause of lack of funding

Chris Clark, president and CEO of the Georgia Chamber of Commerce, recently plugged T-SPLOST to The Albany Herald Editorial Board, who judging by their support of this tax, bit on Clark’s spiel, hook line and sinker. Clark said he often asks T-SPLOST opponents for alternate solutions to alleviating congestion and projects funding, yet gets no answers. Mr. Clark, here are a few alternate suggestions that come to mind.

Privatize all possible transportation and infrastructure areas and fund through extracted user fees. Anytime you eliminate government, efficiency, reliability and responsibility are automatic.

Hold our politicians’ feet to the fire. Fraud, waste, incompetence and pandering are rampant at every level of government-controlled enterprise. Politics has become a good old boys club. Backs are scratched, hands greased, elections bought for favors granted. Grand projects proposed as solutions to problems that remedy too few become debacles of cost and time overruns at taxpayer expense, with more taxes demanded perpetuating the whole rotten, vicious circle. With a click of the mouse, tens of billions of dollars lost, stolen and wasted are easily identified by government at the national and all other levels. Corruption is so prevalent, all our halls of government have become a swamp where leaders wallow around in the sludge, pushing it back and forth, doing little to address it. Now you come around asking us to give you more of our hard-earned money so this masquerade of competence can continue? We from whom you demand fiscal responsibility see through the thin veneer of rhetoric and refuse to succumb.

Chris Clark, either privatize Georgia transportation or finance this transportation project dilemma with the money you could save if government were reputable, reliable, responsible and competent. Fiscal irresponsibility is your prime culprit for lack of funding. Guess that doesn’t leave you many options.

STEVEN T. TAMBRONI

Albany

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Albany Herald Editorial Board plans to take an official position on the T-SPLOST referendum soon, but it has not written in support of or in opposition to it at this point.