If you’re mad about paying high tolls, you should be furious about the politics brewing at the expressway authority.
Political appointees orchestrated a coup last week, ousting its executive director,who had actually cleaned up the scandal- and conflict-coated agency — and saved the authority money.
In case that sounds like the kind of inside baseball you couldn’t care less about, let me direct your attention to the image on this page: a shiny quarter.
See, you have to pay more of those when the authority wastes money.
The authority has raised tolls twice in the past four years. So really, we’re not talking just one shiny quarter. We’re talking two at each tollbooth.
Two tollbooths per trip means $1 … round trip means $2 … five days a week means $10 … 50 weeks a year means $500. Just for the recent increases.
Now do you care about the shenanigans that went down last week?
The meeting of the Orlando-Orange County Expressway Authority started pleasantly enough. In fact, it was supposed to be a celebration: 50 years of toll roads in Central Florida.
It was also celebrating being scandal-free. Long mired in bad bond deals, pay-for-play politics — a “culture of corruption,” as a grand jury described it — the authority had finally cleaned up its act.
New Director Max Crumit had ushered in a new era of ethics and transparency.
He ousted the people behind the costly bond deals. He started posting all of the agency’s financial transactions online. He aired the agency’s board meetings on live TV.
He was watching your quarters. And, for the first time in many years, the authority was scandal-free.
This would not do.
Click here for the story in OrlandoSentinel.com.
