The bridge that won’t die is having an eventful back-to-school season, against the potential deadline of a September 15th special session at the Legislature.
Here are a few of the highlights:
- The project has agreements for $86M in pay-offs compensation to industrial users as part of the effort to secure a Coast Guard permit for the bridge height (dumped into the Friday-before-a-holiday-weekend news hole).
- The Governor has the lawyers busy figuring out if Oregon even has the legal ability to build a bridge partly in Washington.
- Everyone is hanging on State Treasurer Ted Wheeler’s assessment of whether the State can pull off the financing on its own.
- The Oregonian Editorial Board is openly wondering whether adding the Columbia River Crossing to a special session could distract from a deal on PERS reform.
The gift that just keeps on giving…
2 responses to “A Periodic CRC Checkin”
Too much money involved with transit in Oregon where its big business indeed. Capital projects is Oregon’s number 1 source of funds it appears. Can’t let those federal dollars get away.
They play with tax funds as if its a hobby of some sort.
After all, none of the politicians will have to pay any of it back, and by the time the bill has come due fortunes have been made by various insiders so who cares right?
It’s business as usual in the U S of A..
I think it is tremendously magnanimous and altruistic of the People of Oregon to abandon their schools, public employees, homeless, and their own urban design projects in order to fund a project that primarily benefits folks who have chosen to not live in Oregon. The wonderful politicians who are showing the way on this will surely be rewarded at election time.