Brian Mast, Bill Posey, others urge feds to suspend bonds for Brightline
Brightline Train Heading North Through Deerfield Beach, FL
By Scott Powers, Florida Politics
Contending that there are statutory problems with the federally authorized bonds All Aboard Florida intends to use to finance its Orlando Brightline train expansion, U.S. Reps. Brian Mast, Bill Posey, Ron DeSantis and Matt Gaetz are urging the federal government to suspend the authorization.
At issue is $1.15 billion worth of private activity bonds that the U.S. Department of Transportation signed off on, allowing All Aboard Florida to get tax exemption status to lower interest rates on bonds it wants to issue for construction of the West Palm Beach to Orlando phase for the company’s private, higher-speed Brightline passenger train line.
North Carolina Republican U.S. Rep. Mark Meadows, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s Subcommittee on Government Operations, wrote and sent a letter last week to U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, with the four Florida Republican congressmen signing on.
The letter includes an assertion that the department’s approval of the bonds for All Aboard Florida “amounts to blank-check authority.” The letter also includes an apparent veiled threat from Meadows, the powerful chairman of the House Freedom Caucus: “Please consider carefully the damage to the future of PABs that results from continuing this allocation.”
Read the letter to Transportation Secretary Chao HERE