How TSPLOST News Is Manipulated

In Friday’s Marietta Daily Journal there is a story describing the Cumberland CID’s visit to Charlotte to examine their light rail system. It’s important to remember that the Cumberland CID and the ARC are both chaired by the same person, Tad Leithead, and have both spent hundreds of thousands of - legally questionable - dollars to promote the upcoming TSPLOST vote.

The news story is that the CID folks came away appropriately impressed with how Charlotte had leveraged their light-rail system to attract Chiquita and other benefits.

What is of real interest is the real story, as told by the first person to comment [on the situation] - a former Charlotte resident who followed the entire development closely. 

It turns out that Charlotte light rail project has become an enormous white elephant and Charlotte had to subsidize Chiquita substantially to get them to move and the light rail transit had little to do with it. 

His concluding comment: “It is just sickening to watch the same lies spread over and over again. If Cobb wants to commit slo-mo suicide, then follow the lead of Charlotte, aka Detroit-on-the-Catawba.”

Georgia, we can do better than this. Let’s vote down the TSPLOST and get on to a real Plan B that can solve the state’s transportation problems.