Wednesday, May 31, 2017

Taxpayers left holding the bag for $45 million in Silver Spring Transit Center fiasco settlement

Is this a thing of beauty, or what?
Montgomery County taxpayers are left holding the bag in the Silver Spring Transit Center debacle settlement agreed to yesterday. County officials attempting to cover-up their failure to conduct their oversight role on the project filed a weak lawsuit in a case where they themselves were mostly to blame.

The result? Realizing they could not win, the County's ultra-expensive legal team reached a chump change settlement worth a paltry $25 million. That leaves you, the taxpayer, holding the bag and paying $42 million for the remainder of the $47 million in cost overruns, $20 million in damages, and $10 million in legal fees. The settlement also requires the County (a.k.a. you, the taxpayer) to pay $3 million to Foulger-Pratt to settle their countersuit, which was directly caused by the incompetence of the County and County Council. You are now on the hook for a total of $45 million.

The surrender settlement, while inevitable given the County's woefully-weak case, was a total betrayal of the promises made by County Executive Ike Leggett and the County Council. Leggett stated he would not leave taxpayers on the hook for even a penny of the cost overruns. Councilmember George Leventhal promised the Brickyard Coalition in 2014 that he would "ensure taxpayers will not be on the hook for the remediation of the transit center." Councilmember Hans Riemer said in April 2013 he would "protect the taxpayers."

Once safely reelected, Leventhal and his colleagues abruptly turned around and made multiple new appropriations of tens of millions of dollars for the transit center. The taxpayers be damned!, was the clear message from the Council.

On Election Day 2018, voters will deliver the overdue "rough, seat of the pants estimate" Leventhal and his colleagues asked for in January 2015 - with a steel-toed boot.

#LockThemUp

18 comments:

  1. Anonymous6:51 AM

    Kick the bums out! Elect Scott Dyer! Sorry Robert, you are not the Dyer I will vote for when the polls open.

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  2. Anonymous7:13 AM

    (5) #Dyer'sWarOnFreeSpeech

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  3. Anonymous7:18 AM

    Robert, do you believe in climate change???

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  4. 7:18: Yes. The weather has changed between the 70s and 80s and today. Rain is heavier, lightning more frequent during storms. More unusual weather events, yet less hurricanes. There's certainly room for debate about global warming, temperature trends, what is causing climate change etc., but climate change itself is a verified fact.

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  5. Anonymous7:47 AM

    Robert, read the link to some of your older posts. Nice look back into some County history. Were you wrong in 09 or do you stand by what you wrote?

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  6. Anonymous7:51 AM

    Oh, no! I, the taxpayer, now have to pay the imaginary $20M in damages?! Say it ain't so! Let's be real, Robert: cost overruns due to design and concrete issues were $30M; the county recovered $25M. Seems like a fair settlement and certainly beats many years of litigation and an unknown outcome.

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  7. Anonymous7:58 AM

    "climate change itself is a verified fact"

    I actually agree with Dyer on something.

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  8. Anonymous8:05 AM

    Everything in this comment section makes my head hurt.

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  9. Anonymous8:09 AM

    Dyer is going to make 8:03 AM disappear for quoting Dyer. Anybody want to bet on it?

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  10. Anonymous8:15 AM

    he doesnt allow any dissent on this platform can you imagine if he had a real job with the council? he'd work on implementing some awful policies and no one could ever dare say anything.

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  11. Anonymous8:19 AM

    8:03 left Dyer into being his own dissenting opinion. I am sure he is going to love that when he sees it. I give it another 10 minutes before he takes it down.

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  12. It's not a dissenting opinion. Read what I wrote above again. Climate change is a fact. The cause of climate change is what is under discussion.

    Secondly, this is a forum for discussing the transit center, not climate change.

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  13. Anonymous8:26 AM

    STFU DYER

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  14. Anonymous8:29 AM

    10 minutes was surprisingly accurate

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  15. I thought I would share what keeps being deleted, to keep readers informed. Actually glad to see Robert is willing to change his mind when presented with new evidence.

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  16. 7:51: You need to read the article again. We got $25 million, and that leaves us with a $45 million deficit. Can we get you a calculator?

    8:15: Oh, yeah, you mean terrible policies like the current Council's that led to the deaths of 2 people in the 911 outage, 7 people in the Flower Branch explosion, and 1 15-year-old girl at the hands of the Watkins Mill HS-based MS-13? Not to mention 2 minor girls being gang-raped by illegal immigrants.

    The bar is so high! How could I ever measure up to these clowns on the Council now? I'm certainly at a deficit in the mustache-twirling villain department.

    "Thank you, Hans!" - Gustavo Torres

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  17. Anonymous9:24 AM

    9:18

    *Face-Palm*

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  18. What kind of a compulsive-disorder maniac keeps pasting the same off-topic comment in over and over again, knowing it will be deleted once again? Answer: A paid troll trying to divert attention from the MoCo cartel dumping the $45 million transit center bill into the laps of the taxpayers.

    Can somebody get this subhuman hobo a straitjacket before he hurts himself or someone else? If you're going to be a low-rent political operative, at least try to dress professionally.

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