We told you that toll lanes project was shady. According to an Observer story, no one seems to know where the updated language, a noncompete clause, in a contract between the Department of Transportation and the private developer it hired to build toll lanes on I-77, came from. “Some area officials were surprised that under the contract with I-77 Mobility Partners, the developer would likely collect damages if the state added two new general-purpose lanes from Exit 28 to Exit 36 at the lake.”
City Manager Ron Carlee is recommending property tax increases to help out with the huge hole the city found in its budget caused by lower real estate values and the loss of a business privilege license tax. But wait! “[T]he rate would go up further than the lower property values warrant, high enough to replace another fee that homeowners pay—a flat $47 trash fee. Carlee wants to eliminate that fee,” WFAE reports. “He says even with the higher property tax, homes valued under $267,000 would pay the city less overall.”
If you needed another reason to hate the Internal Revenue Service, check out this story. A North Carolina small business owner had his entire business bank account seized — to the tune of $107,703 — by the government for no reason other than making cash deposits under $10,000. The law the IRS and Justice Department use to justify a move like this was designed to go after criminals and terrorists. In recent months, both government entities have said they’ll back away from using the law, but Lyndon McLellan of Fairmont, North Carolina, is still waiting to get his money back. The prosecutor on the case offered to give him half of his money back in a settlement.
Well this is just creepy and gross. The folks at Paypal are developing a new payment system that works via a small, microchipped pill you swallow every day or two. “Like birth control, per PayPal’s Jonathan Leblanc, the ‘next wave of passwords will be edible, ingestible or injectable.’” Folks who have that much trouble remembering passwords need to get their life together.
This article appears in Apr 29 – May 5, 2015.
I’m curious. Why don’t these articles about the toll lanes ever address
whether or not Cintra has donated to any political campaigns.
Why don’t the articles ever remind us of how much the tax payers have
already paid to build the lanes that Cintra is going to be allowed to charge
us to use in addition to the ones they are going to build with some of their
money and some of our money? I am talking about the existing HOV lanes on
I-77, the already constructed lanes on I-485 and on the already constructed
busway on Independence.
If Cintra wants us to pay them to use a road, shouldn’t it be a road that
they actually own?
Why don’t the stories ever mention the Cintra project in Indiana that has
filed for bankruptcy protection? Or that Moody’s, the rating agency, last
year downgraded the debt of the operators of Texas State Highway 130, owned
by a consortium including Cintra, because of the risk the company would
default on its debts.
Why do you suppose Cintra wanted that clause in the contract that requires
the state to repay them for any losses?