Daily Loaf

Florida U.S. Senator Bill Nelson said today that the Tampa Bay area has taken a big leap in attempting to get high-speed rail to the region, and he placed great hopes on the Florida Legislature conducting a special session on rail issues  next month to show Washington that it means business about a a $2.5 billion federal stimulus request for high speed rail.

Speaking at the Columbia Restaurant in Ybor City, at an event hastily put together by the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce, Florida’s senior Senator said that the state’s chances of acquiring the funding “improve enormously”  if it can successfully deal with the issues with SunRail and TriRail, which the legislature has contended with for the past couple of years, but has never reached a deal.

Nelson gave a shout-out to former Hillsborough County Commissioner Ed Turanchik and his ConnectUs organization that has been formed to try to bring a Tampa-to-Orlando high speed rail line to Florida (though he did mispronounce Turanchik’s name).

Nelson said high speed rail would create 4,000 jobs, and that organizers are “ready to run dirt and start pouring concrete.”

The Democrat also touched on health care;  as a member of the Senate Finance Committee (best known as the Committee led by Montana’s Max Baucus that spent considerable time crafting their own bill), Nelson said that whatever comes out of the Senate will be different than the House bill passed Saturday night.

The Senator spoke as approximately two dozen anti-health care reform activists, including several  CL recalls seeing at the infamous Kathy Castor town hall meeting in August, demonstrated across the street from the Columbia.

Nelson has always distinguished himself in his nine years in the Senate as a fierce critic of offshore drilling in Florida.  Accompanied by several large maps, Nelson told the Chamber audience why the oil companies cannot be believed when they talk about needing to drill off of Florida’s Gulf Coast.

He said currently there are 37 million acres under lease, 30 million in the central and western Gulf.

And he said that there’s an additional 8.3 million acres that they received in a deal that he and former Florida U.S. Senator Mel Martinez made in December of 2006, in exchange for the state getting at least a 125-mile buffer zone from drilling.

Nelson also discussed the plans in the Florida Legislature to discuss legislation that would allow drilling to come as near as 3 miles off the state’s coast, which could be discussed in a special session but most likely won’t come up until next March.  He scoffed at proponents’ arguments that it would bring in extra revenue to the state, saying it takes 10 years  to bring an oil well to fruition.

And pushing the tourist angle, he urged the Tampa Chamber of Commerce to officially come out against the plan to repeal the 1990 law on offshore drilling in the state.

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