1/15 Letters: What’s really going on with the light rail?
I went to Durham Jan. 10 to attend a GoTriangle meeting on the Durham-Orange Light Rail Transit Project. I was surprised to be refused entrance.
I was honored to serve as director of the NC Division of Water Resources for many years. My colleagues and I were always aware that citizens paid our salaries and had a legitimate interest in our water management programs. We were pleased when the public wanted to learn more about our programs, and we never turned citizens away.
The light rail project represents a critical transit choice and the expenditure of billions of tax dollars. Citizens need to get information as it develops and follow the public debate as it unfolds, particularly at this critical time when costs are escalating and rapid design changes are being made to try to overcome opposition. The public interest will not be served if our elected leaders make decisions in closed rooms on the basis of information not shared with the public.
Our officials should open up the process and let the public see what is going on. What are our leaders trying to hide?
John N. Morris
Chapel Hill
End the shutdown
My son is an air traffic controller. On payday, Jan. 11, he received his federal government paycheck. Due to the government shutdown, for working 80 regular hours, 8 overtime hours, and 16 hours of holiday pay, he received a check for $4.15! Yes, $4.15. It is time for President Trump and the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives to end this shameless shutdown. I call on Thom Tillis and Richard Burr to force Mitch McConnell to pass the House bills and send them to the president. If the president does a veto, the Senate needs to override the veto. There will a price to be paid at the ballot box for everyone who does not step up and end this ridiculous shutdown.
Vicki Shearer
Wake Forest
Headline correction
This morning’s headline read “Butner prison officers working without pay,” (Jan. 12).
Correction: “Butner prison officers and all other federal employees, who overall average $37 per hour, working without paycheck, but will receive full back pay after the shutdown has been resolved.” But that headline lacks the emotional impact of a half-truth. This is exactly why financial advisers stress the importance of having savings on hand in case there is a disruption in income.
The whole truth is that those federal employees who live week to week on their paycheck are in a bind, but they will receive their back pay.
Congress, give the president the money for the wall to slow the flow of immigrants who have chosen to enter the country any way other than through the legal ports of entry. That is called breaking in line.
David F Colvard
Raleigh
Paid for
Calculating the cost of the shutdown so far, we take 400,000 federal workers making an average of $37 per hour and multiply it by three weeks of 40 hours. That comes out to $1.776 billion. We also hear that President Trump is now going to pay all these workers even though they didn’t produce anything, a cynical ploy calculated to show how magnanimous he can be. If the shutdown goes on for another week, it will consume about half of what he is demanding for the wall. That money ought to be offset against the cost, which means he must now be demanding $2.5 billion. Another four weeks of this and we will have paid for his temper tantrum without having to build a thing.
Andrew Leager
Raleigh
Incentive nonsense
Lowering state corporate income taxes to zero will not increase tax revenue (“Best incentive: End corporate taxes,” Jan. 12). For 30 years this rhetoric has never been true. For that to happen, the tax rate would have to be at least an order of magnitude higher. A paltry tax of 2.5 percent is not determinative of corporate behavior. Apple and Amazon did not bypass North Carolina because of the state corporate tax rate.
The Kansas Miracle of slashing taxes and services was a miserable failure in every measurable metric. Yes, the business incentive practices that states engage in to bribe businesses to locate within their borders is repulsive. But so too is soliciting and accepting them. Somehow a homeless person begging for change on a corner is a sign of sloth, but corporate suits begging for millions just to do their jobs is “just business.”
Matthew Witosky
Holly Springs