Full steam ahead for Florida rail funding

TALLAHASSEE — With surprising ease, the Florida Senate ended a special lawmaking session a day early Tuesday by approving a package of train legislation designed to bail out South Florida Tri-Rail, kickstart a troubled Central Florida rail project and win billions of dollars in federal bullet-train money.

Gov. Charlie Crist said he’ll eagerly sign the legislation that seemed in trouble just last week when lawmakers raised concerns about the expense, liability language in case of accidents and union jobs for the proposed SunRail commuter line in the Orlando area.

But the AFL-CIO struck a deal Tuesday with state transportation officials to keep federal railroad and labor job protections for some of its members, giving Democrats more of a reason to join with Republicans to successfully back the bill.

A key player: Sen. Jeremy Ring of Margate, who sponsored the bill and kept wooing fellow Democrats and the unions to his side.

Ring’s pitch for the bill was all about jobs. Not only would construction workers and engineers find employment, he said, but the state’s economy would be changed by a network of commuter, light and high-speed rail systems that would link the major urban areas of the state from Jacksonville to Miami to Orlando to Tampa.

“This will transform the future of Florida,” Ring said. “Today, the Florida Senate took the bold step of planning for a 21st century transportation system.”

Sen. Mike Fasano, a New Port Richey Republican who chairs the Senate’s transportation budget committee, said it’s not just South and Central Florida that stand to gain from the legislation. He said the Tampa Bay region, due to its transportation planning and strategic location, could be first in line to draw money from an estimated $60 million source of rail money that the bill establishes in 2014.

“They have a great shot at getting a good amount — if not most — of that money,” Fasano said.

But the legislation is only a first step.

Crist and legislative leaders hope that the bill will help persuade federal transit officials to look kindly on Florida’s request for $2.5 billion in federal stimulus money to help build a bullet train.

Over and over again, state lawmakers said federal officials told the state that it ‘‘needs to get its act together’’ on commuter rail. The feds, though, haven’t promised the money. But federal officials did threaten to take back about $256 million in federal money for Tri-Rail if it cut back on services due to budget cuts.

The legislation is divided into three major parts that establish a new rail oversight ‘‘enterprise’’ at the Department of Transportation, give Tri-Rail up to $15 million more annually and give taxpayer-backed liability protections to the freight carrier CSX, which is selling 61 miles of tracks to the state for the SunRail project.

That last issue, liability for CSX, was a deal-breaker in the Florida Senate for the past two years as Sen. Paula Dockery hammered home the difficulties of protecting a private company from being held liable in case of accidents. She also has described the $1.2 billion deal for a rail system serving 3,500 riders as a “boondoggle’’ and a case of corporate welfare.