Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog

We had previously covered the various failures of Austin’s toy train Project Connect light rail project to achieve its stated goals. Now a lawsuit has been filed to put the light rail tax out of our misery.

A new class action lawsuit filed in Travis County 126th District Court claims that the City of Austin is collecting annual property tax illegally to fund Project Connect since the project is not following through on delivering the public transit development that voters agreed to in 2020.

As KVUE reported, voter-approved Project Connect has faced legal action in the past from taxpayers and is now facing another lawsuit brought by the same group of plaintiffs who want to prevent the city from continuing to collect millions of dollars in property taxes to fund the now reduced Project Connect plan.

The plaintiff’s lead counsel, Bill Aleshire, said, “They’re pursuing what I call a ‘miniature’ Project Connect that’s not city wide.”

Aleshire explained that Project Connect “started as a $7 billion plan that included 30 miles of rail, a route to the airport and downtown, now has a more than an $11 billion price tag and half the routes.”

He also argued that the city “miscalculated” its 2024 tax rate and that the funds already collected are not being spent on the transit project.

“Not including this year’s $187 million, Austin’s Project Connect tax levy has been for over $630 million. But there is $476 million on hand, unspent, uncommitted,” Aleshire said.

Project Connect managers, the Austin Transit Partnership, described the lawsuit as “baseless” and stated the funds collected would be utilized in the future, according to KVUE.

Lead plaintiff Cathy Cocco referred to the transit project as “an unaffordable, outdated, yesterday idea not suited for the 21st century city that needs to be efficient, agile, affordable, and more equitable for all Austin residents.”

While Project Connect had the potential to benefit the Austin community, Cocco sees the plan as a “bait and switch scheme.”

The group wants city leaders to stop the tax, revisit the project, and ask Austinites to vote on it again.

Note that previous Project Connect lawsuits remain unresolved.

At this point it’s obvious that Austin voters were sold a bill of goods. They’ve coughed up a lot of taxes and gotten an underutilized toy train that doesn’t meet the promises made in the bond language. The entire project should be scrapped and money returned to taxpayers. Of course, that would mean Austin’s ruling political establishment would have to admit they were wrong and give up control of a big bucket of money, so we know that’s not happening without a fight…