Taxpayer Association: Oregon stimulus pork. 1M bike boxes.

The Taxpayer Association was honored to make the lead story on KGW-8 regarding Oregon being listed among the 100 wasteful projects in the federal stimulus package. Noted was a million dollars for bike lockers. Embarrassingly, a biker interviewed at a Tri-Met station said the current bike stations work just fine and a million dollars is quite excessive. Another million went for a better horn for the newly minted (way over-budgeted and under-used) Westside train. Several million also was targeted for Eugene bike paths. How many prisoners could we keep behind bars for that $3 million bike path?

Jason Williams of the Taxpayer Association was quoted as saying, “The politicians are selling this as a stimulus plan, but you can’t stimulate the economy by replacing train horns and building bike boxes, you stimulate the economy by giving us taxpayers are tax dollars back.”