Political Quotes

“This whole issue of excessive attorney fees, and a great deal of lawyer activity today is a problem with the system. So I do not see that that is necessarily going to be impacted negatively by delaying the fine. Second, I would point out that the enforcement language of this does not affect if funds are available. So the instance that the Senator talked about, I presume there were available funds going to that city to fund the activity that needed to be corrected. Therefore, there were those available funds. Then compliance would have to occur and the fines would be assessed. This is not applied to private water companies. That was intentionally done because the issue of unfunded mandates is a public one to a large degree, and I did not want to get into the whole ancillary question of the private-public debate and the profitable part of the corporations engaged in the delivery of water and how you would end up subsidizing them through this language. So we would be stuck with the taxpayer impact event because the issue here is impact on the tax base and the reallocation of the tax base through unfunded mandates. All this amendment says again is that if it is not funded, you do not fine. It does not undercut the basic goals of this bill I do not think.”