Perhaps the best way to think of the Hillsborough County Public Transportation Commission is to liken the sludge-filled backwater agency to the ne’erdowell, out of work brother-in-law who moves into your house, drinks all your liquor, never flushes the loo, complains about the food and then insults your spouse at every opportunity.
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And that brings us to the PTC’s embattled recent ex-executive director Kyle Cockream, who could write a textbook on how to turn a cushy $150,000-a-year job essentially requiring little more than a pulse to draw a paycheck into a self-inflicted maze of scandals, law enforcement investigations and seedy good ol’ boy conspiracies.
For years the PTC, bureaucracy’s answer to a paper-pushing pie fight, has been at the center of all manner of scrutiny for the often all too close, cozy relationship it has had with the very businesses it is supposed — wink-wink, nod-nod — to regulate: the county’s taxi, limousine and towing companies.
But that axis of regulatory canoodling was upended with the arrival of the rideshare entities, Uber and Lyft, which offered a better business model to consumers and drove the cabbies crazy.
Cockream endeavored to crack down on the rideshare interlopers to reign in, if not kill their intrusion into the marketplace. But Uber and Lyft also had deep enough pockets to fend off legal challenges. And that eventually led to a conspiracy of dolts as Cockream plotted to engage in a sting operation, in which cab and limo drivers posing as normal rideshare customers would lure Uber and Lyft drivers to destinations where Cockream’s crack Keystone Kops were waiting to issue tickets and hefty fines.
Apparently it never dawned on Cockream there was anything wrong with employing rideshare competitors, not to mention the very companies he was supposed to be objectively regulating, to undermine Uber and Lyft. This was like asking McDonald’s to help spy on Burger King.
The Boob Conspiracy soon led to calls for investigations, which would obviously require the sleuths probing the PTC to gain access to records relating to Cockream’s communications with the cab and limo businesses. Alas, when they finally got access to Cockream’s cellphone records, many of the texts and other messages on the devices had — as if by magic — disappeared. Oh dear.
But not everything had gone bye-bye. Some of the communications that survived involved communiques between Cockream and the (cough, cough) chief PTC inspector Brett Saunders. Really now, don’t you suspect the bumbling guards assigned to protect the hapless prince in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" were more diligent than a gumshoe for the PTC.
In their messages back and forth, Cockream and Saunders engaged in obscenity-laced tirades against then PTC chairman, Hillsborough County Commissioner Victor Crist, referring to him as a "$#@^%! idiot," not to mention suggesting the commissioner could "*&^%$*" as well as the always popular "%$#&^%," aimed in the general director of Republican state Sen. Dana Young, another vocal PTC critic, who is pushing to abolish the agency.
Let’s put it this way. The PTC has about as much of a chance of remaining a standalone government agency as President Donald Trump winning the National Organization for Women’s champion of the year.
Days ago Hillsborough Tax Collector Doug Belden offered to assume management of the PTC, which would seem to be a pretty good idea. Belden has been an effective and able public servant who could restore some public confidence in the PTC. So thanks a bunch.
Still, you have to wonder if Belden truly appreciates what’s he stepping into — (ahem) literally.
The disinfectant required to simply air out Cockream’s toxic waste dump of an office could be a budget-buster.
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