When just the title of a piece of legislation runs to 20 pages, it's fair warning that the bill may be another runaway "train" -- as lawmakers call their 11th hour cut-and-paste jobs -- that the governor ought to derail with a veto. HB 261, a 176-page mishmash of 18 separate transportation-related bills, is one of these.

Whatever good provisions it contains are overwhelmed by features that would open the door to waste, recklessness and abuse of authority in road-building.

In the worst of it, Florida's Turnpike would be a virtually self-governing "Turnpike Enterprise" that could compete with private enterprise in building hotels, offices and just about any other kind of commercial venture. The "Enterprise" would have a freer hand to encumber existing toll revenues to underwrite new projects that would be unable to pay their own way for as long as 22 years, seven more than currently allowed. This roads-to-nowhere loophole is a boondoggle in waiting for any developers with sufficient political influence, whom motorists elsewhere would be forced to subsidize with their tolls.

The bill also allows the Department of Transportation and local expressway authorities to create public-private partnerships that could bypass such proven safeguards as review by the Division of Bond Finance. The Orlando-Orange County Expressway Authority would be set free to float its own bonds.

Environmental advocates, reeling from multiple defeats in the regular session, oppose HB 261 on the valid grounds that it would encourage urban sprawl and undercut laws that protect Florida's wetlands. It is also a license for financial irresponsibility such as this state hasn't seen since abuses in the 1962 refinancing of the original Turnpike prompted the Legislature to enact many of the safeguards that its witless successors now propose to trash.

The governor's Transportation Department promoted the original bill, which ran a mere 33 pages on introduction. On final passage of the grossly engorged result on the session's last day, only one legislator (Rep. Ann Gannon, D-Delray Beach) had the presence of mind to vote no.

Despite all that, there is only one right thing for Jeb Bush to do, and that's to veto it, just as he did to a similar transportation "train" last year.

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