An argument that U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., might have heard from the Inter-Modal Transportation Authority in support of the transpark appeared in a letter to the editor July 3, when an ITA board member wrote there were always people against progress. Naysayers were against the locks and dams on the Barren and Green rivers in the 1830s, opposed to I-65 in the 1960s and against everything else in between that brought prosperity to southcentral Kentucky. But thats only part of the story: Warren County and Bowling Green public bonds financed hardly any of those worthy projects. The Army Corps of Engineers built and maintained the locks and dams with Uncle Sams money. The Louisville and Nashville Turnpike in the 1840s was a private toll road. In the 1850s Bowling Green businessmen risked $300,000 of their own money to buy the right-of-way for the L & N Railroad from Elizabethtown to the Tennessee line. Thats more than $6 million in todays dollars. State money financed higher education in Bowling Green in the early 1900s. Federal aid to rural cooperatives helped fund electrification in Warren County in the 1930s. State bonds built the Kentucky Parkway in the 1950s. Federal and state money built I-65 in the 1960s. Whether Sen. McConnell can use his remarkable political skills to convince the U.S. Senate and the Federal Aviation Administration to finance the transpark project is another matter. Meanwhile, Warren County and Bowling Green taxpayers should not be stuck with a $25 million debt. They also should not be liable for any environmental cleanup the transpark could cause. If the ITA thinks the transpark is a good idea, why dont they risk their own money, like the Bowling Green businessmen in the 1850s? Why cant they convince other businesses to join them? Michael KleinBowling Green