Professor Haynes Goddard's op-ed asks why the multi-billion dollar light rail initiative was not included in OKI's 2030 plan approved by its Board on Thursday. The answer is twofold: the will of the taxpayers and the force of the law.

As I have explained to the good professor on two occasions, the federal mandate that OKI operates under requires that each and every project in our one-, three- and 30-year plans is fiscally constrained. This means that there is a way to pay for the project.

The taxpayers' 69 percent to 31 percent defeat of the light rail plan made it clear to objective observers that light rail did not have such fiscal support. OKI staff made inquires with the Federal Highway Administration precisely on this question and were told, in certain terms, that inclusion of light rail in the 2030 plan would violate our federal mandate.

Inclusion would make the entire plan null and void. The flow of federal dollars for transportation projects in the entire region would stop. It should be clear why light rail was not included in the 2030 plan.

It should be noted that the OKI 2030 plan does include two mass-transit rail initiatives, the Central Area Loop and the Eastern Corridor project. In addition, the overall 2030 plan will save taxpayers over $5 billion due to improvements in transportation systems. The plan is a work in progress and OKI will constantly work to improve it, but I think that $5 billion savings for the taxpayers is a good start.

In the short time that I have been at OKI, I am greatly encouraged by a new enthusiasm of our eight-county community for drawing the region together to find solutions to our shared problems. For its part, OKI's hard-working staff is dedicated to finding the best answer to difficult issues that will have the most positive effect on the 1.9 million people who live in the region.

In the real world, not every plan is perfect. However, there is no reason to think that OKI's staff did not try to make it as perfect as those 1.9 million people wanted it to be.

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Mark Policinski, Executive Director, OKI Regional Council of Governments