Mitt Romney’s new California mansion is expected to include a two story elevator that is capable of transporting his cars around his two story garage. While the lawmaker and former Massachusetts governor is alright with car elevators for personal use he has never been comfortable with elevators for the disabled.
Romney during his time as governor vetoed two pieces of legislation that would have improved two elevators under the Americans With Disabilities Act.
As if denying the disabled access to easy transportation wasn’t bad enough, Romney then had a private elevator in the statehouse locked so it could only be used for his own private needs.
The denied piece of legislation came to Romney’s desk in 2006; the first legislation asked for a $40,000 elevator improvement project while the second asked for $25,000 to make ADA improvements so people with disabilities could actually use the elevators they were suppose to have access to.
At the time Mitt Romney said the programs:
“Would be nice to have, but which we cannot justify paying for out of rainy day funds. A smaller number of these projects are just pure pork.”
We are not really sure how fixing an elevator to make it Americans with Disabilities compliant is pork spending at its worse. Of course we will never know Romney’s real reason for denying the ADA elevator fix because he used $100,000 of taxpayer dollars to have all records of his governorship destroyed after he left office. Ironically that $100,000 could have fixed the elevators with $35,000 still left over.
