TAMPA - Tampa business leaders said Wednesday they want a scaled back light rail route between Tampa International Airport and the planned downtown high-speed rail station.

Stressing that additional voter input is essential following the Nov. 2 defeat of a referendum that would have funded light rail in Hillsborough County, a panel of elected and business officials agreed that rail remains critical to the area's quality of life and economic development future.

"We need to talk to people sooner rather than later and scale back a plan in order to get started," said Gary Sasso, president and chief executive officer of Carlton Fields law firm and outgoing chairman of the Moving Hillsborough Forward group that campaigned for the one cent on the dollar sales tax.

"We need to get the precise route between the high-speed rail station and Tampa International Airport, cost it out, and do it," Sasso said.

A light rail connection to Tampa's end of the Tampa-to-Orlando high-speed line would help preserve funding for that phase of the high-speed line, said John Schueler, who takes over chairmanship of the Tampa Bay Partnership today from Sasso.

Schueler said a Tampa light rail connection would eventually become part of a broader transportation plan.

High-speed rail advocates were concerned that without the light rail connection, critics could make a case that the Obama Administration's $2.05 billion allocation should not go forward. Currently the Tampa-Orlando phase of the high-speed line is scheduled to be operational in 2015.

Sasso and Schueler were among more than 125 elected officials and business people who attended a panel discussion Wednesday sponsored by the Tampa Bay Partnership regional economic development organization, the Tampa Downtown Partnership and the Urban Land Institute Tampa Bay, a non-profit planning group.

"We need to listen to the public and we have an obligation to create a plan that works the best," said Schueler, who is president of Media General's Florida Communications Group that includes The Tampa Tribune, WFLA-TV, Channel 8 and TBO.com.

Schueler said it was premature to discuss funding for a Tampa light rail segment that could serve to attract more interest once the public could see and ride it.

Panel members Ron Govin, a Temple Terrace city councilman who chairs the Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority and Mark Sharpe, a Hillsborough County commissioner and HART board member, want to see light rail go forward but said voter views must be respected.

"The voters spoke clearly," Sharpe said. "Government must be restrained."

Tampa attorney Ron Weaver, who attended Wednesday's Hillsborough transit forum, agreed with the downtown-to-airport light rail proposal.

He suggested it could be funded by a half-cent sales tax increase – compared with the one cent on a dollar increase voters turned down – if a quarter of a cent were used for the light rail segment and a quarter cent were promised residents from the south and east county areas for five transportation or road projects they might choose.

"It would be manageable to build a bare-bones light rail line between the airport and downtown if it did not have all the bells and whistles some might have wanted at first," Weaver said.

He suggested HART trim its most recent projections of $99 million a mile for light-rail along Cypress Street to about $70 million in accordance with voter wishes to cut government spending

Light rail advocates found some reinforcement from an independent post-referendum poll by Fallon Research and Communications Inc. of Washington, D.C., that found that only 31 percent of those who voted against the tax said no additional steps should be taken to improve roads and transit or to build a light rail system.

U.S. Rep. John Mica, R-Winter Park, who takes over as House transportation committee chair in January, has said he was disappointed in the Hillsborough light rail referendum defeat.

He intimated at one point that the Tampa leg might be jeopardized without the good transit connections he thinks are necessary at high-speed rail stations.

Some observers believe Mica must maintain that skeptical position for the conservative voter base that helped re-elect him, but Mica has also indicated he wants the Tampa-Orlando high-speed line to succeed.

"Please know you continue to have a strong proponent for bringing Florida and the United States into the next era of alternative and cost effective transportation systems," Mica said in a Nov. 8 letter to Florida transportation secretary Stephanie Kopelousos.

"As the State of Florida moves forward on the Orlando to Tampa project, it is my hope that this first leg of a statewide system will attract significant private sector interest and commitment to assist in the development, financing, construction and operations of the rail system.

tjackovics@tampatrib.com