This Washington
Predictable Arguments In Debate Over Emergency Transit Funding
Photo by Oran on Flickr.
The debate over Sen. Scott White's (D-46) bill, which allows King County to pass (by a two-thirds majority of the county council or a majority vote of the people) a two-year, $20 vehicle license fee to help fund Metro bus service (which is facing a $300 million shortfall through 2015 without the funding), headed to the house transportation committee today. It passed the senate earlier this month .
The pro-transit side pointed out that Metro will have to make drastic cuts without the funding and the anti-transit side argued that transit service should be funded by transit users, not people who drive cars. Anti-transit Republicans, in short, say funding transit is socialism, believe the state does not subsidize cars, and will vote against this bill.
Case in point: Anti-transit Republican Jay Rodne (R-5) called the legislation an "unfair shifting of taxation" onto car owners, saying it "directly penalizes places like rural King County that I represent that are wholly dependent on the automobile. I've got a real concern for imposing a cost shift on those areas that are not serviced by transit." Rodne claimed, additionally, that if Metro would simply "keep labor costs in check" the agency wouldn't need a new revenue source. "Labor costs are wholly out of any context of reality at Metro and therein lies the problem. And the solution is, let's go back to penalize the people who drive cars to respond to a failure of management to keep labor costs in check?"
(Actually, as I've reported ad nauseum, roads are heavily subsidized by taxes that are paid by everyone---and as Metro general manager Kevin Desmond pointed out at today's hearing, fully 86 percent of Metro's current users also own cars, meaning that only 14 percent of Metro riders won't pay the fee).
Metro general manager Kevin Desmond responded patiently (I think) that the union "[voted] 69 percent ... to give up not only their wage increases but, frankly, their long [cherished] three-percent [cost of living adjustment] floor. That was a serious giveback by the [Amalgamated Transit Union]. ... That contract will save $32 million over the three-year life of the contract [or] roughly 200,000 hours in service, so labor has been part of it."
Later, Rep. Jason Overstreet (R-42) asked King County Council transportation committee chair Larry Phillips, "why not use the fare to get closer to your actual costs rather than charge this tax on people who are already subsidizing the fare?"
Phillips responded curtly, "Well, actually, we have done that. Over the course of the last two years, we have raised fares four times. … We've almost doubled the fare rate in King County as the recession was taking hold. I think we've pushed the fare issue about as far as we can."
Representatives of Community Transit in Snohomish County, which was included in White's original bill but subsequently removed in the senate transportation committee, asked the house committee to put them back in the legislation.
The debate over Sen. Scott White's (D-46) bill, which allows King County to pass (by a two-thirds majority of the county council or a majority vote of the people) a two-year, $20 vehicle license fee to help fund Metro bus service (which is facing a $300 million shortfall through 2015 without the funding), headed to the house transportation committee today. It passed the senate earlier this month .
The pro-transit side pointed out that Metro will have to make drastic cuts without the funding and the anti-transit side argued that transit service should be funded by transit users, not people who drive cars. Anti-transit Republicans, in short, say funding transit is socialism, believe the state does not subsidize cars, and will vote against this bill.
Case in point: Anti-transit Republican Jay Rodne (R-5) called the legislation an "unfair shifting of taxation" onto car owners, saying it "directly penalizes places like rural King County that I represent that are wholly dependent on the automobile. I've got a real concern for imposing a cost shift on those areas that are not serviced by transit." Rodne claimed, additionally, that if Metro would simply "keep labor costs in check" the agency wouldn't need a new revenue source. "Labor costs are wholly out of any context of reality at Metro and therein lies the problem. And the solution is, let's go back to penalize the people who drive cars to respond to a failure of management to keep labor costs in check?"
(Actually, as I've reported ad nauseum, roads are heavily subsidized by taxes that are paid by everyone---and as Metro general manager Kevin Desmond pointed out at today's hearing, fully 86 percent of Metro's current users also own cars, meaning that only 14 percent of Metro riders won't pay the fee).
Metro general manager Kevin Desmond responded patiently (I think) that the union "[voted] 69 percent ... to give up not only their wage increases but, frankly, their long [cherished] three-percent [cost of living adjustment] floor. That was a serious giveback by the [Amalgamated Transit Union]. ... That contract will save $32 million over the three-year life of the contract [or] roughly 200,000 hours in service, so labor has been part of it."
Later, Rep. Jason Overstreet (R-42) asked King County Council transportation committee chair Larry Phillips, "why not use the fare to get closer to your actual costs rather than charge this tax on people who are already subsidizing the fare?"
Phillips responded curtly, "Well, actually, we have done that. Over the course of the last two years, we have raised fares four times. … We've almost doubled the fare rate in King County as the recession was taking hold. I think we've pushed the fare issue about as far as we can."
Representatives of Community Transit in Snohomish County, which was included in White's original bill but subsequently removed in the senate transportation committee, asked the house committee to put them back in the legislation.
