Governor, lawmakers still at odds over transit funds
HARRISBURG – SEPTA said Monday that it has sent out layoff notices to hundreds of employees and is preparing to eliminate all weekend service and raise fares 25 percent if the governor doesn’t do something to fill the agency’s budget deficit. But Gov. Ed Rendell said he is sticking by his demand that lawmakers return to Harrisburg and resume a legislative session that they ended Nov. 21. With just more than 24 hours to go before the legislative session by law must end, Rendell again called on lawmakers to make up the shortfall by having motorists pay higher fees on new tires, emission stickers and car rentals.
“The governor is still holding out hope that the Legislature will return and enact a mass transit fix that will avoid layoffs and catastrophic cutbacks to service,” said Kate Philips, the governor’s press secretary.
Republicans on Monday said they’re not returning. Besides, they said they have already offered the governor a solution: Use federal highway funds to make up the $62 million shortfall for SEPTA and a $30 million gap for the Port Authority of Allegheny County, or PAT.
“He has the ability to transfer funds and … take care of this crisis,” said Stephen Miskin, spokesman for House Majority Leader Sam Smith (R-Jefferson). “Then if there is a problem caused by the transfer of highway funds, we take care of the roads during the budget process.”
So in other words, more than two weeks after the showdown between Rendell and the Legislature over mass transit spending began, there has been no compromise by either side on how best to find $92 million for the state’s commuter trains and buses.
SEPTA’s director of public affairs, Richard Maloney, said Monday that his agency’s board of directors is holding a special meeting Thursday to consider contingency plans if funding doesn’t come through. He said in addition to the elimination of weekend service and the fare increases, about 1,400 workers eventually would lose their jobs.
There has been no decision as to whether individual train lines or bus routes would be eliminated entirely, he said.
This is the second year in a row that SEPTA’s budget has been short tens of millions of dollars. Last year, the agency used highway funds to make up a $55 million deficit.
“But then everybody in Harrisburg told us that was the only and the last time they would do that,” said Maloney.
He contends SEPTA’s budget is already barebones, having eliminated 1,200 positions and cut $400 million over the past eight years. “We’ve cut the system down as lean as we possibly can and still deliver the service required,” he said.
Although the smaller Pittsburgh transit system has a shortfall half that of SEPTA’s, it is responding with equally draconian measures. PAT said it plans to raise fares 25 percent in February and eliminate weekend service by March.
Before the Legislature adjourned in the wee hours of Nov. 21, it arranged to have $6 million transferred from other funds to pay for cash-strapped bus lines in rural areas. But Republicans argue that if Rendell needed more money for SEPTA and PAT, he should have asked a lot sooner than he did.
“We were prepared to take up this issue in July, and it was the governor who asked us to wait for an audit of the systems,” Miskin said. “We’re still waiting for that audit.”
An interim report on the audit was given to the governor on Nov. 12, but Rendell has yet to share that report.
Rick Martinez can be reached at 717-705-6330 or rmartinez@calkins-media.com.