Harrisburg PA - Pennsylvania State Republicans pretty much told the various transit systems in the state that they need to look towards their city and county to provide them the additional funding they claim they need to continue operating. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports on this important stance by the State GOP regarding the public transit crisis in Pennsylvania.
While I tend to lean towards agreeing with House Republican Leader Sam Smith in terms of the philosophy of what he states, what I actually see here is hypocrisy and passing the buck. The buck I see being passed is from the tax and spend State Legislature to the local municipal level of government. The hypocrisy I see is that these same politicians have no problem porking out and earmarking tax money for their pet projects that benefit far fewer than public transit does.
Representative Smith correctly states that transit systems in the state already receive $900 million each year in state funding. He also correctly states that it is time the city and county start ponying up more. In Pittsburgh, for example, the City of Pittsburgh and the surrounding suburbs provide absolutely no funding assistance and Allegheny County provides a small amount of funding but even at that, they are trying to get out of providing that funding.
Out of the $900 million already provided by the state, a far from insignificant part of that funding is squandered by the transit systems in paying to operate various unneeded transit projects that they just had to build and didn't need as well as what seems to be the transit industry goal of finding new ways to waste money. The remainder is used to pay the workers, keep service on the streets and various other operational activities.
While I strongly oppose Governor Rendell's "Big Oil" windfall tax he is proposing to help fund transit systems as it will do nothing but punish Pennsylvania residents and the transit systems in the long term, it shouldn't be used by the State Legislature as a way to pass the buck in the transit funding crisis. The State Legislature needs to come up with a new funding structure as well as a funding mechanism that works. By attempting to blame the Rendell plan, no matter how ill-conceived it is, and using that to avoid doing what needs to be done, the politicians of Pennsylvania are only helping to destroy an important part of the State's infrastructure.
The Port Authority of Allegheny County is cleaning up it's act and eliminating waste as well as scaling back operations. SEPTA, is more efficient than PAT is but they are saddled by having a large rail network (pre-dating SEPTA) which is sucking down money. Neither the city or county in either area can fully fund the deficits and Rep. Smith knows this but I do agree that both the county and municipal governments need to start contributing more to running transit in their jurisdiction.
We won't likely see the State (or even local) politicians curtail their spendthrift ways on pork projects nor are we likely to see enough of an increase in local level funding to cover the deficits incurred by rising fuel and health care costs.
This poor attempt to pass the buck by Rep. Smith is simply a ploy being used by both political parties in Pennsylvania to avoid dealing with fixing the problem of a lack of a proper funding mechanism for public transit. I will give Smith credit for this, at least he isn't giving us political lip service about the situation like the Democrats routinely do.
The State Legislature needs to understand that public transit is an important part of the economic infrastructure of the State. It helps bring people to the jobs that haven't been chased out of the State by the business unfreindly environment in Pennsylvania. Public transit also is an important tool for emergencies, especially in the post 9/11 environment, to get people out of an area.
Even though Pennsylvania State Representative Sam Smith (R) pulled no punches and made the situation clear without the political spin, he earns a Lance for trying to pass the problem of public transit off onto someone else to deal with. It is the lack of a proper funding mechanism which the State Legislature refuses to allow that has helped spur this problem and it's been going on for 40 plus years. Deal with it already and quit trying pawn the problem off onto someone else.
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