(The following story by Stephanie M. Peters appeared on the Rutland Herald website on March 21, 2009.)
RUTLAND, Vt. — The House Transportation Committee this week restored funding for Amtrak’s Ethan Allen Express to a draft of the 2010 transportation budget, but the service’s salvation still remains far from guaranteed, according to Rep. David Potter, the committee’s vice chairman.
“I know from having been here for a while that it’s not a done deal until it’s a done deal,” Potter said Friday afternoon. “I would say it’s looking good, but it doesn’t mean that it’s going to come out this way in the end until all the cards are on the table and everyone has agreed.”
The budget still needs to be voted upon by the committee, which Potter said he expects will happen early next week. It will then pass to the House Appropriations Committee before going to the House floor for a vote and moving to the Senate, he said.
Earlier in the week, Potter, a Clarendon Democrat, said at a legislative breakfast sponsored by the Rutland Region Chamber of Commerce that the committee had not found a way to fund the train’s continued service.
However, on Friday he said the committee now hopes to create a Motor Fuel Distributor Infrastructure Assessment, a motor fuel tax that will represent new revenue and will be used for bonding. That money would not be used directly to fund Amtrak because of the tight restrictions associated with the bonding, but would free up other transportation funds that could be applied to the cost of Amtrak, Potter said.
Potter cautioned, however, that the Senate could very well propose an alternative revenue source, namely additional motor vehicle registration fees, and the final proposal could end up being a compromise, he said.
“It’s not a secret that we’re talking about these things, but what you have to know is all we’re really doing at this point is talking about it and what it looks like in the end could be entirely different,” Potter said.
The news comes after the state announced late last month it would soften its proposal to eliminate the Albany-to-Rutland service in favor of a temporary switch to an Amtrak-operated bus route, a proposal put forth by the Douglas administration last fall as a means to save about $1.4 million in the budget next year.
For now, the bus proposal has been “entirely scrapped,” according to Robert Ide, director of rail for the Agency of Transportation.
Keeping the rail service was “always a financial conversation for us,” he said. “If the Legislature tells us (Amtrak) is our spending priority then that’s it.”
Since its announcement, the administration’s plan to eliminate the Ethan Allen was met with strong opposition — spearheaded by Rutland businesses and city officials — spanning the state’s western corridor and call to not only keep the service, but extend it to Burlington. On Monday, the Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce will join with the Rutland and Addison County chambers of commerce to hold a press conference at Union Station in Burlington announcing their unified support of a Burlington to New York City line.
Tom Donahue, executive director of the Rutland Region Chamber of Commerce, said Friday he still remains “cautiously optimistic” about the train’s future.
“It does appear the funding is in the transportation budget at the moment … but it’s still five votes away from being a sure thing,” he said.