(The Orlando Sentinel posted the following article by Jim Stratton on its website on May 4.)
ORLANDO — The billion-dollar rail project that has bedeviled state lawmakers is attracting an unlikely group of critics.
Transit officials around the state are warning that proposed high-speed-rail legislation will drain the pot of money now used to run Florida’s local bus and rail systems.
By their estimate, 43 percent of the state money now used to pay for bus routes, rail lines and transit stations will be gobbled up by the constitutionally mandated high-speed-rail project.
Transit agencies say they’re not opposed to high-speed rail, but they’re worried about how the state would fund it.
“We are very, very concerned,” said Wes Watson, executive director of the Florida Public Transit Association.
“We think it’s absolutely unfair.”
Two bills spell out how the state would pay for high-speed rail. Sponsored by Lakeland Republicans Rep. Dennis Ross and Sen. Paula Dockery, the wife of the Lakeland businessman who pushed to get high-speed rail approved in 2000, the bills propose spending $75 million a year for 30 years beginning June 1, 2004.
The money is to come from the 3-year-old Transportation Outreach Program, or TOPS, which pays for special transportation projects around the state.
But if there’s not enough money in that account — and this year, there’s none in the proposed budget — the state would turn to the public-transportation fund.
That account is expected to have about $175 million in it in each of the next five years.
Siphoning off $75 million for high-speed rail, the transit association argues, would gut local bus and rail systems.
About 500,000 people a day use public transit in Florida, Watson said.
Bill waits for lawmakers
Lawmakers may take up the rail legislation when they return to Tallahassee for a special session to resolve the state’s budget impasse. The bill is waiting in House and Senate committees.
Central Florida’s transit system gets about $10 million a year from the state to cover operating costs.
If the bill survives, Lynx officials say, the agency would lose about $4 million.
“It’s a pretty big whack,” said Joe Saviak, Lynx’s director of governmental affairs and communications.
“It definitely means pulling some buses off the street.”
Watson said agencies around the state would face similar scenarios.
“You’d be looking at entire routes being eliminated,” he said.
But not every transit official is so fearful. Mike Snyder, a Lynx board member and the state’s top transportation official in Central Florida, said the legislation is “something to keep an eye on,” but it “doesn’t concern me yet.”
Another option available
Snyder said he thinks lawmakers will find a way to fund TOPS, meaning they won’t have to raid the public-transportation fund.
If legislators don’t fund TOPS, they could increase the state’s public-transportation account enough to cover both high-speed rail and local bus systems.
Right now, the state must set aside at least 15 percent of its transportation trust fund for public transportation.
“But that’s just a minimum,” said Nazih Haddad, director of the Florida High Speed Rail Authority.
“It’s not a fixed amount.”
Boosting public transportation’s share of the pot would leave a smaller percentage for road projects.
Saviak doesn’t think lawmakers and road-building interests will go for that.
“Who’s the easy group to pick on?” he said.
“Public transportation.”