(The following story by Larry Higgs appeared on the Asbury Park Press website on April 9, 2009.)
ASBURY PARK, N.J. — Gov. Jon S. Corzine’s proposed state budget would cut $62 million in state operating aid to NJ Transit, which transit advocates fear could result in a “doomsday budget” of fare hikes and service cuts for riders, similar to what New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority has proposed.
Reductions in the proposed fiscal year 2010 state budget would cut 17 percent from NJ Transit’s budget to operate trains and buses and put the state mass-transit agency back to 2008 funding levels.
Richard Sarles, NJ Transit’s executive director, said he isn’t ready to raise fares and cut service. The last fare increase, in June 2007, was the third increase since 2000.
“Fare increases and service cuts are things we try and avoid,” Sarles said in an interview Wednesday. “We’ll try and do everything but that.”
NJ Transit officials are looking at recurring savings from cost-cutting measures already taken or ongoing, such as early retirement programs, not filling certain positions, better use of technology to communicate with customers and trimming administrative costs, he said.
Cost-containment measures taken this year have saved about $15 million, said spokeswoman Penny Bassett Hackett. Administrative costs have been reduced from 12 cents of every dollar to 8 cents.
“At the end of the month, we’ll outline how we’ll deal with it,” Sarles said, adding that NJ Transit passes its budget in July after the state budget is adopted. “We’ll go through the budget and try and deal with it.”
Sarles is scheduled to testify before the Assembly Budget Committee about NJ Transit’s budget on May 28, but transit advocates said they don’t see how a $62 million cut can be absorbed without fare hikes and service cuts.
“I can’t imagine how they do it,” said Zoe Baldwin, Tri-State Transportation Campaign New Jersey coordinator. “It would come to some fare increase or services cut. Seventeen percent is a hefty cut.”
Doug Bowen, president of the New Jersey Association of Railroad Passengers, said it is a lower political risk for Corzine to throw mass-transit riders under the budget bus, rather than drivers or other larger groups of constituents.
“If you don’t drive, you don’t count,” Bowen said. “The governor’s trying to lose as few votes as he can, by not raising the gas tax.”
State treasury officials defended the cut to NJ Transit’s budget as part of the larger overall plan to reduce a $7 billion short fall with $4 billion in cuts, plus federal stimulus money and $1 billion in additional revenue.
“In that $4 billion, of 2,400 line items in the budget, 36 are reduced and NJ Transit is not immune from this,” said Tom Vincz, Treasury Department spokesman. “We have asked all stakeholders to share the burden, and this is in line with the efficiencies we’ve asked of all agencies.”
Vincz said the focus of the budget remains to minimize the burden on the state’s more vulnerable citizens, while dealing with the budget shortfall.
“These are unprecedented times and we’re taking unprecedented steps to achieve a balanced budget,” he said.
While $420 million in federal stimulus funds have come NJ Transit’s way, that money must be used on construction projects and cannot be used for the agency’s operating expenses, Sarles said.
Advocates said they’re worried that off-peak service on which riders depend will get the ax.
“What we fear is more of recent past. They’ve established a precedent of cutting more off-peak and late-night service in the hopes that we wouldn’t notice,” Bowen said.
Sarles defended those types of schedule adjustments as putting capacity where the demand for service is — in and round peak hours.trimming administrative costs, he said.