(The following editorial appeared on the Delaware County Daily Times website on February 10.)
DELAWARE COUNTY, Pa. — The trains and buses will be kept running on time for now. And if not always exactly on time, at least, running. Fascists were always better at doing this sort of government work. But this is a democracy, and democracies have their disadvantages. One of them is that its elected officials tend not to respond to difficult political questions until a crisis arises.
And sometimes, not even then.
Wednesday, Gov. Ed Rendell released his proposed budget for 2005-2006. And it’s what the budget doesn’t include that is interesting.
The question in this case is how to fund the region’s public transportation needs.
Last fall, politician after politician running for re-election walked into the Daily Times building and described SEPTA as one of the most dysfunctional public authorities they’d ever seen.
Poorly managed, insufficiently funded, indifferently run, the public transit system is in crisis, and yet political “leaders” continue to quibble and squabble about what to do about it.
In the past, Rendell staved off D-Day by asking and getting the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission to transfer more funds from highway projects to SEPTA.But that only has bought time; it’s not a long-term answer.
There seems to be a consensus that SEPTA cannot be allowed to cut itself to ribbons. Think of the authority as a teenage girl, threatening to slice open her wrists. That’s what SEPTA did last year when it threatened devastating cuts in service and fare hikes that would effectively cause it to bleed to death.
There also seems to be a growing political consensus that the agency needs a dedicated funding source — that is to say, one it can rely on year-in and year-out. The question is from where should these tens of millions of dollars be raised.
The governor said earlier this week that any long-term solution for SEPTA would have to include a gas-tax increase, but he doesn’t want to do that right now with gasoline prices as high as they are.
Maybe in the spring.
Republican legislators are justifiably complaining that the governor has been hard to pin down when it comes to where he stands on how to save SEPTA.
“Every week, it is something different,” state Rep. Rick Geist, R-Blair, said of Rendell. “He has got to quit dancing around.”
That way, the Republicans can have the cover of a Democratic governor proposing to raise taxes instead of being blamed for it themselves.
In the short term, SEPTA will now be OK until June. But redirecting money from the highway fund will prevent needed projects from being done on the state’s roadways and bridges.
Prioritizing and choosing between painful alternatives are what voters send politicians to Harrisburg to do. They are paid pretty well to do it, even when they don’t.
Now is the time — not May 29, not May 30 — to get this hard work done. Because there may come a time when it will finally be too late.