(The following story by Jere Downs appeared on the Philadelphia Inquirer website on November 23.)
PHILADELPHIA — As a last resort, Gov. Rendell is preparing to scrap some road and bridge projects and postpone others and use the money from that to rescue bus and train service statewide.
The state’s secretary of transportation, Allen Biehler, is drawing up a list of highway projects to eliminate or defer with an eye toward dedicating $90 million in federal transportation funds to transit this fiscal year. The plan was outlined yesterday in a memo obtained by The Inquirer.
The total amount available to plug SEPTA’s $62 million deficit was unclear.
“I’m opposed to moving the money right now,” Rendell said in an interview yesterday. “Let’s see what the legislature does.”
But Republican leaders who control the General Assembly refused yesterday to return to Harrisburg before their session officially ends Nov. 30 and instead urged the governor to use federal road funds for aid to mass transit. Such use would not involve any approval from the legislature.
“There is no conceivable way we are coming back,” Drew Crompton, a top lawyer for Senate President Pro Tem Robert Jubelirer (R., Blair), said yesterday. “The door is bolted shut.”
Beth Williams, a spokeswoman for House Speaker John Perzel (R., Phila.), said: “The ball is really in Gov. Rendell’s court.”
While the governor has the power to call the legislature back into session, his spokeswoman, Kate Philips, said yesterday that the governor had not decided whether he would call a special session.
The legislature adjourned Sunday without addressing the statewide transit crisis. Its two-year session officially ends Nov. 30.
A Democratic plan to increase motor-vehicle fees to raise $110 million in stopgap funding never picked up GOP support. Before leaving town, the legislature passed a bill changing the state’s new gambling law, but Rendell has said he might veto it.
The legislators never got around to raising their salaries.
From their district offices, many lawmakers yesterday continued to call on the governor to use highway funds for transit.
In another memo obtained by The Inquirer yesterday, a high-ranking official with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation warned Biehler that any such transfer of federal funds would be definitely unpopular and possibly illegal.
“Any shift of federal funds to transit would necessitate the removal of other regionally important transportation projects, dashing expectations,” PennDot Deputy Transportation Secretary Larry King wrote.
“Federal highway money can only be transferred for capital transit projects,” King continued. “In recent years, federal law has made [transit] operating expenses ineligible for this federal funding.”
The law in question has been broadly interpreted in the transit industry to allow such transfers. Rendell used $25 million of same type of federal funding last year as emergency aid to SEPTA and the agency that operates Pittsburgh’s mass-transit system.
Without resolution of SEPTA’s $62 million budget deficit, transit riders have little choice but to wait and see whether fares will rise 25 percent Jan. 1 and weekend service will end Jan. 23. Meanwhile, SEPTA mailed about 400 layoff notices to management and union employees yesterday.
“Rome is beginning to burn,” SEPTA spokesman Richard Maloney said. “We are out of time and out of money.”
Even if the needs of this fiscal year are met, SEPTA projects a $92 million budget gap in fiscal 2006, beginning July 1. Without action by the state to produce reliable, predictable transit funding, Biehler’s memorandum notes, $190 million in federal highway dollars must be redirected to keep buses and trains running statewide between now and July 1, 2006.
PennDot will have only $133 million in state gas-tax revenue to offset the transfer of federal road funds, leaving a gap of $57 million in road projects that will have to go. In specifics, Biehler is looking to eliminate $35 million in road projects for fiscal 2005 and $22 million in road projects statewide for fiscal 2006.
Just last year, Rendell shifted $15 million to save SEPTA away from the reconstruction of Route 309 in Montgomery County – and promised never to do it again.
Each year, the budget for federally funded road projects in Southeastern Pennsylvania amounts to $400 million. On the table in this region, transportation sources said, could be $28 million worth of road projects to eliminate in fiscal 2005 alone. An additional $44 million in projects could be postponed here and later funded again with anticipated state gas-tax revenue.
That means the city and county appointees who sit on the board of the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission will soon have to face tough choices. They channel all federal transportation funding that flows into the region and meet next on Dec. 9.
Even before the scope of the use of highway money was known yesterday, the commission’s director predicted it would be a thorny task to gain his board’s support again.
“We know the importance of SEPTA,” John J. Coscia said. “This is an unpleasant and somewhat difficult task.”