(The following article by Jere Downs was posted on the Philadelphia Inquirer website on June 24.)
PHILADELPHIA — SEPTA’s volatile finances were stabilized yesterday for the next year and a half with $215 million shifted from federal road and bridge funds.
The Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, which signs off on federal and state transportation spending in the region, unanimously approved the request by Gov. Rendell to plug SEPTA’s deficits until December 2006.
With that money assured, the transit agency’s board of directors also voted unanimously yesterday to approve a balanced SEPTA budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1.
But transit riders who have endured years of SEPTA threats to ax service or raise fares still have cause for concern. SEPTA General Manager Faye Moore warned yesterday that a strike is still a possibility.
Members of SEPTA’s largest union – Transport Workers Union Local 234 – are working without a contract, which expired June 15.
SEPTA’s $952 million budget for fiscal 2006 assumes that veteran Local 234 members will contribute to the cost of monthly health care, said Richard Burnfield, the transit agency’s senior budget director. Details on budgeted employee co-payments are not available in the agency’s published budget, and Burnfield declined further comment.
Avoiding monthly health-care co-payments is an issue over which many veteran bus drivers, cashiers and janitors say they are willing to strike.
“I hope it does not come to that,” Moore told the planning commission’s board yesterday. “We are hoping to a do a fair and reasonable settlement without a work stoppage.” Local 234 spokesman Bob Bedard could not be reached for comment yesterday.
Of the $215 million for SEPTA, $130.5 million will be used by the transit agency in fiscal 2006. Of that, $92.1 million will fill SEPTA’s projected operating budget gap. An additional $4.1 million will finance transit service designed to fund low-income urban workers commuting to suburban jobs. An additional $34.3 million was directed toward bus overhaul and maintenance.
For fiscal 2007, the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission pledged $65 million toward SEPTA’s projected $130 million operating budget deficit that year. For the welfare-to-work transit service, $2 million more was committed. Finally, $17.5 million will be used for bus overhaul work.
“SEPTA will still have another $65 million deficit next June,” commission director John Coscia said. “What will happen, I do not know.”