(The following article by Jere Downs was posted on the Philadelphia Inquirer website on May 21.)
PHILADELPHIA — Without the immediate threat of fare hikes and service cuts, SEPTA’s budget hearings drew positive, if sparse, feedback yesterday in Philadelphia.
Facing a $70 million deficit in a proposed $920 million budget for fiscal year 2005, the transit agency’s strategy of enlisting community support for state funding reform was welcomed by hard-core transit supporters, union leaders, community activists, and riders who stopped by the Pennsylvania Convention Center to testify yesterday afternoon.
“You can say we have a love-hate relationship with SEPTA… However, these are different times, and we are here to provide support for reliable funding,” said Jeanne Boone, a spokeswoman for the Action Alliance of Senior Citizens of Greater Philadelphia, the city’s largest advocacy group for the elderly. “We cannot let SEPTA wither on the vine.”
Two hearings yesterday took place in a small conference room down the hall from the cavernous Convention Center hall where hundreds of people last May loudly scolded SEPTA’s plans to abandon four Regional Rail lines and the Route C bus. In January, a combination of $30 million in state funding and $11 million in SEPTA savings closed a $41 million budget gap in the agency’s current budget.
To kick off the 11 a.m. hearing, agency budget director Richard Burnfield alluded to painful options should state legislators decline to increase transit funding. Mending the projected $70 million deficit for the fiscal year beginning July 1, Burnfield said, would “require staggering cuts of a magnitude which would leave tens of thousands with no options or choices.”
A fare increase alone, Burnfield added, “would be among the highest in transit history and would result in drastic and permanent losses in riders.”
Gov. Rendell and state legislators have said repeatedly that tax hikes to raise transit funding are unlikely before the November election. Nonetheless, Burnfield said in an interview yesterday that SEPTA riders can expect public hearings in “September or October,” in which the agency will have to directly address its budget shortfall.
“We cannot wait much longer than that,” Burnfield said. “We have to give ourselves time in the fiscal year to balance the budget.”
Transit supporters applauded SEPTA yesterday for the launch this month of Save Transit, an agency-led coalition dedicated to pressing the cause of transit with state legislators.
“I stand here in public ovation of SEPTA’s decision not to cut service and lines. Underfund SEPTA and the region will collapse,” said Ed D’Alba, president of Urban Engineers, a Center City consulting firm. “We must, once and for all, stop the political gamesmanship of the funding debate.”
Paul Levy, director of the nonprofit Center City District, noted that SEPTA’s rescue is necessary given public transportation’s crucial role in the health of Philadelphia’s business, education and hospitality sectors.
“SEPTA must be understood as a vital investment in our region,” Levy said. “We simply want to get SEPTA off the list of chronic, critical patients.”
In contrast to the 900 people who testified or sent letters protesting cuts last year, only about 100 have commented on the budget in six hearings across the region so far, said Murray Goldman, one of the hearing examiners hired by SEPTA to run the proceedings. The seventh and final hearing began at 5 p.m. yesterday.
“There is no controversy,” Goldman said, explaining the smaller crowds. “Who knows when the other shoe is going to drop? There will be more hearings in the fall.”