(The following article by Jere Downs appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer on May 29.)
PHILADELPHIA — In a possible violation of Pennsylvania’s Sunshine Law, SEPTA’s board of directors met behind closed doors to discuss raising fares high enough to eliminate the need for drastic cuts in bus and rail service.
During the 45-minute session last Thursday, the board debated the consequences of increases sufficiently hefty to erase at least $40 million of SEPTA’s projected $55 million deficit, according to several members. A 15 percent increase, agency managers told them, could rescue the Broad Street C bus and the R1 Airport, R2 Warminster and R8 Chestnut Hill West Regional Rail lines.
“There was a consensus that we don’t want any service cuts whatsoever,” Thomas Babcock, a Delaware County appointee, said of the session.
At the board’s monthly public meeting immediately afterward, the 13 members present from the 15-person board did not mention the proposal, which would raise the cost of a token from $1.30 to approximately $1.50. Instead, the audience of about three dozen riders was informed that “legal and other matters” had been discussed.
With few exceptions, the Sunshine Law requires officials of public agencies to make their decisions in public. When more than half the elected or appointed members of a board assemble, they may not privately discuss the “framing, preparation, making or enacting of laws, policies and regulations.” They are allowed to move behind closed doors only to consider a limited range of matters, such as personnel, real estate, labor negotiations, or anticipated or pending court cases.
Board Chairman Pasquale “Pat” Deon said a new fare-increase option – which would replace the increase of roughly 7 percent that SEPTA already has proposed – could be discussed in private because it “raises legal concerns” about state procedural requirements. For instance, with only a month left until the board must balance its $888 million budget, SEPTA would find it difficult, if not impossible, to conduct another mandatory round of hearings in the city and suburbs.
“Anything we were asking [in the closed-door meeting] was legally related,” Deon said Tuesday, “and that’s our right to counsel.”
At SEPTA headquarters at 1234 Market St., the board rarely deliberates agency business in public, said Jettie Newkirk, one of two Philadelphia-appointed members.
“I have been on the board 10 years, and there has never been a public discussion or debate with the SEPTA board,” she said Friday.
“Discussing this in public, whatever, it just opens up Pandora’s box.”
Other SEPTA board members said they interpreted the Sunshine Law to mean they could discuss any issue privately as long as they did not act on it.
“I brought up the idea of raising fares… but no decision was reached,” said Michael O’Donoghue, one of Montgomery County’s two board representatives.
Corinna Vecsey Wilson, a lawyer for the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association, called that a common misreading of the Sunshine Law.
“I don’t see that it would ever be appropriate to have [the fare-increase] conversation behind closed doors,” she said. “Even background conversations which will lead to a decision… should happen in public.”
“People rely on public transportation,” she added. “It is sad for the residents who are going to be impacted.”
For the time being, many are more mad than sad.
“These representatives are supposed to be accountable to this region, to the riders, to governmental officials, to everybody,” said Irv Acklesberg, a lawyer for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and the Action Alliance for Senior Citizens. “To do it in private session is to operate as if SEPTA is a private company. It is not. It is ours.”
Board members have engaged in little public discussion of their plan, announced March 30, to save $25 million by eliminating four regional rail lines, the Broad-Ridge Spur and the C bus, and reducing service on dozens of bus routes. A 10-cent increase in the price of a token and the doubling of parking fees would net an additional $15 million.
Of the board members, only Charles Martin, a Bucks County representative, is known to have attended one of 10 public hearings held last month throughout the region.
“People are tired of being attacked, myself included,” Newkirk said of her decision to stay away from the particularly tumultuous daylong Philadelphia hearings.
The rowdiest crowd, however, turned out for the board’s monthly public meeting last Thursday, at which members barely mentioned the budget.
Pedro Rodriguez of the Action Alliance for Senior Citizens asked about the fate of the C bus and received a wait-and-see answer. “The public has had no opportunity to ask you questions,” he complained to the board. “This is our only chance.”
The members of his group then proceeded to pelt the board with old shoes.
Saving the C bus had indeed been one of the topics of conversation around the conference table in the board’s private meeting room just one hour before.
“There was unanimity that the board does not like these cuts,” Sen. Stewart Greenleaf (R., Montgomery), a state appointee to the board, said on Tuesday.
In search of a better way, the board requested that SEPTA staff research three new budget strategies, Martin, the board member from Bucks County, said. One would raise fares high enough to avoid any service cuts. A second would raise fares enough to minimize cuts. A third would allow SEPTA to carry a budget deficit past June 30 if the agency received formal assurance that funding relief was on the way from Harrisburg.
The board learned that help from Harrisburg may arrive, but not in time.
Tom Ellis, a Montgomery County appointee, told of his recent trip to the capital with SEPTA general manager Faye Moore and Denise Smyler, Gov. Rendell’s appointee to the board, to beg for the $15 million lost as a result of state budget cuts.
Ellis said he told board members that Harrisburg “is going to work with us to get that money back, but it’s unlikely that any final decisions will be made before we have to adopt our budget.”
Deon, the board chairman, said the board might hold a news conference to give its views on the budget.
“What we want to do is come out with the same thing,” he said, “that we agree with the public.”