Who is Responsible

[trainman8119]

An interesting thought popped into my head today in one of those rare slow times on the train.

Who is responsible ??? By that I mean this. The cries are that the agencies are out of money. That is the real obvious here. But where does the shortfall come from. We all know that 30-50% (or whatever) of operating costs are to come out of the fare box. Now does that mean that the CTA, would, lets say, go 50-50 with government on covering expenses. So, where is the shortfall. Is it that the CTA (or Pace or Metra) is not covering their 50%. Or is the government not covering their 50%. If that was spelled out a little bit clearer, then the blame game would be clearer. If the CTA is not providing their end of the bargain, then the fares should go up and/or service cut....end of subject. If 50% of the budget is coming out of the farebox, then the state (or city, or whatever) should make up the difference. And if the CTA is making out an unrealistic budget, then maybe the state should take over creating the budget and take it away from the service boards to ensure that their (our) money is not getting wasted.

An idea

If the RTA was supposed to be the fiscal oversight (which they are, right), then they should just flat out make out a budget based on requests from the service boards and act as the government body representing those in the House and Senate. I have a hunch that way back when, this was the idea when the RTA was formed. Thus, the RTA and only the RTA should be begging for money on behalf of each of the service boards. In other words, instead of each body having a board of directors, the RTA would be the board of directors that would present their budget to the transportation commitee in Springfield for their approval. This way, since the state always has to come up with money to bail these guys out, they would have a say so on what goes where. Kinda like when you went to your parents for your allowance to buy an ice cream cone off the ice cream truck, or needed 5 bucks to put gas in the car (ahhh those were the days). Anyway, this would reduce some of the bueracracy. I mean, Pace has a 8 person board, the CTA has a whatever person board and Metra has a whatever person board. All these boards do is meet once a month to honor law requirements and collect their over-inflated paychecks for doing absolutely nothing. And since they are all politicians anyway, nothing would really change with the State transportation committee taking control of the purse strings. Also, this would reduce the number of whiners (eliminating a layer of waste and saving a ton of money), therefore accountability would also be easy to put the finger on. If it goes right, then credit can be given. If it goes wrong, then blame can be assessed and the bad eggs can be eliminated.

I know this is a pipe dream...but wouldn't it work????? It sure can't be worse that it is now.

[busfan]

Im not sure the exact formula but it used to be that the money from the farebox was used to cover employees salerys. All State and Federal money was used for parts, Buses, structure, etc. The main problem CTA has been fighting is the funding formula. RTA actually oversees CTA funding. The gas tax and funding was set up in the early 80's. RTA gets the money, and CTA gets the money from RTA. Problem is......... in the early 80's is was a very good formula, but now that CTA carries more people, more miles, the formula dont work anymore. RTA always has the final "say so" on CTA's budget. They want the way the formula is calculated. Thats basically why the RTA has new buses and better equiptment all the time. If you notice this week the govenor originally said he was going to "loan CTA 20 some million dollars", but RTA is the oversite for CTA and they have to approve it.

[Busjack]

Trainman is heading in the right direction, busfan is somewhat off. Busfan is correct that the federal government cut off operating subsidies and only provides capital money. However, RTA depends on the sales tax; the RTA gasoline tax was repealed in about 1979. Also, CTA now carries about half the passengers (on an initial fare basis, not an unlinked trip one) that it did when the 1980s formula was created, and the mileage was cut in 1997. Frequency is also much less than it was. Finally, the RTA doesn't have any buses...they belong either to CTA or Pace. Pace's budget, of course, never fully discloses where it gets the capital money to purchase buses (for instance, its 2006 budget said it had money for 18, and its 2007 budget said for 38, but it purchased 102 2600s). CTA uses bond money to purchase its buses, and the only question is whether there is adequate federal formula grant money to cover the bond payments.

RTA is supposed to be the oversight agency, but it had no business approving unbalanced 2007 budgets. They may well be in compliance with the law by saying spend as you will the first half, but all the budget balancing comes in the last quarter, but that was an irresponsible position.

With regard to trainman's comments:

As far as where the shortfall is created, if sales tax revenues go up 2% a year, and expenses 6%, and fares are increased only as the last straw (except for Metra, which has had some periodic fare increases, but apparently undercharges in the outer zones), there isn't enough money to go around. Especially when the Auditor General finds that the CTA is an inefficient organization, and the RTA isn't exercising effective oversight over it. The NTSB got its dig into both the CTA and RTA on another matter on Tuesday or Wednesday, but we know that the RTA and CTA are both "corporate accidents waiting to happen" in more ways than one. It doesn't matter how you allocate fault. Also, you seem to ignore here (although not elsewhere), that a good part of the problem is the spending rather than the taxing or fare side. I am surprised that you brought up the recovery ratio (by implication), given how Pace has continually played with it without realizing that there were not infinite funds.

As to who should do the begging, you have your point. First (late 2004), Frank and Carole were begging, and, for some reason (probably because Frank wanted to raise only the collar county tax and give it all to the CTA), Pace sided with Metra and told them to go fish. Then all of them were supposedly united in the RTA's Moving Beyond Congestion campaign. That apparently was a big dud, so CTA and Pace started their own campaigns again. The part I can't figure out is that while both Pace and the RTA have their "contact you legislator" sites, the CTA, both on transitchicago.com and Ask Carole, are linking to Tony Coppoletta's site. Is CTA trying to mask that it is running a campaign, and why isn't it directing people to the RTA site?

I also think you raise an issue separate from the begging, which is who should be governing the transit agencies at all. I would agree with you if you are saying that there should just be one transit operating board, apportioned properly. Then it could have subsidiaries running bus and rapid transit, commuter rail, and paratransit, but those subsidiaries would not have independent boards. That is my understanding of how the New York MTA works. SB572 goes in the wrong direction by increasing the size of the RTA and Metra boards, and not dealing at all with the totally dysfunctional CTA Board. However, the reason for this seems to be that while Daley says that funding is the legislature's problem, he wants to retain operational control of the CTA, I guess to protect patronage workers, and nobody wants Daley to run suburban transit. I agree that the current plan only multiplies board payrolls for people who do virtually nothing to earn their $15,000 or $25,000 (Reilly reportedly now wants $50,000).

Finally, with regard to state bailouts, I can see a difference between asking the state for an appropriation out of the general fund (in which case you are competing with schools, welfare, prisons, and everything else on which the state spends its money) and asking the legislature for authority to impose taxes in your own area. The RTA said in the Moving Beyond Congestion Plan that it wanted a sustainable tax source, but if spending growth is triple real economic activity reflected in the sales tax, the sales tax isn't that, and they will be back in a few years asking for another quarter percent. Also, the current approach has become a mixture of both state subsidies and local taxes, with state matches on the sales tax, the $54 million paratransit appropriation, and downstate wanting theirs.

The final thing to remember (which I have said elsewhere)...there is no funding without taxes. The bleep hit the fan when the RTA didn't recommend a tax plan until the last days of the regular session and the governor said he was against sales tax increases.

[Busjack]

Two possibly relevant Tribune opinion pieces on this:

• John Kass
  
• Editorial against accepting the plan (apparently too late, as the RTA did accept it).
  

Doesn't mean that I agree with all of the Tribune's opinions, but food for thought.