Yesterday, the King County Council passed a proposal by Councilmember Rod Dembowski that would delay the Metro bus cuts made necessary by the great recession and the failure of Prop 1 last April. Under Dembowski’s proposal, which was supported by councilmembers Hague, Dunn, Lambert, and von Reichbauer, the council adopted the scheduled September service cuts but indefinitely delayed the cuts scheduled for February 2015, June 2015, and September 2015.
They also passed a motion requesting that the Executive Constantine use the delay to look for more savings and efficiencies. The suggestions included: further increasing fares, eliminating paper transfers, and commissioning a second performance audit.
Keeping transit service on the street is at the core of Transportation Choices’ mission. Saving and expanding transit service in King County and across the State is why we get up every day and come to work. That said, we cannot save bus service in the short-term if we are making metro financially and politically unsustainable in the long-term.
That is why we support Executive Constantine’s to veto the Demboski’s shortsighted proposal. From Dow’s veto letter:
[The Dembowski ordinance] is not responsible. It violates the Comprehensive Financial Management Policies adopted unanimously by the Council less than two months ago. Specifically, it spends future revenue that does not exist, and it draws upon one-time revenue to fund ongoing operations. Further, it violates King County Metro’s Council-adopted Strategic Plan by allocating service hours based on political considerations rather than data and established objective criteria. We’ve come far in our nationally recognized work to reform and modernize King County government and should not endanger this progress. …
We can budget based on hope. Or we can budget based on reality. This ordinance commits us to spending money that we do not know to exist. …
Ordinance 2014-0210.2 violates the Transit Strategic Plan and service guidelines, and creates additional financial impacts that are not reconciled. This compromises the integrity of our regional planning process and sets a dangerous precedent.
Not only did the council plan irresponsibly delay service cuts, it also went outside of the non-politicized, community adopted strategic plan, to save relatively inefficient DART routes on the eastside, at a cost of $2.4 million dollars that Metro does not have.
While there is room for efficiency in any organization, public or private, Metro is not facing an efficiency crisis; the agency has undergone an audit and extensive scrutiny by the legislature and a diverse group of community stakeholders known as the regional transit task force (RTTF), which Rob Johnson, our Executive Director, and Carla Saulter, our communications director who was not on staff at the time of the RTTF, had the pleasure of contributing to. Our statewide transit crisis is, at its heart, a revenue problem. We cannot starve our transit systems, expecting them to do more with less, while our region grows faster than any other in the country. And, we can’t fund transit service with fairy dust and dreams — money we don’t have.
It is painful to accept that cuts must happen. It breaks our heart to hear stories from friends and neighbors who can’t affordably get to where they need to go in a timely manner. That’s why Transportation Choices is working with the City of Seattle to identify revenue that would save city service. We are also exploring options with other cities in the county. But the truth is, without countywide funding for transit service and/or a more direct investment from the state, cuts are coming.
Until our state provides a stable, sustainable and non-regressive funding and revenue sources for transit, we will continue to limp along with inadequate, under resourced transit service. We can and must do better.
