One big piece of news emanating out of St. Louis is Metro's funding crunch.
The mass transit system provides bus and train service to St. Louis City, St. Louis County and portions of Illinois. With cuts to the service taking effect, lawmakers are looking at ways to help the system. That's the topic of my latest article for the St. Louis Beacon:
State Rep. Rachel Storch, D-St. Louis, argues the state needs to take immediate action; she proposes an emergency spending bill to ease a nearly $45 million deficit.
While lawmakers, such as state Sen. Bill Stouffer, R-Napton, and state Rep. Steve Hobbs, R-Mexico, fear the consequences of using state funding to help municipal transit systems, they are considering legislation to make the program self-sufficient.
House Budget Chair Allen Icet, R-Wildwood, proposes something of a third option: a one-time infusion of cash contingent on Metro's convincing voters to pass a tax increase for operating expenses. That option, however, could take months to implement.
If anything, the debate over Metro illustrates the political and structural complications of wrangling state aid for local transit systems. The General Assembly usually declines to help pay for mass transit, and a decision otherwise could set a new precedent.
Read the rest here.
Give me a break. This is about as poorly a run system as you could imagine. There malfeasance is legendary and well recorded.
The taxpayers of the state should not contribute any more than we already do to this poorly managed and ill conceived system. If the taxpayers in the area in which the system is located won't support it - why should the rest of us?
Posted by: JasonB | April 01, 2009 at 09:20 AM