As President Obama, VP Joe "Amtrak" Biden, and SecTrans LaHood will tell you, America needs more Public Transportation. Public Transit stimulates economic growth, cuts down carbon emissions, and increases the livability of the area around it. This of course means that it is a sin in the eyes of Conservatives. Yet even the state that thinks Barry Goldwater is someone to look up to, and has sent John McCain and Jon Kyl to the Senate hand-in-hand for years, has begrudgingly begun to accept that Public Transportation is a good thing. Phoenix now boasts a nascent Light Rail line to go along with a respectable bus system.
Unfortunately, there are those in the Arizona State Legislature who'd see this progress stopped, if not reversed, and the Bill to do it is on its way to passage.
In the Phoenix metropolitan area, the Regional Public Transportation Authority, better known as RPTA or Valley Metro, makes Public Transit happen. They set the routes, manage the system, and set the plans for the future. Their comes from a public transportation fund, intended <span style="font-weight: bold;">solely</span> to fund public transit. But the Arizona Republican Party wants to make a little change, which they detail in Senate Bill 1416, brought to us by "the AZ Senator" Thayer Verschoor.
Proponents of Gun Control, a Woman's Right to Choose, Equal Rights for (Well anyone not a white man), and generally all things Just may know Thayer as the little pudgy guy who hates you. As it turns out, he has a strong dislike for Public Transportation as well. In a nutshell, his bill would do the following:
- Remove Valley Metro from its stewardship of the Public Transportation Fund, and give control to the "Regional Planning Agency." That agency would be the Maricopa Association of Governments (MAG). This would essentially make Valley Metro subservient to MAG, needing the Associations to approve the use of Public Transit money for Public Transit. MAG's not an inherently "bad" Agency, but it is a planning and policy association, it was not created to have direct control over Public Transit funds. It's also far more political than Valley Metro, and it leans heavily toward favoring highway spending over actual Mass Transit like buses and Light Rail.
- Remove's Valley Metro's authority to modify the Transit Plan to better suit changing economic or population situations. Also stripped is the authority to decide which systems (like buses and Trains) to buy. In fact, Valley Metro would essentially be limited to choosing whether to operate Public Transit itself (if it can get the money from MAG), or whether it should contract it out (for-profit Public Transportation).
- Remove the restriction that the Public Transportation Fund be used for Public Transportation only. In fact, MAG would have the authority to spend Public Transportation Fund money however it likes, since they would set the transportation plan (notice I didn't use the word Public there).
Among other sources, some of that Public Transportation Fund money comes from sales taxes approved via voter referendum specifically to fund Public Transit run by Valley Metro. This bill would essentially open the fund up to whatever use MAG wants, and Valley Metro will be lucky to have scraps left with which to actually operate Public Transit. I don't know about you, but I find that pretty appalling.
Arizona media is nowhere to be found on this, unfortunately. Of course, the Arizona Republic's editors blasted Light Rail in Phoenix as a waste that would never hits its ridership goals right up until it blew those numbers into the weeds, so maybe I shouldn't be surprised.
This one's slipping under the radar, and I'm afraid it will all be over before anyone realizes it.