A SEPTA funding boost is uncertain amid a complex state budget struggle

With less than two weeks to go until the theoretical deadline for passage of the state budget it s still very uncertain that legislators will approve spending the hundreds of millions of additional dollars that SEPTA and other transit agencies say they need to avoid ruinously deep system cuts It is clear however that the thousands of pro-transit emails that riders have sent legislators the town halls that senators and representatives have been holding and the rallies staged in Harrisburg and elsewhere are having an effect The continuous statewide advocacy for citizens transit has helped bring the issue to the forefront of a multitude of various legislators minds declared Sen Nikil Saval a member of the Senate transportation committee who represents Center City and part of South Philly The advocacy has gotten the attention of the Senate Republicans whose sponsorship is essential to passage of a spending package Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman who has suggested transit shouldn t receive any additional funding contends the agency and advocates are trying to manufacture a situation Sen Cris Dush from central Pa sent out a mass email response last week complaining about an unfunded highway project in his district and chastising SEPTA riders who have the luxury of being able to sit on a bus or train catching up on work or social media while our folks must pay attention to the road ahead to avoid deer and other drivers We don t have the money for what you are asking I will not take from the infirm the elderly to provide money for SEPTA I hope and pray all of you in the SEPTA institution area find solutions within your communities Dush wrote Pennsylvania Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman spoke during a news conference in the Capitol after Gov Josh Shapiro delivered his budget address for the - fiscal year Feb AP Photo Matt Rourke Beyond the rhetoric it s hard to know what s genuinely happening in the closed-door negotiations between legislative leaders and Gov Josh Shapiro where details of the budget are being worked out Political experts and even lawmakers like Saval say they don t know for sure that there will ultimately be more money for transit or which proposed revenue-raising measures might win approval One of the limited things they generally agree on is that the budget perhaps won t get a final vote by the June deadline although it likely will be done before August when the first of SEPTA s planned deep utility cuts are scheduled to hit They also say any deal will need to boost funding for the kind of rural red-district road and highway projects Dush was referring to I can tell you that it s very key to me to talk to my colleagues and get an understanding of their infrastructure demands in their district revealed Sen Joe Picozzi a SEPTA booster and one of Philadelphia s scant Republican elected functionaries There s a lot to be done There are a lot of demands and I think there s a lot of people who really care about seeing them addressed The worst budget fight in decades SEPTA periodically has dramatic financial crises when its operating costs and capital necessities start to exceed its state funding The majority contemporary ones in and came with familiarly dire predictions of road shutdowns and a diminished system and were fixed by shifting turnpike tolls and other state funds to mass transit The system s current problems however come at a particularly tough moment of political division and fiscal uncertainty experts say State Senate President Pro Tempore Kim Ward described the fight over this year s budget as the worst one she s seen in her years in office in part because of likely federal funding cuts I don t remember us being in this bad of a financial position the Republican lawmaker disclosed in a TV interview Sunday Gov Josh Shapiro has proposed increasing the state budget about to billion for the fiscal year that starts in July with more money for schooling healthcare care economic maturation and transportation He would put an additional million in sales tax revenue toward transit Senate Republicans essentially rejected a similar transit proposal last year triggering SEPTA s latest emergency Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker at podium and Pennsylvania Gov Josh Shapiro spoke at the Frankford Transportation Center after he publicized new funding for SEPTA Nov Meir Rinde Billy Penn For the governor s budget to work the state would have to spend down its surplus and rainy day funds and also approve new sources of revenue It depends on the legalization and taxation of both recreational marijuana and skill games a type of quasi-legal video gambling device often seen in corner stores and American Legion posts That plan faces serious hurdles While the state has an billion surplus Pittman and other Republicans argue Shapiro s proposal threatens to drain it within a couple years The skill games proposal is mired in disputes over how high to set that tax and legalizing pot appears to be a long shot Marijuana doesn t seem like it s going to go anywhere mentioned Anselm Sauter vice president of state establishment affairs at the Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia Rural vs urban GOP vs Dem There are other confounding issues as well such as efforts by President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans to slash Medicaid spending which would put pressure on the state to aid residents who lose their physical condition coverage As a effect while residents and elected representatives in Philadelphia Pittsburgh the Lehigh Valley and other relatively transit-heavy areas are urgently focused on keeping their agencies running Republicans from plenty of other parts of the state that have little or no transit are much more concerned about balancing the books The biggest thing for Republicans is that billion number They want it below however we get there That s kind of where their opening salvo is stated Samuel Chen a Republican political strategist and political science professor who lives in Allentown They re also concerned by Shapiro s inclusion of the new marijuana tax it seems unlikely to happen meaning we ve lost a half billion dollars of revenue that was planned for this he commented Another complicating factor is a broad sense of resentment among a multitude of non-urban residents and legislators who feel that their priorities are continually neglected Chen revealed That s in a range of areas from transportation as reflected in Dush s email to mentoring funding and next year s celebrations of the nation s th anniversary Easton was where the Declaration of Independence was originally read Allentown is where the Liberty Bell and the Declaration were stored during the Revolutionary War he explained Yet so far the commemorations planned for the Lehigh Valley have received nothing not a penny from the state And the people here are livid There is a notion among Republicans and Democrats across the state that Philadelphia and Pittsburgh get all the attention he commented Lots of ideas but no breakthroughs While a full budget bill has yet to be introduced a bunch of different measures have been proposed related to transit and state revenues On Tuesday the Democrat-led House once again approved a bill endorsing Shapiro s idea of spending more sales tax revenue on transit The measure would also borrow million for road projects in an effort to satisfy a key Republican demand A measure authorizing state-run marijuana shops passed in the House last month but died in the Senate Other legislators have noted they will introduce bills to legalize and tax commercial pot sales among them Philadelphia Sen Sharif Street who has teamed up with Republican Sen Dan Laughlin of Erie County but it s not clear when they will do so and how the proposals will fare Shapiro wants to set the skill games levy at close to the rate at which casinos are taxed while Pittman and other Republicans have proposed and another bill would set it at The state s casino industry is pushing for the higher rate championship maker Pace-O-Matic is arguing for the lowest figure which Chen noted is not going to happen State Sen Nikil Saval spoke at a rally in help of transit funding at the State Capitol in Harrisburg June Jimmie Brown Pennsylvania Senate Democratic Caucus Saval co-sponsored what supporters are calling the Transit For All funding package It would create a statewide fee on Uber and Lyft rides raise a fee on car rentals from to per day and boost the tax on leased cars from to But Saval last week disclosed he wasn t sure those bills would advance in the legislature Sauter commented the only transit funding idea that has made any real progress so far is Shapiro s plan to only spend more sales tax revenue although he commented skill games could still happen The pathway for that is challenging to say the least and there s a reason that they haven t been able to do this for a couple of years he announced But among the different revenue proposals it s the one that has at least the best chance I would put that at - Chen revealed It really depends on if they can get the funding formula correct The question now is whether someone will break the impasse over transit funding and how Will Pittman let the skill games bill he co-sponsored come up for a vote Will the million in bonds for roads and highways satisfy legislators with rural constituencies Will transit agencies get all the money they need or not quite enough Is there something else Republicans need perhaps a SEPTA fare hike or particular additional cost-cutting so they can feel they re protecting their constituencies Or will the challenges individual bills face and the parties broadly divergent priorities in Harrisburg lead to inaction on transit again as they did last year They very well could according to Chen Kicking the can down the road is what the legislature does best he reported The calculation is going to come down to what kind of deal can we get What kind of political capital do we have to spend Spreading the good word about SEPTA Republican lawmakers have put out memos with other ideas they say would help SEPTA although they don t come with any funding and have yet to be introduced as bills One would require SEPTA to contract with a private company to run its buses the sponsors contend this would likely generate additional savings to SEPTA Another from Picozzi talks generally about the benefit of public-private partnerships updated bus routes sales of advertising and naming rights a crackdown on crime and fare evasion and increased state fiscal oversight Pa State Sen Joseph Picozzi who represents Northeast Philadelphia Vote Picozzi His bill would set metrics and timelines for SEPTA to meet necessary benchmarks and specifically require better enforcement of quality-of-life crimes among other requirements his memo says In an interview Picozzi praised the work SEPTA general manager Scott Sauer is already doing to improve the system and commented his goal is to bring forward the concerns of the plenty of SEPTA riders he has spoken with They want the system to be safer and more reliable and for agency leaders to be responsible stewards of constituents dollars he noted We want to set goal posts and make sure they re accountable to in fact deliver on that progress Picozzi disclosed His broader aim is to promote a long-term forward-looking vision of the agency he revealed He s been educating fellow legislators about the importance of stabilizing the transit authority s budget so it can move ahead with big projects like the Bus Revolution which aims to make bus routes more efficient and Reimagining Regional Rail an initiative to modernize the commuter rail structure I ve explained to a lot of my colleagues who might not be as familiar with SEPTA as I ve become as I am as a lifelong rider what the Bus Revolution is and what SEPTA is looking to do and how there s a level of clarity that they re looking for to be able to implement selected really positive changes he stated As for the overall state budget the first-term legislator declined to comment on the status of closed-door negotiations but mentioned There demands to be a revenue conversation Something should get done on the skill games issue he reported In terms of what that exactly looks like and how much of it goes to mass transit I can t really say what the final picture is going to look like The post A SEPTA funding boost is uncertain amid a complex state budget struggle appeared first on Billy Penn at WHYY