It’s time for the decade-old Valley Transportation Authority to
learn to live within its means. And that means those leading it,
its board of directors, its general manager, chief administrative
officer and chief financial officer, need to take responsibility
for the financial mess the agency is in.
It’s time for the decade-old Valley Transportation Authority to learn to live within its means. And that means those leading it, its board of directors, its general manager, chief administrative officer and chief financial officer, need to take responsibility for the financial mess the agency is in.
How? By taking a realistic look at its $340 million annual budget, the very few passengers – 135,000 riders each day – and its projected $2.8 billion deficit for the next three decades. VTA leaders need to immediately draft a budget that makes sense. It will take real leadership, leadership that has been nonexistent.
The VTA needs to spend only what it has on real transit needs and not wants, like proposed expensive light-rail extensions around the county and the buffoonish $4.7 billion BART-to-San Jose project.
The critical March independent audit by the Philadelphia-based HayGroup, at a cost of $500,000, makes the same points. VTA General Manager Michael Burns took the proactive step to get the review. Now what? Will the VTA behave like a private sector company in trouble and cut costs and adopt a realistic budget?
Remember, some of the same concerns raised by the latest audit were pointed out in 2004, when the Santa Clara County’s Civil Grand Jury recommended suspending the BART-to-San Jose project and disbanding the VTA’s board of directors. The board thumbed their noses at all of the grand jury’s recommendations.
Most damaging in the HayGroup audit are the findings related to how the agency has forecasted its 30-year economic outlook, erroneously relying on money generated from the 2000 passage of a half-cent sales tax. The audit found that in light of last year’s failed half-cent sales tax proposal and no other incoming revenues, the VTA cannot build and operate the promised transit improvements.
When the agency last year again asked voters for more money – a half-cent instead of a quarter-cent sales tax increase – it failed.
Now Burns has welcomed a transportation-only tax measure in the November 2008 ballot.
Yet even with rising gas prices, ridership is down.
So, while it’s a good thing that the agency is questioning the logic behind its bus service, eliminating some routes and consolidating others, the truth is that what’s needed is a magnitude 8.0 shake-up that would essentially re-invent the VTA. And despite all the super critical audits and obvious flaws, it’s just not happening. Voters should remember that whenever VTA asks you for more money out of your paycheck.
