Funding for Washington’s Metro commuter rail system is shaping up as a bruiser of a fight in the 2018 General Assembly session.
Metro’s management says it needs at least $500 million yearly in government support — $150 million from Virginia — to meet pressing maintenance needs. Without the money, Metro will continue its slow-motion death spiral of cycle of deteriorating safety, schedule delays, eroding ridership, and declining fare revenue. Without the money, Metro’s General Manager has said he will need to cut service in July 1 this year.
While Northern Virginia legislators are eager to patch up the ailing transit provider, which moves hundreds of thousands of commuters, downstate lawmakers won’t be happy about any solution that reduces funding for downstate projects. And Republicans won’t like any remedy that perpetuates the status quo of a broken, dysfunctional rail system hampered by a featherbedding union contract.
In his proposed biennial budget for FY 2019-2020, Governor Terry McAuliffe asked for $150 million in dedicated funding for Metro; $84 million would come from Northern Virginia regional transportation funds, while $65 million would come from new taxes on real estate sales, hotel stays, and wholesale gasoline. Providing the money would be contingent upon Maryland and Washington, D.C., funding their share, and a streamlining of Metro’s governing board from 16 members to five.
“The Metro system is a lifeline for the Northern Virginia economy, and it remains critical to our economic competitiveness,” McAuliffe said. “But we all know that system is just plain broken. And it represents a significant threat to our economy if we don’t fix it, and quickly.”
Notably absent from McAuliffe’s list of requirements is any reform of the Metro’s labor contract. That shouldn’t come as a surprise given the Democratic Party’s pro-union orientation generally and its close ties to the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) in particular.
According to the Virginia Public Access Project, the Alexandria office of the ATU has donated $75,300 to Virginia political campaigns since 2007 — all but $2,000 to Democratic campaigns and funds. The Maryland office of the ATU has donated $44,000, all to Democrats. And Local 689 representing Metro transit workers, has donated $132,269 — all but $250 to Democrats. From all sources, the union contributed $30,000 to the Northam for Governor campaign.
Republicans won’t be happy about funneling $150 million a year more into an organization unwilling to extract concessions from a labor union that in turn funnels money into Democratic Party coffers. Crass political considerations aside, the GOP also has to be concerned that the alliance between Democrats and labor unions is the essence of the Blue State governance model that cements Democratic Party primacy in states like Illinois and New Jersey while pushing them to the brink of fiscal insolvency.
McAuliffe is shrewd enough not to ask downstate Virginians to share the hefty burden of supporting Metro. Virginia’s dispensation of mass transit funds already favors Northern Virginia by lopsided margins. If Metro has problems, that’s because short-term political considerations over the decades have driven Metro to its perilous predicament. Motivated by social justice concerns, the board has refused to raise fares sufficient to meet the organization’s needs. It has allowed the maintenance backlog to build to billions of dollars, and unfunded employee pension obligations to accumulate billions more. All the while, the board has assented to labor contracts that have crimped productivity and inflated costs. Downstate Virginians would be infuriated by any proposal requiring them to help pay the bill for such a dereliction of management.
The question is how Northern Virginia legislators will receive McAuliffe’s proposal. Only a fraction of Northern Virginia commuters ride Metro rail and buses — most commute by car. Tens of thousands of motorists who use the Dulles Toll Road pay additional tolls to help fund construction of the Silver Line to Washington Dulles International Airport — indeed, they pay more to subsidize the Silver Line than Silver Line passengers pay in fares.
McAuliffe shrewdly rejected the option of a new regional sales tax, a move that surely would have infuriated non-Metro-riding voters. His ploy is a classic one of imposing a series of opaque indirect taxes — levies on real estate transactions, hotel stays, and whole gasoline — that voters will not readily connect with the Metro. But dipping into Northern Virginia’s regional transportation fund will deny money for other projects. Metro could yet trigger an electoral revolt. But most of NoVa’s legislators are Democrats now, they are philosophically inclined to support mass transit, and they are likely to fall in line behind a Democratic governor.
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