Regional Transit Authority – the Post-Crescent Gets it Right

    An editorial in today's  Post-Crescent supported the idea of establishing a regional Transit Authority in the Fox Valley, and I would like to add my voice to theirs.

The need for regional transit authority in the Fox Valley grows out of the fact that our population has grown to the point where we are no longer eligible to receive federal funding for the operating expenses of our bus system.  A stopgap measure passed in Congress last year provided short-term funding to allow our transit system to continue to operate through 2012, but without a regular source of funding the system will soon have to shut down or curtail service drastically.


    Last year, Representative Penny Bernard-Schaber introduced a bill into the legislature to allow an RTA to be created in our area, but the bill died in committee because of the doctrinaire opposition of some legislators to anything that might allow any increase in taxes.  (The RTA would have been allowed to levy a sales tax not exceeding 0.5%.)


    This is an excellent example of the sort of blind opposition to taxes that I spoke of in my last post.  An RTA is an example of a local solution to a local problem using local funds.  Surely local people should be allowed to decide whether their money should be used for public transportation.  BernardSchaber's bill would have required that a referendum be conducted before an RTA could be established, and the bill was supported almost universally by public officials and business groups in the Fox Valley. 

    Here we have a case where local officials and local citizens would have the opportunity to decide for themselves whether this was a good use of their tax money or not, but they were stymied by radical rightists in the legislature to whom anything that smelled like a tax was taboo.  We cannot conduct our politics in this way.  We have to recognize that local governments have legitimate functions and that it costs money to carry out those functions.  The people of our communities must weigh the value of public transit against its costs and decide what to do, but a doctrinaire stance that says "no new taxes" is not helpful.

    So, let's get on with this.  Support a approach that will allow us to solve our transit problem in the way that seems best to us.  Oppose doctrinaire interference into local decision-making by the radical right.