With ridership on Council of Government’s County Transit
doubling, with fares that cover only 1 percent of fully amortized
costs, requiring taxpayer subsidies of 99 percent of all transit
expenses, the S.S. San Benito-Titanic is on an inevitable collision
course with Iceberg Bankruptcy.
Editor,
With ridership on Council of Government’s County Transit doubling, with fares that cover only 1 percent of fully amortized costs, requiring taxpayer subsidies of 99 percent of all transit expenses, the S.S. San Benito-Titanic is on an inevitable collision course with Iceberg Bankruptcy.
COG’s Director’s band-aide approach, just as effective as re-arranging the deck chairs on a doomed oceanliner, won’t solve the insolvency. Having discovered the “lump,” COG’s directors prescribed a snake-oil salesmen to drum-up more “ridership.” Throwing gasoline on a fire is bad leadership; each additional rider costs taxpayers 99percent of the cost of the extra ride.
Why not apply an effective remedy instead? The Legislature enacted a bill drafted by the Law Revision Commission, which our former State Senator, now Secretary of State, Bruce McPherson sponsored, conforming California State Law with the Bankruptcy Code Congress enacted in 1979. While about 20 years late, this reform enables local governments to pull the plug on self-destructing agencies like County Transit. By putting the agency into Chapter 9 of the Bankruptcy Code, COG could remove the malignant tumor before it causes San Benito County and its two cities to petition for relief themselves in the Bankruptcy Court.
The Chapter 9 plan of reorganization, like those the airlines and railroads and trucking companies have filed during the era of “deregulation,” could nullify “burdensome” contracts, e.g., public-sector union agreements, unremunerative fare structures crammed down rural counties’ throats by the Legislature, and other destroying aspects of urban public-sector transit that are impossible in rural counties. Then privatization could be utilized to guarantee future transport service for SBC’s future residents, including elderly, disabled and disadvantaged who will not have transit in the future if we don’t remedy our fatally-flawed transport policy.
Otherwise, full steam ahead; the iceberg awaits us. We’ll teach our children the same thing that the Soviet planners taught theirs. Caveat Viator.
Joseph P. Thompson, Tres Pinos
