Texas Transit Association

VIA — strapped for money, running a deficit to causes outside their control, about to start a route realignment, needing a short term fix — which is what the bill would have done — quite possibly will enter air quality nonattainment (and impact business, loss of jobs), air quality to then worsen, and here is the best single solution to addressing mobile sources of pollution, save money for people suffering from hard times, including the transit dependent!

*VIA must find new financial solution after veto*
By Patrick Driscoll, San Antonio Express-News, 06/25/2003

VIA officials, stunned by news that Gov. Rick Perry vetoed a bill that would have made it easier for the agency to extend its sales tax to telephone services, are retrenching to figure out another way to save a sinking budget.

“We’re stuck,” said Shelton Padgett, chairman of VIA Metropolitan Transit. “We’re going to have to do some brainstorming.”

The transit agency was relying on the phone tax to raise $1.5 million a year to shore up ongoing losses and help avert further service and staff cuts or fare increases. The tax would have added about 25 cents a month to the average phone bill.

Expect to see a slim budget proposed later this summer, said John Milam, president of VIA.

“A considerably smaller budget,” he said. “That was a blow to us.”

VIA has had operating deficits since fiscal year 1999, except 2002, when investment gains for the first time flipped numbers into the black. For the first eight months of this year, the agency was $863,000 in the hole, even after cutting expenses by $562,000.

“I wish I had better news,” said Barbara Hassmann, VIA’s finance director, during a report to the board Tuesday.

Current law requires that a majority of government entities in VIA’s service area approve the phone tax. The change would have let a committee appointed by those entities implement the tax.

The phone tax also was supposed to have been temporary. It would have been repealed if voters later approved an increase in the overall sales tax for VIA, which is now at half a cent per dollar.

Perry said in a statement that the phone tax was unnecessary because of legislation he signed allowing VIA to ask voters to raise the overall sales tax and split the money between transit and roads. He vetoed the phone tax bill Friday, two days after signing the other into law.

But any election to consider increasing the sales tax is more than a year away, according to local officials. So that doesn’t address VIA’s concerns over the next year or so.

“He (the governor) was badly advised by his staff,” said Sen. Jeff Wentworth, who authored the phone tax bill.

The veto surprised local officials because there had been no opposition voiced to the measure as it went through the Legislature.

All state representatives from San Antonio were behind it, Wentworth said.

“We didn’t have any indication,” Padgett said Tuesday. “I’m still recovering from the disappointment.”

Meanwhile, VIA continues to hear complaints from riders concerned about service cuts, including some reductions scheduled for August as part of a plan to increase efficiency.

Criticisms often include claims that officials are insensitive to travails of riders.

“Are you for real? Are you even alive?” Margaret Sada told board members Tuesday. “I want to bring a doctor and see if you’re alive.”