Lawmakers Hear the Case for State Public Transportation Funding

A joint House Democratic Policy Committee/Philadelphia City Council hearing on March 5th featured a parade of witnesses testifying that SEPTA and other Pennsylvania transit agencies need more funding to avoid falling off a fiscal cliff. / Photograph by Bastiaan Slabbers/NurPhoto

“When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.”

— Ancient Kikuyu proverb

This year, in Harrisburg, SEPTA is the grass, and 56 other public transit agencies statewide may also get trampled in the tug-of-war between the state House and state Senate.

The fight concerns funding for public transportation in the Commonwealth. The state House Democratic Policy Committee came to the IBEW Local 98 training facility at the Navy Yard Wednesday to hear public transit riders, executives and other civic leaders make the case for “Keeping PA’s Economy Moving Forward” by adequately funding public transportation.

Philadelphia City Councilmember Nicholas O’Rourke (Working Families Party) also sponsored the hearing, which  Democrats Jamie Gauthier, Rue Landau and Council President Kenyatta Johnson also attended. He and most of the others who spoke stressed that the issue of funding for public transit concerns all Pennsylvanians, not just Philadelphians.

Yet the proximate cause of the hearing and the fight is the fiscal hole down which SEPTA is staring. The tug-of-war began last year, when a House-passed bill to fund public transportation failed to make it out of the Senate. That failure left SEPTA staring at a $240 million hole in its current fiscal year budget. Gov. Josh Shapiro tossed $153 million of highway funding down that hole last November in order to forestall steep fare hikes and service cuts.

Wednesday’s hearing was part of an effort on the part of the House Democrats to avoid repeating that maneuver.

The speakers voiced different yet interlocking messages stressing the importance of adequate public transportation funding. Janeeiah Simmons and Mahogany Johnson, two members of PhillyBOLT, an organization that develops leadership and advocacy skills among residents of lower-income neighborhoods, stressed that SEPTA was a lifeline without which their ability to function would be seriously constricted.

Erik Johanson, senior director of budgets and transformation at SEPTA, noted that his agency plays a key role in keeping the state’s most economically productive region productive. “The five-county region generates 41 percent of the state’s economic activity with 32 percent of its population on just five percent of its land,” he told the legislators. “The Southeast region generates $13.3 billion, or 38 percent, of the total revenues to the state’s general fund. SEPTA employs 9,300 people and has issued $1.4 billion in contracts for business services from Pennsylvania companies over the last five years. Only robust public transit can generate this much economic productivity in this small geographic footprint.”

Others who testified reminded those in attendance that adequate transit funding matters to more than Greater Philadelphians. Greg Downing, executive director of the South Central Transit Authority, which serves Berks and Lancaster counties, noted that upwards of 70 percent of his two systems’ riders had low incomes and no other practical way to get around. What’s more, the systems serve much more rural territory.

Last fall, Gov. Josh Shapiro kept SEPTA from entering a doomsday spiral by moving $153 million in highway funds to the agency’s budget. The hearing participants want to make this unnecessary next fiscal year. / Photo by Sandy Smith

Which brings us to one of the perennial challenges both Democrats and legislators from the Philly area face in getting the legislature to sign off on transit funding.

Namely, reminding legislators from the state’s interior that the money helps people get around well beyond Philadelphia.

SEPTA gets the lion’s share because it carries the bulk of the state’s transit riders. But those 57 transit agencies serve communities large and small, including three systems that serve Endless Mountains communities and other locations along the state’s sparsely populated Northern Tier. While I haven’t examined their books, I’ll wager that these get bigger per-rider subsidies than SEPTA does.

There’s also the tug-of-war mentioned at the beginning. This one’s largely partisan. Democrats control the House while Republicans control the Senate, and most of the time, the Senate is reluctant to add spending bills that would require tax hikes. But since hikes appear necessary this year, this may boil down to a difference of degree.

Both the House and Senate have proposals to tax games of skill — the video games found in bars and convenience stores that offer cash payouts not based on chance. The House wants to tax them like casinos while the Senate wants a much lower tax rate. Given that transit is not the only program in need of more money, a push in favor of the House’s proposal would make more money available for transit.

Another tug-of-war, however, involves the overall state transportation budget. Many of those same legislators who believe transit funding benefits only Philadelphia also say that roads don’t get the money they need. Given the extent of the state highway network, they may have a point, and several of the legislators at the hearing said that any overall transportation funding bill would have to sweeten the pot with additional road funding — especially since Shapiro has to put back the money he pulled out to rescue SEPTA last year.

And on top of all this, one attendee brought up what could cause the whole effort to founder once again. After the hearing ended, State Rep. Darisha Parker (D-198th District) remarked, “The State Senate wants vouchers.”

Tuition vouchers that would allow lower-income families to send their children to private or religious schools have been a long-sought Republican goal. Shapiro also came out in support of the idea during his successful 2022 campaign for governor, but most of his party’s legislators are not on board. He proposed tuition vouchers in both of his first two state budgets, but he reversed course on supporting them the second time around.

The Democratic-controlled House opposes the idea even though it approved a budget that included them last year — but it did so only after Shapiro agreed to delete the item from the final budget, a move that upset the Republicans who control the Senate.

So what’s the likely outcome of Wednesday’s hearing? It will rally the troops in support of increased funding for transit, for sure. But it won’t by itself provide the push needed to get everyone on board with providing adequate state public transportation funding. What might be needed is a variant on something Sen. John Fetterman engaged in to his benefit in the 2022 election: A dialogue tour that brings transit riders and operators to those parts of the state with little or none. Perhaps if we get the ordinary people talking to each other, it will be easier for the pols to as well.

Updated March 7th, 5:22 p.m., to correct Councilmember Jamie Gauthier’s party affiliation.