It's wrong time to inflate transit agency's costs

Rocky Mountain News Editorial

4/18/07

      Two months ago, we warned that forthcoming legislation could spell fiscal trouble for the Regional Transportation District at a time of increasingly worrisome forecasts for the FasTracks budget.

      Senate Bill 251, by Sen. Bob Hagedorn, D-Aurora, is set for its first floor vote today. And there's even less to like about the bill now than when the idea was floated in February.

      The bill would end the requirement that forces RTD to hire private contractors to run at least half its bus service. (Light rail is fully unionized.) It would replace the 50-percent floor on private service with a 55-percent ceiling, and make contracting voluntary, not mandatory.

      Over time, as we'll explain, the result would be to limit RTD's flexibility to find providers - unionized or not - that can offer the best service at the lowest price. And this would occur when the agency is struggling to keep its FasTracks program on budget and on schedule despite soaring construction costs and slower than expected sales tax collections.

      The bill could zing taxpayers in the near future, too, not just when the current labor agreement expires in 2009. Here's one reason why: By fully contracting its access-a-Ride service for disabled passengers, the district now saves between $18 and $29 an hour. Even under private contract, RTD pays $62.57 an hour for paratransit service. If those routes returned to the union, costs would surge to either $80.89 or $91.45 an hour, depending on whether the district had to build or lease a bus facility.

      Private paratransit service now saves RTD between $22 million and $35 million a year. Yet paratransit is growing rapidly. If that growth pushed the district to the contracting ceiling imposed by SB 251 and RTD had to sever contracts on those or other routes, the expense would be immense.

      SB 251 would shortchange government coffers, too. Private contractors pay property and fuel taxes and vehicle registration fees; union-staffed lines owned by RTD, a public agency, do not.

      Former Gov. Bill Owens, who championed the contracting policy, vetoed a bill two years ago that would have lowered the contracting floor from 50 to 35 percent. Now the transit union thinks it can push its agenda through a friendlier legislature and past a Democratic governor.

      No doubt this possibility led RTD's board to propose a compromise. On Tuesday, the board said it could support SB 251 if it were amended to stipulate that contracting levels would not be subject to change under binding arbitration.

      The board is not concerned about its own resolve in union contract talks. Rather, the proposed amendment would protect RTD and taxpayers from the possibility that an arbitrator summoned after a negotiating impasse could dictate a reduction of private contracts on his own.

      That's not a fanciful scenario. Back in the 1990s, an arbitrator did impose costly benefits on the district and then flew back to his Chicago home.

      SB 251 is unnecessary, but if lawmakers are determined to pass it on grounds that RTD's elected board should decide for itself how much contracting to do, they should honor the board's request and amend the bill. That way, the future level of contracting will reflect the board's preference as opposed to that of a labor arbitrator who jets in from out of state.