Congressman
Tom Davis (R-VA) has requested that the House of
Representatives consider an amendment (H.R. 3496
as revised) to the Outer Continental Shelf Lands
Act (43. U.S.C. 1338) to divert $1.5 billion of
federal revenues earned through offshore drilling
to subsidize the deeply troubled transit system
(called Metro) serving the Nation’s Capital and
his Congressional district.
If
enacted, the Tom Davis earmark would be one of the
largest ever passed -- seven times larger than
Alaska’s Bridge to Nowhere and twice as large as
Mississippi’s Train to Nowhere.
Mr.
Davis justifies taxpayer funding for this local
project on the grounds that “Metro, the public
transit system of the Washington metropolitan
area, is essential for the continued and effective
performance of the functions of the Federal
Government, and for the orderly movement of people
during major events and times of regional and
national emergency.”
In
fact, Metro provides no such service. Unreliable
and poorly run, the system is subject to frequent
shutdowns and service interruptions due to
equipment failure, bad weather, suicides, driver
error and passenger medical emergencies. In
mid-June heavy rain and wind caused a shut down on
two of its five routes, significant delays on the
other three, and the complete shutdown of the two
commuter rail lines serving suburban Virginia.
While some roads in the area were damaged as well,
none suffered the kind debilitating closures and
interruptions that Metro did.
As
for the essential purpose of getting the federal
workforce to its desks, a Metro spokeswoman noted,
“Because nearly half of Metro’s daily
commuters are federal government employees…
delays could be less severe if large numbers of
them take advantage of the unscheduled leave
option and stay home.”
In
other words, Metro’s service can be improved if
federal workers don’t go to work. So much for
essential service.
But
beyond the posturing on behalf of alleged national
needs lies a legislative effort whose origins
sprang from an act of constituent service, and
chief among the constituents being served was the
Congressman himself. As originally introduced in
July 2005, H.R. 3496 was written to force a
resolution of a dispute Mr. Davis had been having
with Metro over its plan to sell 3.75 acres of
land it owns by a Metro rail station to a
developer who wanted to incorporate the land into
a large, mixed-use development not far from Mr.
Davis’s home. Concerned about traffic congestion
and the displacement of suburban charm with urban
density, Mr. Davis threatened to do something
about it.
While
most Americans can only complain about encroaching
development, Mr. Davis can use his congressional
powers to prohibit it, and the original version of
H.R. 3496 was written to do exactly that.
Specifically, Section 4 (a) of the bill prohibits
Metro from selling the 3.75 acres in question
until it has submitted a detailed study of the
proposed land sale and the planned development to
Congress. But, as Metro has since sold the land to
the developer, the legislative prohibition was
pointless, and all that remained of the bill was a
massive federal bailout of a troubled transit
system.
In
fairness, Metro confronts serious problems, chief
among them being a legacy of mismanagement and
high-cost operations, which was covered in
excruciating detail in a four part series
published in The Washington Post in June
2005. As a consequence of its many operating
inefficiencies and the deep subsidies to its
riders, Metro is broke and has no funds to add to
capacity, replace unreliable rolling stock or make
other necessary repairs and improvements. Although
it has raised fares twice in the last two years,
the increases were modest and well below the cost
increases incurred by local motorists because of
soaring gasoline prices.
Metro
also has avoided opportunities to save money and
improve service through competitive contracting,
due in part to opposition from its unionized
workforce. Thanks to the savings that outsourcing
makes possible, virtually all of the newer public
transit services added in the Washington, D.C.,
area are operated by private contractors.
Another
troubling aspect of this costly earmark is the
regressive nature of the spending policies the
bill promotes. Notwithstanding H.R. 3496’s
contention that subsidizing the daily commute for
civil servants is an essential national need,
Washington area workers are among the best paid in
the nation. Whereas nationwide the 2004 median
household income was $44,684 in 2004, it was
$88,133 in Fairfax County, Va., the most populous
part of Mr. Davis’ congressional district.
As
such, Mr. Davis is proposing an extraordinary
exercise in trickle up economics to compel
Americans across the country to subsidize the
transportation needs of a small slice of one of
the nation’s most prosperous communities. As the
U.S. Census Bureau reports, only 9.6 percent of
Fairfax County residents and 4.2 percent of those
in Prince William County, Va., use Metro or
another form of transit to get to work.
As
troubling as these inequitable transfers are, Mr.
Davis’ original bill required that, as a
condition of receiving the $1.5 billion federal
bailout, all communities in Metro’s service area
had to raise their taxes (euphemistically referred
to as a “dedicated funding source” in H.R.
3496) to match the federal subsidy. In the
communities supportive of the plan, discussions
centered on an increase in the sales tax to
provide their share of the $1.5 billion, thereby
compounding the regressive nature of the limited
benefits it would provide a small segment of the
area’s population. Although these mandatory
matching tax increases are not part of the new
amendment, members of Congress should be alert to
any last- minute effort to change it and double
the proposed taxpayer costs.
While
Representative Tom Davis is justified in his
concern about Metro’s poor performance as it
struggles to serve a small fraction of his
constituents, either version of H.R. 3496 would
reward that poor performance with a costly
taxpayer bailout. Instead, Congress should force
fundamental market-based reforms on Metro by
linking the continuation of the system’s
existing federal subsidies to reductions in
operating costs, improvements in service and an
aggressive program of competitive contracting
similar to the successful reforms implemented
elsewhere. In recent years, Denver, San Diego, the
Washington D.C., suburbs, and London, to name just
a few, are among the communities that have given
up on the socialist transit model by implementing
aggressive contracting programs.
--
July 24, 2006
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