While Gov. Josh Shapiro temporarily stopped SEPTA from entering a “death spiral” by redirecting federal road funds to the nation’s sixth-largest public transportation system, the fight in Harrisburg to secure a reliable stream of state funding is just beginning.
State lawmakers will spend the next few months striking deals that will aid SEPTA avoid a fiscal crisis, including major rate increases, temporarily halted by Shapiro’s efforts, for the nearly 800,000 residents who operate public transportation every day in Philadelphia and surrounding counties.
Who is to blame for the SEPTA funding crisis and why lawmakers couldn’t come together sooner to reach a solution is an ongoing dispute between top legislative leaders in the GOP-controlled Senate and a narrow Democratic majority in the House, with disagreement on both sides over how to go about front.
For leading Democrats, including Shapiro, this represents a failure by Senate Republicans to work on the issue. For Senate President Pro Tempore Kim Ward (R., Westmoreland), SEPTA’s funding problems are a “crisis [Shapiro’s] own production,” instead prioritizing spending on public education over public transportation during budget negotiations earlier this year. According to Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman (R., Ind.), GOP Senate members are being thrown under the bus by Democrats instead of proposing realistic solutions.
“If the governor and House Democrats feel they have to use us as a scapegoat, so be it,” Pittman said. “But the reality is that all parties need to come to the table to find solutions to the problems.”
Last week, Shapiro put an end to the issue by announcing he would take the extraordinary step of allocating $153 million in federal funds earmarked for eight road projects as a leftover from SEPTA. Without it, top SEPTA officials planned to raise all fares by 21.5% and cut service to try to address a $240 million annual deficit resulting from fewer people using public transit after the pandemic.
Shapiro, an Abington Democrat, vowed not to let SEPTA fail as it became clear how much the transit agency would have to raise fares and cut service to stay in business. Earlier this year, Shapiro proposed increasing the share of public transit in the state sales tax — but not increasing the tax itself — as part of a special funding stream intended to give public transit agencies some stability. State House Democrats have passed this and other plans on three separate occasions, with no Republican senators yet taking action, said House Majority Leader Matt Bradford (R-Montgomery).
“If they want us to come up with other ideas, we can talk about other sources, but honestly, we’ve moved the Rubik’s Cube three times with no significant response other than what seemed to move the goalposts at a time when workers, employers and the economy are in peril with because of the Senate’s inability to act and govern,” Bradford added.
» READ MORE: SEPTA’s funding difficulty is nothing new. This is how we got here
However, GOP leaders in the state Senate rejected the plan, saying they would not support public transportation funding without combining it with infrastructure funding and citing the state’s structural deficit, which projects the state to spend more than it earns each year for the coming years.
Pittman has proposed regulating arcade games – which are legally ambiguous and resemble the slot machines that have spread across the state in restaurants, bars and convenience stores – as a potential new source of revenue, but not all Republicans and Democrats in either chamber have the ability to do so. there is still no consensus on how to tax and regulate the industry.
“The reality is that the governor and Democrats in the House of Representatives have simply taken revenue from our General Fund to pay for transit, and all this has made our structural deficit even worse,” Pittman said. “Frankly, the Democratic mindset is, ‘We can just spend more money on transportation and not have to worry about where it’s coming from.’ And our majority in the Senate does not want to accept this point of view.”
Top lawmakers and Shapiro failed to reach agreement on a final budget deal this summer, setting aside only a fraction of what SEPTA and other transit agencies said they needed from the state, only after a Philadelphia delegation stepped in to Harrisburg to ensure SEPTA received its share resources needed to survive in the short term until a final agreement is reached. Lawmakers left Harrisburg earlier this month without reaching a final agreement, sending SEPTA into a “death spiral.”
Democrats and Republicans have previously shown a willingness to unite on SEPTA issues by creating a SEPTA special prosecutor.
Shapiro will likely introduce a solution as part of his budget proposal in February, but it’s unlikely the special funding stream will be approved until this summer, when lawmakers and Shapiro will be constitutionally required to pass the state’s annual budget. This puts transit agencies across the state, including SEPTA, in limbo until a final solution is found.
