Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., needs some new material. After saying last year, “We’ve seen bad management contracting on a fairly regular basis” from the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, he convinced his colleagues this year to resort to the stale solution of throwing good money after bad.
The Davis bill that passed the House earlier this year rewards Metro’s mismanagement with $1.5 billion in new federal money and requires the localities Metro serves to establish dedicated sources of matching funds.
Both proposals are way off-track. For starters, dedicated funding is almost always a bad idea. Guaranteed revenue eliminates the need for government agencies to justify their budgets. Metro should have to compete with other entities for tax money, to make the case for each dollar it is given.
Add to that the fundamental unfairness of federal dollars subsidizing local transportation. Why should taxpayers in Peoria help pay for the commute of Washington-area residents? More precisely, why should they contribute more than they already do? Many government agencies offer employee subsidies for Metro, which is money from federal taxpayers.
The bill’s supporters argue that the entire nation should help pay for Metro because (1) everyone benefits from the federal workforce and (2) tourists ride Metro, too. The first point is too silly to press. A federal government with more than 800,000 “non-essential” employeesin Washington is hardly an asset. As for tourists: When they’re already being soaked by the District’s 14.5 percent hotel tax, they’re unlikely to balk at subway fare.
Some of the bill’s boosters tout advantages of Metro that don’t even exist anymore. It’s true that Metro trains used to be the easiest way in and out of Washington on the Fourth of July or Inauguration Day. But now that the Smithsonian station is closed on such occasions — when the Park Police transform the National Mall into the National Holding Pen — the convenience of Metro is negated.
When the Government Accountability Office was presented with the same case for more Metro funding, it took a clearer view, concluding that the better solution was for the transit authority to “reexamine its own spending priorities.” An examination of Metro’s budget makes it difficult to disagree.
Consider that Metro spends almost as much on bureaucrats as it spends on operators to run the system ($163 million for the former; $169 million for the latter). Among the salaried suits it employs:
» 73 lawyers and legal assistants at a cost of $10.2 million this year — rising to $12.4 next year;
» 191 individuals to handle customer communications, marketing and sales, with an operating budget of $20 million. The sales department brings in revenue selling ad space on trains and buses, but how many people does it take to do that? How much marketing is needed to promote a system with record-high ridership?
» 300 people in workforce development and administration, with a budget of $36 million. Is it really necessary to tutor managers and supervisors in such things as “decision making,” “problem solving,” “interpersonal skills,” and “sensitivity”? And what sort of employees is Metro hiring if it must provide them “focused programs in reading, comprehension, writing, math and English as a second language”?
Additionally, Metro spends millions of dollars each year on media relations and event planning, paying workers to field calls from reporters and plan such things as the Martin Luther King Day program. Employees in the Office of Intergovernmental Relations are charged with “policy analysis aimed at identifying funding sources.” (Translation: wrangling money.)
Even the smaller items in Metro’s budget suggest a free-wheeling approach to spending. The agency proposes to pay consultants nearly a million dollars over the next five years to survey customer satisfaction. Who doesn’t know that customers are satisfied when trains and buses run on time and dissatisfied when they do not?
Metro budgeted $47,000 this year for messenger service; more than $1 million for travel and meetings; $46,000 for bank chargebacks; $1,000 for parking violations.
A federal bail-out and dedicated revenues will only encourage such excess. To discourage waste, the Davis bill resorts to the tired remedy of additional oversight. But Metro “is already subject to oversight from multiple entities,” as the GAO points out, and “it is unclear whether this oversight is sufficient … .”
It isn’t — and more will not help. In the absence of any meaningful requirement that Metro hold down costs, providing additional funding will serve only to grease its fast track to higher spending.
Melanie Scarborough is a freelance journalist in Alexandria.
