GOP-controlled legislature poised to give taxpayer-spurned transit $20 million

posted at 1:32 pm on April 16, 2009 by Patrick Ishmael

Over at the American Issues Project I’ve written a post about how the tea parties present an opportunity for for right-leaning groups (like Republicans) to make inroads into urban areas. One of the ways the GOP could screw this opportunity up is, I said, by reaffirming the urban status quo.

Well, guess what.

The Republican-controlled Missouri legislature is…debating whether to send stimulus money to the St. Louis public transit system to reopen bus routes, many of which disappeared last month due to a lack of public will to fund them….

Rather than spend money on a project of some permanency — like a road or bridge, of which many in St. Louis City are in utter disrepair — it appears the legislature may instead dump tens of millions of dollars into a program that 1.) is supremely efficient at blowing through cash and 2.) will have to (re-)close the routes that it (re-)opens when the state’s stimulus cash runs out, assuming local governments don’t step in. And that’s a fair assumption.

It’s a “fair assumption” because St. Louisans voted in November against raising taxes to maintain the Metro’s previous service offering. The legislature’s proposed action should infuriate every citizen and especially proponents of good governance, not only because the legislation wouldn’t meet the “one-time expenditure” principle for stimulus funds set out by the GOP during the stimulus debate, but also because the money won’t in fact cover the funding gap; unless I mislearned my math, $20 million does not a $45 million shortfall, fix. 

If Missouri Republicans intend on saving the St. Louis Metro by throwing money at it, the Party is going to do real damage to itself, both among its base and among those for whom urban alternatives based on sound economics principles would be appealing. It’s more of the same, and that’s exactly not what tea partiers want.

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