Montgomery, Prince George’s officials endorse Fair Share

County Councilmembers and state delegates from Montgomery and Prince George’s Counties sent letters to Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley asking him to allocate funding for Metro sufficient to stop service cuts, as FairShareForMetro.com has been urging.

The Prince George’s County Council and state legislative delegation both sent letters from their collective groups. House Delegation Chair Melony Griffith and Vice-Chairs Marvin Holmes and Michael Vaughn circulated the legislative letter, and County Councilmember Eric Olson championed the Council version.

Both included nearly identical key language: “Closing [the budget gap] without severe service reductions would require an additional contribution from Maryland to WMATA’s FY11 operating budget of approximately $29 million. … We are well aware that these are challenging budgetary times, but this is one expense we believe the state cannot forego.”

In Montgomery County, Councilmembers and delegates signed on individually to a group letter which Council Vice-President Valerie Ervin circulated. President Nancy Floreen, At-Large members Marc Elrich, George Leventhal, and Duchy Trachtenberg, and district members Roger Berliner and Nancy Navarro all signed. No word on why Mike Knapp and Phil Andrews did not; it may simply be that they didn’t have time to get to it, as the Council was on recess during the time period.

For the House of Delegates, 21 delegates signed the letter circulated by Delegation Chair Brian Feldman (district 15) and Delegate Roger Manno (19). As with the Council, we don’t know if there’s a reason Kumar Barve and Luiz Simmons (17) didn’t end up participating. Advocates didn’t have a chance to circulate a corresponding letter to the Montgomery Senate delegation.

Congressman Van Hollen is also circulating a sign-on letter to WMATA urging them to forgo service reductions. Hopefully his letter will not just go to WMATA, since WMATA is not the one with the power to stop the cuts. It’s O’Malley and also Congress that have that power.

The Maryland legislature has done most of what it can to keep options open for Maryland to fund WMATA. They only have the power to reduce budget items, not to add to them, and they haven’t reduced the budget for WMATA. In addition, two key committees have adopted language in their budget reports that doesn’t foreclose a further subsidy increase, saying in part,

WMATA and the Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT) shall submit a report to the committees that explains what actions were taken to resolve the budget deficit identified by WMATA. The report shall include any information on service cuts made in the budget or fare increases and how they will impact riders. Finally, if WMATA increases the local subsidy payment, MDOT should indicate its share of the funding and what impact the funding increase will have on the department’s financial forecast.

This leaves the ball squarely in Gov. Martin O’Malley’s court, since he can re-designate money within the Transportation Trust Fund (TTF) and utilize such funds to close the Maryland portion of the WMATA deficit. He would have to defer some other projects, presumably road projects, to move this money.

The legislature has the power to raise a tax and dedicate it to WMATA after the budget is adopted, but that is very unlikely to happen in an election year. The legislature acted during the 2007 Special Session to bolster TTF revenues, but actual revenues have not met projections and the TTF is now stretched thin.

In upcoming posts, we’ll look at the long-term funding prospects for Metro in Maryland and throughout the region.

Update: I’ve added information about the delegates and councilmembers who circulated and championed each letter.