By SHIFT-BAY AREA: substack – excerpt
When Bay Area transit leaders are backed into a corner, they rely on a familiar, patronizing refrain: “The public just doesn’t understand how transit funding works.”…
The False Claim: The transit establishment’s response was swift, arrogant, and entirely dismissive. In KQED’s recent reporting on the Connect Bay Area Act, campaign spokesman Jeff Cretan dismissed proposals to redirect money from major capital projects toward transit service…
They Already Did It: Earlier this year, Newsom negotiated a financing package allowing Bay Area transit agencies to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars from state funds that had already been allocated for transit capital projects.
The largest share of those capital dollars had originally been reserved for construction of the San Jose BART extension. Instead, they became the source of loans designed to keep existing transit systems operating.
As columnist Daniel Borenstein observed, the package did not require new state money. It relied on capital funds that had already been committed to construction projects, temporarily converting those resources into operating support through a loan structure.
The accounting mechanism may have been creative.
But the result was unmistakable.
Capital resources were used to sustain operations.
Exactly the scenario transit advocates now insist cannot happen… (more)