Minnesota Free Market Institute

In response to my Pioneer Press column bringing to light comments by transportation bill architect Rep. Bernie Lieder, Steve Dornfeld of the Metropolitan Council noted that little of the $6.6 billion transportation bill goes to transit operating subsidies; that spin is true. But I wrote that the metro area sales tax, which was sold as a way to build new transit and reduce congestion, is first being used to pay operating costs for transit we already have. Dornfeld says the $30.8 million subsidy is a one-time appropriation, but he doesn't discount the need for future light-rail subsides.

Per Dornfeld, future transit subsidies cannot come out of the metro area sales tax for transit (unless they subsidize new transit). Per Lieder, operating subsidies won't come out of state general funds, and they should come from county property taxes. I don't recall higher property taxes and subsidized transit operating costs being part of the DFL sell on the transportation bill.

In many ways, voting for the transportation bill was common sense: Consensus and a Legislative Auditor's report hold thatMinnesota has neglected maintenance of its infrastructure. People are frustrated. Leaders of the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce were under pressure from influential members to make something happen. Transit supporters were pressuring for a pot of money like the highway kids have. Transit lobby support and campaign support from chamber members can fill a lot of GOP endorsement potholes.

But to paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, The Override Six "are men and woman of great common sense with their fingers on the pulse of their constituents — meaning thereby men and woman without principle or moral courage."

Last week the nonpartisan Civic Caucus posted an interview with State Rep. Bernie Lieder, chair House Transportation Finance Division and chief author of major transportation bill that passed the Legislature on Feb.21. Among his comments, Lieder discussed toll roads, transit funding, property taxes and transportation earmarks.

“Rep. Lieder made a number of hedging-your-bets statements indicative of someone who may have overpromised and risks under-delivering,” writes Minnesota Free Market Institute Senior Policy Fellow Craig Westover in Friday’s Pioneer Press. “Call it ‘the largest tax increase in modern Minnesota history’ as the GOP does or cloak it as a ‘Transportation Bill’ as the DFL does, the legislation passed over the governor's veto is but a packet of promises that will be breached as soon as it's politically expedient. Six-plus billion dollars is a lot to spend for entertainment value, but were it not for the soap-opera duplicity of the daytime drama at the Capitol, we'd get very little else from this 'historic' legislation."

The St. Paul Pioneer Press reports in a page-one story today that the popular Route 16 bus along University Avenue, which runs every 10 minutes and stops at virtually every important cross street on University Ave, is “going to take a beating from the planned Central Corridor light rail line.” It will run less often and make fewer stops. The reason (according to the Pioneer Press): “Officials need to get riders off buses and onto trains to raise Central Corridor ridership forecasts to meet a federal funding formula.”

“Transportation policy is supposed to be about increasing mobility,” says Minnesota Free Market Institute Senior Policy Fellow Craig Westover. “’Mobility’ is people getting from where they are to where they want to go to do what they want to do when they want to do it. The decision to curtail Route 16 bus service is anti-mobility – it will force people to either wait longer for the bus or walk farther to catch the train. As we get down to the short strokes on obtaining federal funding, it becomes increasingly obvious that the Central Corridor is more about using taxpayer dollars to create a political legacy than being true to a transportation system that provides the benefits of mobility.”