Alabama Transit Robbery

In 1998, the California congressional delegation worked together to fight for the state’s fair share of one of the nation’s biggest spending packages. This was the six-year, $200-billion federal transportation funding bill, a measure flawed by last-minute pork barrel projects spread to many congressional districts. But the basic philosophy of the bill was sound and the funding distribution was fair.

Now, Alabama Sen. Richard C. Shelby is trying to make an end run around all that hard work, at the expense of California and New York. Shelby, a Republican, chairs the Senate Subcommittee on Transportation. Now, under the flimsy guise of “transit equity,” he wants to slash transit financing to the two big states and divide the booty equally among the other states.

He has attached a provision to the Senate version of the transportation bill for the coming fiscal year that would limit each state to a maximum of 12.5% of the $5.1-billion federal mass transit spending pot. But the provision would harm only New York and California, which could lose $160 million and $117 million, respectively, in anticipated funding.

Why is Shelby doing this? Because some states take a “disproportionate share” of transit funding, he says. It’s a specious argument.

Sure, the two most populous states get more. That’s because they move far more people via transit than most of the rest of the states combined. California alone moves 15% of the nation’s bus riders and rail passengers. And don’t forget that California regularly coughs up more than $10 billion more in federal taxes than it receives in a given fiscal year. Alabama is a “taker” state, receiving far more in federal aid than it pays in taxes.

Shelby’s state has many more workers on the federal payroll, per capita, than California. Would he care to play Robin Hood with the huge agricultural subsidies Alabama has received over the years? Alabama, with its high poverty rate, receives disproportionately large amounts of aid for health and welfare.

There’s more: federal guarantees on private loans to the state’s Mobile shipyard; and one of the largest federal subsidies among the states to expand affordable phone service.

The House version of the transportation bill does not cap transit spending for states. The California delegation should rally to defeat Shelby’s antics and see that the House version of the bill holds sway.