Trimess

Friday, May 10, 2013

JOHN CHARLES AT THE STATEHOUSE

No pal of the unions or working man I know, but he does have a handle on Trimet issues


JOHN CHARLES AT THE STATE HOUSE from al m on Vimeo.



I agree that the board should be changed, but I also agree with Neil McFarlane, that actually doing that will have little effect on by itself, on the problems on the agency.  Their completely upside down on the on their match between expenses and revenue this particular document(s) (3 total given),  which future historian would refer to as Trimet's “suicide note” (their financials) describes they can’t survive,  they would be completely collapsing within 15yrs,  but they imply, that there is an window of opportunity between now and fiscal 2017 which I think is false,  because they have been looting their trust funds their down $1.2 billion, these are trust funds,  money is supposed to be there for promises made to employees and past employees and their $900 million OPEB (Other Post-Employment Benefits) obligations is 0% funded, their other trusts funds 67% funded 52% funded, the Trimet board meets twice a month, I’m pretty sure you don’t wake up one day and discover wow 1.2bill is gone what happen, we are talking entire generations of board members  showing up at meetings,  looting the trust funds to pay for other stuff, that to me is a complete failure of governance and it goes  back over 20yrs, so simply replacing board member by itself would not be enough because the agency is soo deep into something,  they owe so many people soo much money they can’t on wine but,  actually, you need to decide on how you are going to reconfigure Trimet, they’re not going to exist. A key thing I want to point out is,  I want to (give) some quotes from trimet's 20 year forecast , published on their website in December,  which is that revenue is not the problem, this is their CFO stating this,  “trimet's operating revenue per capita are 70% higher than peer agencies, the payroll tax is a reliable and growing source of revenue, you may know that the payroll tax rate goes up every January pursuant to your legislation is likely to go up every January through 2024 also pursuant to your authorization, passenger fares have grown by an average of 6.8 percent annually over the past 10yrs it’s not a revenue problem.”  In fact,  all funds budgeted went up by 125% in the last 8yrs  and service went down by 14% something of a bureaucratic miracle that revenue goes in and nothing comes out.  Benefits verses wages   Trimet benefit are 157% of wages, I looked at the top 15 transit districts in the country, Trimet always wants to act like it’s a big time transit entity, there is no one even close to that the second is NY city MTA where their benefits are 88% of wages ,that followed by Washington DC, New Jersey transit  are at 83% the  lower end is Denver RTD which is 34% and Miami Dade County is at 33% , so even in an industry known for high cost of labor,  Trimet is completely off the chart and there is not going to be a solution to traditional bargaining, because the basic template has been approved and reapproved  and reapproved  by the board so many times, there is no going back.  So another problem is rail it is unsustainable and cannibalizing bus service, every time they build a rail project and MLP, as an example, they will be selling   $60 million of bonds, paid back by future payroll taxes which is cannibalizing its own general fund, and bond holders get paid before anyone else does.  On the Senior Lean Debt Chart, that is when they have all this debt piles up, the payroll tax money goes into trust funds,  then goes out to Wall Street bond holders.  Trimet never gets to touch it, so bond holders will get theirs, but what happens to actual riders. The key thing that I only discovered recently, in their 20yr forecast; is that in 2027, just as the gap between operations and revenue and expenses is its widest, they will have to float $327 million in revenue bonds in fiscal year 2027, to replace 36 of the original rail cars and purchase 12 new ones, at that point the Senior Lean Debt Chart completely blows up and they simply won’t exist, “if” they are around at that point. So, they have broken promises to everybody, they broken promise you when you authorized increases in payroll taxes in 2003, they promised  that service would go up, fact is that it’s gone down,  they promised employees for benefits upon retirement and there is no money in the trust fund or at least, one of the big trust funds.  They promised FTA, when they took federal money for light rail lines they would have levels of service and those levels of service are not there, plus,  the yellow line and the green line are violating Full Funding Grants, so to me the Trimet board has no credibility.
                                                                                                John Charles, President of Cascade Policy institute.

Starting @ 33 mark, to 40min mark.  This is about 95% accurate I may have missed a phrase or two, but this is the gist of it all.
 

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