Budget bill puts transit money at risk

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By James Briggs

For the second time since Gov. Scott Walker was elected in November, Democratic lawmakers say he is gambling with federal transportation money.

The first time was when Walker turned away more than $800 million that would have paid for a high-speed rail line to be built between Milwaukee and Madison. Now, Democrats say, the governor’s budget repair bill has placed at risk $46 million in aid to local transit systems.

The money, which supports bus systems throughout the state, comes with the stipulation that transit workers must be able to collectively bargain. Walker’s bill, which would strip collective bargaining rights from public unions, could cause the federal government to stop writing checks for Wisconsin transit.

“For the city of Stevens Point, this means 58 percent of our (transit) budget,” said state Rep. Louis Molepske, D-Stevens Point. “We had 255,000 rides last year.”

Besides paying for bus routes, the federal money also sometimes contributes to building projects connected to local transit systems. La Crosse, for instance, in August opened a $30 million transportation hub that might not have been built without federal transit money.

“It was very much paid for by federal funding,” said Tony Hutchens, the city’s assistant director for public works.

The federal government picked up about 8 percent of the tab, Rep. Jennifer Shilling, D-La Crosse, said.

“It’s a beautiful new transit center helping to revitalize our downtown,” Shilling said, adding La Crosse receives about $1.9 million a year in federal transit aid and is in line for an additional $1.2 million that would pay for new buses.

But Rep. Robin Vos, R-Burlington, said concerns over the loss of federal money are overblown.

“I’m confident the Obama administration is not going to cut out bus service to tens of thousands of people,” Vos said. “We will fight as hard as we can to make sure the money stays here.”

But no one knows for sure how the federal government would react to changes in Wisconsin’s labor law, said Michael May, a city attorney for Madison. The city of Madison extended employee contracts through 2012, in part, to protect the city’s annual $7 million in federal transit money.

Federal officials, though, have not responded to the city’s inquiries for more information, May said.

“They normally look at it at the time transit aid is done, and I don’t know they’d give us a hypothetical answer,” May said, adding he doesn’t know what the city would do if it lost its transit money.

That uncertainty, Democrats say, makes this issue similar to the argument Walker made when he said the state would try to use federal rail money for road construction.

State Rep. Peter Barca, D-Kenosha, called Wisconsin’s chances of keeping its transit money a “50-50 proposition.”

Just as when the state depended on the U.S. Department of Transportation‘s decision on rail money, Molepske said, Wisconsin would be similarly dependent on the U.S. Department of Labor to rule on transit aid.

“We have three new hybrid buses on the way. It seems very illogical to have this trust issue out there,” Molepske said. “I do not want to have to trust the secretary of labor that these funds will come back to Stevens Point when we can say we’re not going to trust this” by rejecting the bill.

The federal aid has provided too many benefits for Wisconsin cities to risk losing it, Shilling said.

“The landscape would be substantially different,” she said, “if we didnít have viable service like we do in La Crosse.”