Let’s get this straight. You take $70 million in half-cent transit tax revenue out of a $1.4 billion Charlotte city budget and the first spending you have to cut is police and fire service?
Bzzzzzzzzt. Wrong. Try again.
But this is beautiful. We are finally talking about spending priorities in this damn town. City Manager-for-a-Few-More-Days Pam Syfert unwittingly threw the door open to the entire city budget with a shameful bit of propaganda.
No more of this fiction of little walled-off pots of money here and little walled-off pots of money there. Government money is government money. It is fungible. It all comes from taxpayers.
The Uptown crowd, backs to the wall, last night finally admitted that was true and abandoned the myth of ear-marking.
This is a great, great victory for fiscal responsibility. We may save this city yet.
Update: Saw this little wrinkle coming over the weekend in Ron Tober’s comments. Now the city is claiming that if CATS does not build five corridors of rail at a cost of $9 billion, CATS — meaning local taxpayers — will have to pay back $300 million to the feds.
That is nuts. First off, I want to see the Federal Transit Administration agreement that commits CATS to building five corridors — only one of which the FTA has funded. Second, I want to see how CATS gets the $300 million number considering the South corridor only got about $192 million from the FTA. Third, I want an example of another system that paid back all its federal money after scaling back train-building plans.
It sounds like The Sopranos — once you get in you can never get out.
