I really do not think the Observer’s Mary Newsom spread a huge falsehood on her blog today on purpose. Not if she asked anyone in city government or CATS for accurate information and then was misled. Be that as it may, the following claim by Newsom is 100% wrong:

I asked Susan Burgess. I asked Deputy City Manager Curt Walton. I asked Budget Director Ruffin Hall. They all said the same. The city budget doesn’t allocate any money to the transit system — not for operations, not for building the rails or stations. It never has. All the LRT money comes completely from within CATS’ separate budget.

That is not what the Observer reported back in July, on the eve of the great bait-and-switch known as the Wachovia Arts Tower deal. That fast one, recall, needed a car rental tax hike to make the numbers work — even after City Manager For a Few More Weeks Pam Syfert stuffed General Fund money into the deal.

What we got then was a shell-game of a plan that gave CATS another dedicated transit tax in the form of car rental tax money in exchange for the city keeping money that it previously gave CATS.

Or, as the Observer’s Richard Rubin reported on July 9th:

For years, the three-sentence party line from city government has been this:

1. Transit money is transit money, locked away by state law from the rest of the budget.

2. Road money is road money, generated from property and sales taxes and constantly squeezed by the need for firefighters and police officers.

3. The two can’t be mingled.

But it turns out that the transit lockbox isn’t so secure after all. Charlotte is preparing to crack it open, pluck out some money for uptown museums, and then replenish the transit fund from another pocket.

What? Is that possible?

Many readers probably think all the money for the Charlotte Area Transit System comes from the half-cent sales tax that voters approved in 1998. Not true. That tax will generate $62.7 million in 2006-07, but that’s less than 60 percent of the CATS budget.

A sizable chunk – $18.4 million per year – comes from general city funds. State law requires the city to make a “maintenance of effort” payment, essentially to keep spending as much on transit as it did before CATS was created.
…

The City Council turned to the idea of raising the rental-car tax to pay for the museums, and the state Senate recently passed a bill to increase the tax. But the bill is not simply a new tax for new projects.

It gives Charlotte an additional rental-car tax that goes directly into the transit fund.

Then, the bill lets Charlotte reduce the amount of general tax money it puts into transit, up to $7.5 million per year. Even though the city plans to spend that freed-up money on arts, the bill allows it to be used for anything.

Republican City councilman John Lassiter said the city’s pitch to legislators was based on the benefits of the arts projects, including state tax revenue and high-paying bank jobs.

We have a new standard for CATS math: $18 million = 0. Actually that sounds about right — for CATS.

But for the rest of us, we have yet another example of local officials playing fast and loose with the facts in order to hide just how much CATS’ $9 billion transit plan is costing this community.

I think Mary Newsom just got caught in a drive-by hit on the truth.