It's a good thing that politicians are held to account for raising taxes. There is a lot of waste in the public sector, and it's easy to hide it.
But it's also a good thing that politicians are held to account for providing leadership. Unfortunately, Premier Christy Clark took the politically expedient back exit with her recent announcement that she would be ignoring the agonized call from the TransLink Mayors' Council for a vehicle levy to replace a property tax increase and called for TransLink to be audited in search of internal savings.
The call for an audit (by both the premier and the Mayors' Council) is an obvious run for political cover. In addition to the organization's annual audits, there's already a special audit underway. The TransLink commissioner is weeks away from delivering an efficiency audit required before a 12.5% fare increase can be approved.
In 2009 the comptroller general audited the organization, and in 2010, TransLink cut $23 million in costs.
The last time a new provincial premier nixed a vehicle levy and called for an audit was in 2001. The leader – the NDP's Ujjal Dosanjh – was subsequently defeated, and the audit reported that the revenue that could have been collected from a vehicle levy would have put transportation improvements on a firm financial footing.
With that funding, the Evergreen Line could have been built years earlier for its original cost of $750 million compared with today's $1.2 billion, a saving of $450 million.
Audit-mania is really an attempt to calm vehicle drivers who feel they're already being shafted by fuel taxes. With Metro Vancouver gas taxes approaching $0.50 a litre, the highest in Canada, they have a point. Yet the bigger problem still won't go away: with population growing, where do we find the money for strategic investments to improve mobility – including alternatives to high-cost driving in areas with poor transit?
That feeling of being shafted is exacerbated by two concerns: fare evasion and overspending on TransLink police.
TransLink's internal audits and two external audits have pegged system-wide fare evasion at around 5% (public perception is that it's 10 times higher). That cost TransLink $18 million in 2010. Then there was Frances Bula's recent revelation of the PwC audit showing 85% of people fined for fare evasion don't pay, and that it's ICBC's responsibility for collecting, but there's no penalty for not paying! TransLink has been calling for that to be fixed for years.
To reduce fare evasion on SkyTrain, the federal and provincial governments (not TransLink) are spending $70 million to install gates and turnstiles. The costs of operating the gates is $200,000 a year more than the increased revenue they will bring in, so that won't improve TransLink's finances.
The TransLink Transit Police are the subject of yet another audit – this one by the Vancouver Police Department (not released yet). The levels of pay they receive are exorbitant (fourth highest among B.C. police departments, at $80,748 average), not to mention overtime provisions that bump way too many into the $100,000-plus bracket. But their budget has been frozen, and their crime-suppression efforts deserve some credit for the 5% growth of transit passengers last year (over the 2010 Olympic highs).
Lost in all this anti-transit noise is the bigger financial management picture: in spite of overall losses of $11 million, last year's TransLink revenue was over budget, expenses were under and customer satisfaction is at a record high. SkyTrain continues to have the cheapest operating costs of any rapid transit system in the world, which allows it to cover operating expenses from fares alone.
What if all these audits discover that TransLink's house really is in order? Would that quiet the no-more-money-for-transit lobby? It's doubtful. Outrage about taxes is legitimate, but shouldn't be the only factor in decisions that lead to more affordable transportation choices. •
