In this issue of Spotlight on The Region:

- What Does David Gunn’s Firing Mean for the Northeast Corridor?

- Talking Straight About Transportation Funding in New Jersey

- The Good and the Bad of Uber-Rich Elected Officials

– Calendar

Saving David Gunn
The controversial defenestration last week of Amtrak President David Gunn, a possible illegitimate action by its incomplete board, has significance for the entire country but even more so for the Tri-State Region.

In a region with so many transportation options, it’s easy to forget that Amtrak service between Boston, New York and Washington is still the first choice for many travelers, particularly business travelers. Although Amtrak trains are expensive and often late, reading and working on one is still a better use of time than jumping hurdles to and from an airplane seat, or driving clogged highways. Improving inter-city train travel within the Northeast and Atlantic seaboard would be a significant economic boost to this region.

But with Gunn’s forced departure, that challenge looks ever more difficult. The Amtrak board essentially fired Gunn last week without warning. Congress has challenged the deed, questioning whether the board had the authority to make such a decision. The reasons are complex, but they include the possibility that the board, which had three of seven seats vacant and two seats filled without the usual congressional approval, lacked a quorum. Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg of New Jersey said the board was retaliating for the Senate recently passing a long-term funding package that ignored President Bush’s wishes to break up and privatize the nation’s passenger railroad service.

Bravo to Sen. Lautenberg for speaking out, and for his work in shepherding a funding package through the Senate. Amtrak needs this kind of attention and more from our region’s leaders, and not just those in Congress, if it is going to survive and thrive. While it may not be the first thing that comes to mind for his next term, Mayor Bloomberg should put Amtrak on his list of priorities worth spending some political capital on.

The problem with Amtrak is not its existence, but that it has been whipsawed back and forth by utopian visions of what it can achieve. Both the pro- and anti-train factions are partially to blame. What was good about Gunn, and so tragic about his forced departure, is that he had a coherent, reasonable vision of how to improve the nation’s train service.

It says something about Gunn that the terms he threw around most with me in a lengthy interview in 2004 were “ties,” “tracks,” “ballast-deck bridges,” and “catenary lines.” Gunn, the former head of the New York City transit system, had an imminently practical vision for restoring and improving the nation’s intercity rail service that was very similar to how he restored and improved the subway system in the 1980s. He eschewed dreams of fancy European high-speed rail, or libertarian management schemes built on the virtues of privatization. Instead, Gunn focused on unglamorous tasks like repairing or replacing wrecked cars, crumbling tracks and ancient catenary lines.

Using tried and true technology, Gunn maintained that Amtrak could soon have trains whipping between cities within major regions at more than 110 mph. True, that’s not the 200 mph of France, Germany and Japan, but it was a practical and affordable vision, Gunn said.

All that was needed for this was a healthy level of government funding. But here things stopped. For some reason, many rail opponents believe that building and maintaining a road, port or airport at government expense is fine, but to do so for a railroad is wasteful socialism. This obtuse and easily refuted argument has nevertheless repeatedly stalled Amtrak.

The irony is that more support exists across ideological lines for swift, dependable train service than ever before. People and politicians who actually live in the Northeast, mid Atlantic, Florida, Northwest, California Coast, and Gulf Coast deal with overburdened highways and beleaguered airports and are willing and even eager to spend taxpayer dollars for swift, dependable train service. It’s no fluke that Sen. Trent Lott, a Southern conservative, and Lautenberg, a Northeastern liberal, have attempted to save Amtrak from the Bush administration’s privatization schemes.

Sept. 11, 2001 showed more than anything the need for train service as both an alternative and a backup to air and highway travel. Since then, Amtrak’s ridership has boomed even as, paradoxically, it has run into tougher political opposition. Right now, the federal government spends a bit over a billion dollars a year on Amtrak, or about what it costs to build a few cloverleafs. It’s a tiny fraction of what the federal government spends on highways and air travel.

Gunn often said in speeches and interviews that he welcomed an honest discussion about the nation’s transportation system and its funding priorities, because he thought rail service would hold its own in that debate. It’s a great tragedy for Amtrak and its passengers, present and future, that that honest debate has not yet taken place. A good start would be placing Gunn back in his job as president of the nation’s passenger railroad service.

- Alex Marshall, Editor, Spotlight on the Region


Talking Frankly About the Great Unmentionable
Generally, Americans love to talk about other people’s money – Donald Trump’s billions and the cost of a suburban McMansion regularly dominate headlines. But when it comes to the collection and spending of our tax dollars, public officials become reticent. They use words like “resources” and “investment.” Instead of hearing about taxes, voters tend to hear that “resources” need to be “shored up” or we need to “strengthen support” for certain policies.

But in New Jersey, at least around transportation funding, the conversation will have to get much more straightforward fairly soon. On July 1, 2006, the state’s main source of transportation financing will run dry. All the tax dollars dedicated to the Transportation Trust Fund will be used to pay debt service for the next 15 years. Worse still, if NJ DOT and NJ TRANSIT lose this $1.3 billion/year, they risk another $1.3 billion in federal transportation dollars that require a state match.

RPA released a report this week detailing revenue options to save the New Jersey transportation system, Reform, Revenue, Results. The report outlines the two sides of the transportation funding problem: operating and capital. New Jersey has been under-funding the operating side for years, and compensating by diverting funds meant for capital improvements. To restore operations, RPA recommends using $675 million from already-collected motor vehicle fees and motor fuels taxes. On the capital side, RPA shows a $2 billion annual need, and outlines 11 revenue options that could, in some combination, meet that need. They include big-ticket items like extending the sales tax to motor fuels and raising tolls; longer term possibilities like privatization of toll roads, value recapture, and a container tax; and smaller items that could be part of a larger package, like rental car fees and weight-based car registration surcharges.

The report also echoes a list of recommended reforms published in a July RPA report. These reforms are necessary to avert another crisis a few years from now, and to keep any new money from leaking away from transportation spending in the future. These include setting up a politically independent review committee to oversee transportation borrowing and spending, issuing public reports on how much is actually collected from transportation-related taxes and fees, ending the use of capital dollars for operations, and restricting borrowing so as not to bankrupt the future (again).

All of this will take a lot of work and require hard choices. Fully funding operations, as we’ve recommended, will mean redirecting money from the General Fund. Choosing revenue options for the capital program will require new taxes, tolls or fees. And making the necessary reforms will, at least initially, make the whole program more expensive. Of course, it’s worth it. Without a real solution, New Jersey can only look forward to crumbling bridges, closed roads, slow trains and crowded buses. With all the pieces in place, the state can be a shining example of efficient use of road space, state-of-the-art transit, and protection of historic infrastructure.

But that probably means we have to drop the code words. Whatever terms he uses, Governor Corzine will need to show the public a realistic plan, matching taxes, tolls and fees to specific projects. New Jersey is past the point of “shoring up resources to strengthen policies.” It’s time to be honest and talk about how to raise money for roads and rails.

– Alexis Perrotta, Senior Policy Analyst


Climbing a Stack of Your Own Dollars to Reach High Office
The cynical view of politics is that people undertake the grueling job of running for office in order to eventually make money for themselves and their friends, legally or otherwise. Names like Boss Tweed, Jimmy Walker and various Garden State politicians in decades past come to mind.

But last week in New Jersey and New York City, two locales not exactly famous for morally pure politicians, a majority of the major candidates for governor and mayor spent bucket loads of their own sizable fortunes in attempts to win office. Since these candidates were already quite rich, presumably they were doing so simply because they desired to be of public service.

Such acts turn the usual view of people’s motivations on its head. But as gallant as this seems in some ways, it’s also disquieting. The two winning candidates, Governor-Elect Jon Corzine and Mayor Michael Bloomberg, were also the candidates that had and spent the most of their own money. Is this what it will take in the future to get into politics?

To be sure, there are also many rich, self-financing politicians who have lost over the years. But the trend certainly appears to be heading in the other direction in the Tri-State Region. In New York City, some have estimated that Mayor Bloomberg spent almost $100 per vote, most of it from his own wealth. According to the Associated Press, “No American mayor has ever spent so much running for re-election, and only a few politicians have approached that level for any office.”

Across the river, in the New Jersey gubernatorial race the amount was equally astonishing. Corzine reportedly spent over $40 million of his own money between the primary and general elections. To seal the point, he added another $1 million on the day before the election. His challenger, Doug Forrester, contributed over $30 million of his personal wealth to his own campaign. Combined, the two major party candidates for Governor in New Jersey put at least $72.75 million of their own money into the race, making it the most expensive election in state history.

In paying their own way, Bloomberg, Corzine and Forrester bypassed laws seeking to control the escalating cost of entering an election, as well as the public financing system in New York City intended to open up campaigns to interests beyond those who can contribute big dollars. Essentially, Bloomberg, Corzine and Forrester are helping kill these public-interest laws and policies.

All things considered, this is not a good thing. Still, many people say that self-financing governors and mayors ensure their independence from political bosses and wealthy campaign donors. But might personal wealth also be only a new way that money is keeping regular people out of politics, by allowing only the super-rich to run for office?

The expressed priorities of the winning candidates might give us some signal of how their wealth influences their potential policies, but in New Jersey and New York City it’s hard to see any clear connection. In New Jersey, Governor-Elect Corzine says he will focus on providing property tax relief and reform. While Mayor Bloomberg has identified a number of priorities for his second term, including the need to build a significant amount of new housing in the City, his most striking message on Election Night was his commitment to go back to work the next day.

One thing is clear: Few aspiring leaders could hope to compete with such well-funded candidates, especially when a great portion of the campaign is waged through expensive television advertising. According to Megan Quattlebaum of N.Y. Common Cause, “As a democracy, we have to decide whether it is acceptable to us that you have to have an extraordinary amount of money to communicate effectively."

For me, the most significant thing will be what these men actually do. If Mayor Bloomberg presides over the construction of significant new housing in New York City, and Governor Corzine enacts meaningful property tax reform, then that makes up for how these candidates financed the election. And who knows how much politicians can get done if they dedicate their time to solving problems rather than dialing for dollars?

However, even if these two politicians accomplish great things, I’m left with a sinking feeling that, as of now, the best way for my six-year-old son Jack to be elected Governor is to make a billion bucks. I wonder if that’s the message our founding fathers would have wanted us to leave the next generation.

– Thomas G. Dallessio, AICP/PP, Vice President and New Jersey Director

December 1, 8:30 a.m. – 1 p.m.
Can Growth Work for New York’s Communities? Community Development, Social & Environmental Justice, and the City’s Future. Pratt Manhattan, 144 West 14th Street, Room 213. Click here to RSVP and see the full schedule: http://r.vresp.com/?PrattCenter/24ad49a36c/441185/2945d20255/268ed4c

December 2, 9:30 a.m.
The Race for Open Space: A Discussion of the Road to the Future of Preservation. Presented by Policy Research Institute for the Region and New Jersey Future. Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, Room 016, Robertson Hall. Space is limited, so please RSVP to gharriso@princeton.edu or 609.258.9065.

Monday, December 5, 6:30 – 8:00 p.m.
Eero Saarinen: Author Jayne Merkel outlines the life and career of the architect best known for the St. Louis Arch, TWA Terminal at JFK, Dulles Airport, the General Motors Technical Center and the US Embassy in London. New Haven architect Harold Roth, as a young Architect in Saarinen’s office, talks about seeing through the construction of the CBS Bldg when the architect died suddenly in 1961 at age 51. The Skyscraper Museum presents this free lecture at the Center for Architecture, 536 LaGuardia Place between W. 3rd & Bleecker streets, Greenwich Village. For more information, call 212.968.1961.