☆ Constant: Transit agencies have been dishonestly squeezing Santa Clara County taxpayers for half a century

Cory Doctorow from Beautiful Downtown Burbank, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Five decades. More than $40bn (no typo) in taxes. And for all this, we get the worst-performing transit agency in the country. Prof Pete Constant chronicles the lost time and money, and how regional transit agencies keep peddling the same dishonest arguments in their quest to keep their grossly mismanaged agencies afloat. An Opp Now exclusive.

"This November, Bay Area voters are being asked to approve a sales tax increase to save BART and Muni from "catastrophic" cuts — the same three agencies, the same rationale, virtually the same pitch I first heard about as a teenager (Ed note: nearly fifty years ago).

"My entire adult life has run alongside this one, unbroken argument, and it has never once been resolved by the answer we keep giving it."
--Prof Pete Constant, former SJ Councilmember.

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