Case For Regional Transit Inches Forward, Though Problems Remain

Business leaders in Racine, Kenosha and Milwaukee made their pitch at a Thursday Public Policy forum gathering for a financed regional transit authority, commuter rail and dedicated county sales tax scheme for transit operations of up to five cents on the dollar.

The push for a three-county regional solution (Milwaukee, Racine, Kenosha) comes as Milwaukee County's bus system is getting closer to complete implosion, trapped by County Executive Scott Walker's disdain for transit, and by the escalating political and fiscal impossibility of using regressive property tax dollars to run it.

So it's looking more and more as if some sort of fix is coming from the State Capitol in the form of county/regional sales taxes and a new transit agency's taxing authority, but there are still problems with the scheme, ranging from the desire of the City of Milwaukee for a piggy-backed fractional sales tax for public safety to political opposition by Milwaukee County Board Chairman Lee Holloway.

And let's not forget that talk radio is waiting in the wings to pounce, since it considers taxes, rails and the freer movement of people throughout the region toxic. For the talkers, a regional transit authority funded by new sales taxes - - even if they are paired with a reduction in property taxes - - is porterhouse tosed to hungry wolves.

But the threat of a shutdown of the County bus system will probably result in some sort of a fix, and if a regional transit authority can be structured and operated equitably, the new system could also include the long-stalled Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee commuter line, too, since the KRM has growing support from development-minded business leaders and transit advocates.

And these are the people who will have to take on talk radio, a negative force which has already spooked Waukesha County to remove itself from the three-county RTA.

Take a bow, Waukesha: any further lobbying from you on behalf of regional cooperation should be laughed out of the room, perhaps along with your Lake Michigan water diversion plans.

Unstated at the Thursday session: the political obstacle that could be added unnecessarily to all this political work if the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission is handed a management or governance role in the operation of an RTA.

The agency is already seen as overtly pro-highway-and-suburban, unrepresentative of urban interests and hopelessly disconnected from taxpayers.

A SEWRPC role in future RTA operations would be a stake through the heart for transit progress in the region.