Sure is convenient havigna transit agency you can raid.
Houston officials plan to offset a $100 million hit to the city’s budget in a recent legal ruling by using cash from the Metropolitan Transit Authority to spend more money on streets and drainage.
[…]
Finance director Melissa Dubowski told council members during May budget hearings last year that the city did not set aside cash for a potential liability in a dropped appeal. Dubowski said if it should happen, it would add $100 million to the budgetary gap.
During a council Budget and Fiscal Affairs meeting Monday, Dubowski the city’s projected budget shortfall for 2026 was $220 million. Add on the drainage money and the figure rises to $330 million.
But Dubowski said the city anticipated being able to offset some of the budget hit with $50 million from Metro’s $170 million General Mobility Fund.
The cash, which will help cover traffic enforcement and streetlight projects, will help free up money in the city’s general fund, Dubowski explained.
City leaders have yet to find any sources of revenue to help with the shortfall in the short term. Dubowski said the city would engage with stakeholders such as METRO and lawmakers in Austin.
See here for the background. I get that this was an unwanted complication, but I’m amused (*) that the stock answer to such situations appears to be “we’ll get some money from Metro for it”. Like using Metro cops to supplement HPD, which later turned into $50 million to help fund traffic enforcement. If that’s the case, then what we have here is not new money from Metro, which is the impression that the story’s headline gave me, but just a reiteration of the fact that the city had already planned to supplement its budget with that cash, and it can say “look, we’re already offsetting some of that extra cost”. Even if that is all this was intended to be, we’re still short $50 million. Sure hope those Austin connections come through for us. It’s not going to get any easier to do that from here.
One more thing:
City officials are also hopeful efficiencies will surface in a study of the city’s finances conducted by local accounting firm Ernst and Young. Whitmire’s administration has said the results have been on their way for months, but have yet to present them publicly.
Part of those recommendations are already coming to life. The finance director said they were looking into consolidating procurement efforts that were once housed in individual city departments into the finance department.
I’m sure there are a few bucks we can squeeze out of “efficiencies”. There always are – things change, and so what was once state of the art eventually becomes obsolete and needs to be upgraded or replaced. And sure, get what you can going in a timely fashion, so as to maximize its effect. But don’t fool yourself into thinking this will save us. The city’s single biggest problem, by far, is the revenue cap. Until we throw that yoke off we’re just tinkering around the edges.
(*) Mostly I just express it as “amused” to distract myself from how angry I am at the way this administration and its useless Metro Chair have treated the whole idea of transit as a joke.
The solution to all problems is to spend more money on them. It may be cheaper to use Waymos to pick up people in vans than to waste Metro money on ridership that is not there.
I rode on Metros for years, mainly on Park and Ride, but often enough on regular routes.
On the Park and Ride, the ridership consisted mainly of Fort Bend residents who did not pay Metro via the sales tax.
Ride the rail from south of the Astro Dome to its stop near the HCC campus and notice how empty the rail cars are.
Spending other people’s money is not how to run the city.
Bill, Metro money is our money. In 1978, voters approved giving the Metro a one-cent sales tax that the city could have used.
HCHSA and NRG Park get $100m a year t from the taxpayers to spend on fancy parties, subsidizing the Rodeo so they can bank $300m+ in assets for themselves, build stadiums for billionaires and barely charge rent, and sponsor “world class sporting events” that “mAke MOneY FOr HouSTon” like the World Cup and a Final Four with Florida Atlantic and SDSU. Since according to the sports people, all these events make money, then they should be able to finance future events from the money already earned from sports.
That way, we can use the HOT and rental car taxes for Metro.
re: “Spending other people’s money is not how to run the city.”
You can keep banging your head on your keyboard, but using tax dollars and/or assorted fees from local constituents or grant dollars collected from State or Nationwide constituents in some fashion are, for the most part (save for bonds, etc), exactly how cities and local governments are funded.