PROVIDENCE -- For the second year in a row, the state's transit agency is facing layoffs and service cuts to address a budget deficit, officials said yesterday.
The board of the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority voted yesterday to approve a $74-million budget for the fiscal year that began July 1, and also voted to hold public hearings on a variety of ways to cover an estimated $1.75-million deficit.
Cost-cutting steps under consideration include:
The elimination of up to 24 routes or sections of routes, which would leave four communities -- Scituate, Foster, Glocester and Burrillville -- without bus service.
Elimination of the popular trolley service in Providence and Newport, and using the trolleys to cover routes elsewhere in the RIPTA system.
Elimination of up to 45 jobs at RIPTA. Mark Therrien, RIPTA's assistant general manager for development and planning, said the cuts could mean about 35 layoffs and 10 additional jobs eliminated when employees retire.
"I see a lot of the elderly being hurt, and the handicapped," said board member William Kennedy.
"We don't want to cut any service," said General Manager Alfred J. Moscola. "The people depend on it."
Last month, the board tabled a smaller, $72.6-million proposed budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1 after a dispute with another agency, the Department of Elderly Affairs, threw a major revenue source into doubt. Since then, changes in estimates of revenues and expenses for this fiscal year have increased the expected deficit.
RIPTA finance officials attributed the problem to several factors.
By RIPTA's reckoning, the Department of Elderly Affairs owes the agency $686,000 for servicing vehicles that transport the elderly over the past year. The Department of Elderly Affairs, however, disputes RIPTA's figures and wants RIPTA to use some of its federal reimbursements to make up the difference, something RIPTA officials yesterday rejected.
Officials also said that the agency's suppliers had expected that diesel fuel costs, a major budget item, might fall back to about $1.14 per gallon after a sharp increase. Instead, Maureen Neira, RIPTA's chief financial officer, said that prices have stayed up at about $1.41.
She said RIPTA is also facing cost increases for health insurance for its employees and for salaries and pension costs because of an impending labor arbitration decision and also for increased costs to serve disabled persons living near bus routes.
Neira said fuel will probably cost an extra $400,000, service for the disabled an extra $400,000 to $500,000, and wages and benefits perhaps $900,000 extra.
More broadly, RIPTA staff and board members said the situation reflects a failure by the state's political leaders to decide what RIPTA should do and then provide the money to pay for it. As it stands now, RIPTA provides subsidized bus service to several constituencies -- the elderly and handicapped, people going to work, students going to school and college, and those going to the beaches in the summer, among others.
RIPTA is also a major part of the state's strategies to reduce both a serious air pollution problem and growing highway congestion.
But recently, it has been limping from crisis to crisis, kept afloat by last-minute infusions of state money.
Robert Batting, Governor Carcieri's appointment to the RIPTA board, yesterday criticized the agency's managers and other board members, saying that "to just keep spending money with a deficit, that doesn't make much sense."
Batting, who has pushed unsuccessfully for spending cuts since his appointment early last year, yesterday called the changes in RIPTA's fiscal projections "staggering." He also said, "We should have significant increases in ridership and the reverse is happening."
Therrien disputed that, saying, "You keep saying our ridership is down," when "our ridership is up significantly." Therrien said that cash-paying ridership is down, because the agency has pursued contracts where several colleges pay, in advance, for their students to ride RIPTA buses using their student IDs.
Moscola's monthly report said RIPTA had a total ridership for the 11 months ending in May of 18.5 million, up 8.5 percent from 17 million the year before.
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