Repeal tip fee discount to help fund reliable city bus service

Elected officials are charged with many responsibilities, but the most difficult, by far, are the decisions that need to be made to ensure fair and efficient distribution of city resources. The fundamental responsibility to balance revenue and expenditures sometimes requires tough decisions that generate public opposition.

While the City Council has had to take its fair share of criticism for such decisions, the ongoing protest against the reduction of city bus service is not one of them. Mayor Peter Carlisle had legitimate concerns about the current and future stability of our public transportation system, but it is unlikely that he anticipated the level of distress caused by the schedule changes in dozens of routes affecting a significant number of the 220,000 daily bus riders.

Since the first cutbacks were implemented in early June, the Council has been inundated with complaints, safety concerns and stories of difficult commutes and other serious hardships. Moved by public testimony, we have appealed to the mayor to consider the bold step of reopening the budget to reallocate funds that can be used to restore the cutbacks in bus service.

The City Charter allows the mayor to resort to this extraordinary measure only when needed to meet contingencies which could not be anticipated when the budget ordinances were passed, and we firmly believe that the current situation fulfills this condition. Bus service is now unreliable for many commuters, resulting in lost wages for some and safety hazards for many others.

We stand ready to work with the administration to find a less disruptive solution than a reduction of such an essential public service. We are not interested in simply "kicking the can down the road," as a Star-Advertiser editorial recently opined, but rather, ironically, we are prepared to do what the editorial suggested with a proposal that would "rebalance revenues that are needed to support a reliable bus service."

We have sent the mayor a number of options that could provide the funds necessary to restore the cuts. Options include amendments to the Executive Operating Budget that would allow the mayor to transfer funds to bus operations at his discretion. Another possible amendment would delete funding for vacant positions and post-employment benefits.

There is even a $150,000 savings in the legislative budget earmarked for a special election no longer needed, due to the early resignation of Councilwoman Tulsi Gabbard. All told, more than $6 million could be transferred to the budget of the Department of Transportation Services.

We recognize that the immediate restoration of bus service to Oahu residents is not a one-time expense and that it will result in a reoccurring price tag each time we face the challenge of balancing the city’s budget. Therefore, we have reconsidered our support for an existing tip fee discount that could redirect this source of revenue to the more critical need of public transportation.

On the Council’s agenda for Wednesday is a measure to repeal the tip fee discount for private commercial recycling companies that dispose of recycling residue at H-POWER or the Waimanalo Gulch landfill. This measure would take effect in January 2013 and could result in a revenue increase of millions of dollars. It is a demonstration of our support for the reallocation of city resources to ensure that the very basic services such as public transportation are not compromised by the overall escalation in the cost of government.

We stand ready to cooperate with Mayor Carlisle in finding a mutually acceptable solution to the transportation crisis before us.