Free Munia!
BeyondChron.org is reporting that a group of advocates and union leaders are thinking about taking the whole Muni fare hike battle to the voters. Yep, another proposition. The proposed proposition would call for a five-year freeze on fare hikes and lay-offs. One of things to be considered for the proposition would be if the Board of Supervisors votes for the fare increases, whether the freeze will be retroactive, meaning will the increased fares be decreased as it were.
The idea behind it all is to force everyone involved to, as they said back in those halcyon days of dot.com yore, "think outside the box." While BeyondChron is claiming some sort of wild conspiracy about Muni boss Michael Burns secretly scheming to bring fares up to $2 a ride, we don't think it's too far fetched to think that if the recent Muni hike goes into place, it won’t be long until Muni comes back, hat in hand, and asks for yet another fare increase. That would be bad. We would also like to point out that while we do think Muni did a good job of spreading the pain in their proposal, it would be best if there were no pain to be spreading. Both Muni and the Mayor both said they were open to any new ideas as to how to fix the situation, but we get the impression they didn’t really spend all that much time thinking of any. It’s not like there are plenty of ideas out there.
If the proposition comes into being and is passed, our guess is that we're headed for an attempt at creating some sort of transit assessment district in which downtown business would help pay the costs of the public transportation. While that might sound like a good idea, there’s an actual problem with it in that it the creating of one was voted down in 1994 and in 1996 by, umm, us, the voters. We voted against the creation of assessment districts in a statewide election too. Oops. Also, those nefarious, villainous forces the Bay Guardian likes to refer to as "Downtown" have always opposed the idea of a downtown transit assessment district because it adds further to the expensive cost of doing business here (don’t tell the head of Wells Fargo about the possible new taxes because he's been whining to people about how he's thinking of moving the company because it’s so expensive here. Tell us something we don't know).