Muni Service Cuts: Illegal?
Photo by Flickr user ecastro
Is Muni’s proposed service reduction legal? That’s the topic of discussion at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting, the Examiner reports.
Transit activist David Pilpel filed an appeal with the Board of Supervisors saying the cuts, which save about $29 million, violate the California Environmental Quality Act guidelines, according to KCBS.
In a nutshell, Pilpel’s appeal says that the SFMTA should have conducted a state-mandated environmental review of the proposed 10 percent service cuts. Meanwhile, the MTA says that they don’t need to because they’ve declared a fiscal emergency. We’ll keep you updated.
Getting around the mandatory EIR was the whole reason they declared a fiscal emergency, no?
Yeah, pretty much. But I think the argument is that the 10% cuts are way above and beyond anything that was discussed as a possible outcome of the fiscal emergency.
Also, in my opinion, it isn’t a fiscal emergency when you make no effort to find funding sources and depend solely on cuts and fare hikes to balance a budget.