DALLAS — Baltimore and Maryland legislative officials are sparring over whether more than $200 million of public transit funding is unused and available for the city following Gov. Larry Hogan's cancellation of a $2.9 billion light rail project.
Warren Deschenaux, chief policy analyst for the General Assembly's Department of Legislative Services, said on Monday that $339 million of state funds were made available by both the cancellation in June of the Red Line in Baltimore and the $500 million cut in the state's cost for the Purple Line light rail project in the northern suburbs of Washington, D.C. Deschenaux lowered the estimate of undedicated funds by $100 million on Tuesday after a review of the available information.
However, the Maryland Department of Transportation said all $745 million of savings realized by the state from cancelling the 14-mile Red Line and the more than $500 million cut from the Purple Line funding has been redirected to the $1.35 billion highway improvement program announced by the Republican governor in June. The road program includes $845 million for new construction and $500 million for bridge and road repairs.
Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake wants the state to fund improvements to the public transit system with the Red Line savings, said mayoral spokesman Howard Libit.
"The dollars attached to the Red Line project ought to remain dedicated to addressing these critical needs of Baltimore and the surrounding area," he said.
The Maryland Transit Administration operates the rail system and most of the bus routes in the Baltimore region.
Doug Mayer, a spokesman for Hogan, said the legislative budget analysts were providing incorrect information at the behest of House Speaker Michael Busch and other Democrats in the General Assembly.
"It's deeply concerning that during a very important discussion about the future of Baltimore's transit system, the speaker's analysts were busy concocting totally bogus numbers only intended to drive a known political agenda," Mayer said.
"This is the second time in as many weeks that these analysts have gone out of their way to muddy the waters by purposefully misleading the press, the public, and both Democratic and Republican legislators," he said. "It's not productive and it needs to stop."
State Transportation Secretary Peter Rahn told a joint session of the Maryland Senate's Budget and Taxation Committee and House Appropriations Committee in late July that all the rail project savings were rededicated to the road program.
"The savings from the Purple Line and Red Line have been committed to roads," Rahn said.
Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz, a Democrat, said Tuesday that the only local project in Hogan's $845 million program of new construction is a $5 million road-widening job.
"It is clear that the administration is not interested in taking a comprehensive look at 21st century transit options for the Baltimore region," Kamenetz said. "Instead, they have redistributed virtually all mass transit funding to the rural counties and forfeited significant federal funds. The administration should have had a plan in place before torpedoing the Red Line."
Rahn told city officials on Monday during a discussion on public transit in Baltimore that the state would relinquish a $900 million federal grant that had been awarded to the Red Line project.
Baltimore County would get an additional $400 million for local roads over the next six years under Hogan's proposal to reallocate state highway user revenues to local jurisdictions, Rahn said, as well as $1.5 billion of state funds for transit upgrades, including 90 new rail cars and a new bus maintenance facility.
Hogan called the Red Line a "boondoggle" when he announced its cancellation.
"We're not opposed to mass transit, but we do oppose wasteful and irresponsible spending on poorly conceived projects that waste taxpayers' money," he said. "In reducing costs here, hundreds of millions of dollars will become available for other important projects."
