Rep. John Ley - Is TriMet heading toward financial collapse?

TriMet is cutting hundreds of positions as the agency struggles with a growing budget deficit, falling ridership, and declining fare revenue. Can Portland’s public transit system recover or is the financial situation becoming unsustainable?

John Ley is a Washington state representative for District 18. He joins the show to discuss TriMet’s proposed layoffs, the broader challenges facing public transit systems in the Pacific Northwest, and whether rising costs, remote work, and declining ridership are pushing mass transit toward a breaking point.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome back to the Lars Larson Show. It's a pleasure to be with you, and I'm glad to get to your phone calls and emails in a moment. And I want to talk to our friend Representative John Lee, District 18 Physician 2 about TriMed. But John, would you mind? I want to just take 60 seconds to say something there. This roundtable meeting at the White House about fraud in federal social service programs. So all the Medicaid fraud that you heard about in Minnesota, all the early learning center fraud in Minnesota, they're now estimating that if all the fraud could be eliminated from all these welfare programs, we could literally balance the budget. That is the size of the fraud. But the the crime is that, John, Attorneys General, who should be on the front lines of fighting that crime, do you know, do you think the Attorney General of Oregon or Washington attended the meeting at the White House?

SPEAKER_01 1:01

Sadly, no, my friend, and it's an outrage, but I'm not surprised. The last number of years, they've spent more time and energy and people's money fighting against President Trump than fighting to protect the taxpayers of Oregon or Washington.

SPEAKER_00 1:19

Well, they're literally saying Vance, in fact, and I have my own questions about Vance, but whatever. He's the vice president. He said there's an old man who died, and he gave this as an example. There was a man paid to come and check in on him, make sure everything was right, do all that was paid by the taxpayers to do that. The guy paid to do that took the money and then didn't do anything, did not check in on the man, and the man died. Now, as far as I'm concerned, John, if you took money and your responsibility was at least check on this man if he's in distress, call an ambulance, call for help, call his family, whatever, help him out, and you don't do it, I think you ought to go to prison.

SPEAKER_01 2:01

Absolutely right. It's a case of government promising to do something, likely overpaying to get it done, and then not following up and guaranteeing that the service that was paid for is actually performed. And it's an outrage and it's a rip-off of the taxpayers and the people needing the help.

SPEAKER_00 2:21

And yet, what does it say when the attorneys general of Oregon and Washington say, we're not going to go because we don't like Donald Trump? Like they're six-year-olds on the playground.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

That's exactly it. It's not what the people hired them or elected them to do. And yet, sadly, once these people in far too many states get elected, they believe they can use their powers to do anything and everything they want. And so much of it has become political instead of actually looking out for the people that they're supposed to protect and defend.

SPEAKER_00 2:57

And well, John, I think where it's overtly political. Would you imagine that if those if the Attorney General Rayfield and Oregon, I can't remember the name in Washington State, but but if those two guys go after the NGOs and the other individuals ripping off the system, do you think they're cutting off some of the lifeblood of political money that's going from the taxpayers to the NGOs and from the NGOs to the DNC?

SPEAKER_01 3:22

Yeah, get guaranteed. And from a different perspective, I'm sure there's an equal uh legitimate accusation about both parties engaging this from the conclusion.

SPEAKER_00 3:34

I don't, you know what, John? I won't go there unless you can give me some evidence. Do you know of many Republicans that run learing centers, say in Seattle, Washington, and take money to care for children and then don't care for any children but cash the check anyway? Because if you know of a Republican who's doing that, I'd be glad to out him on the air. Same thing for Oregon. But I know people want moral equivalents. Well, both sides do it. Tell me where the both side stuff is. Do you know of any NGOs, say the homeless ones that take hundreds of millions of dollars and don't do a damn thing for the people on the streets that are run by Republicans or conservatives? Does Brian Haywood have an outfit that runs an NGO? Because I don't know about it. Maybe you do, but John, I don't think it's equal on both sides of the aisle.

SPEAKER_01 4:20

Oh, I I I'm sure it's not equal whatsoever. And in Oregon and Washington, we are so blue and have been controlled by a single party for the last 20, 30, 40 years. Overwhelmingly, the uh system, quote unquote, that uses these NGOs is favored and controlled by the unions and the Democrat Party.

SPEAKER_00 4:42

Okay, let's go to TriMet. As you pointed out, TriMet is cutting 170 jobs, and people say, Oh my God, but they've got a $224 million deficit, and cutting all those jobs is only going to cut a quarter of that.

SPEAKER_01 4:57

Yeah, TriMet's been out of control for a decade or more. Their ridership peaked back in 2012, and yet they keep expanding their costs. Um looking back over the last decade, they've given employees 37% in pay raises. Um, the reckoning should have happened with the pandemic lockdowns, but as we know, the federal government and the state government stepped in and TriMet got $670 million in COVID relief money that allowed them to avoid making painful cuts that were necessary to try and keep their costs in line. And instead, they've actually increased their costs every single year. And it's to the point that now TriMet ought to be in bankruptcy and they're finally having to make cuts. But the cuts that they're talking about are nowhere near enough to actually put their fiscal house in order.

SPEAKER_00 5:56

Well, in fact, John, if you were to, and you I I would expect you'd be the guy who would have done this because you follow this issue a lot more closely than me. But if if cutting 170, that's 400 positions, sought to be a limited, but 140 were already vacant, uh, and the union workers will be eligible to return to prior union positions. So you got the unions in this too. But if it if it only cut a quarter of the money they need to cut, if they were to cut, say, 600 workers, that would take it down by enough to fill the gap. But at that point, you'd have an agency that doesn't really have any employees, wouldn't you?

SPEAKER_01 6:31

Well, the i it's a good start, and the pro one of the problems is TriMed is bloated with administrative staff. And so I I would look to cut two-thirds of the staff that are needed from their administration and their overhead that way. Number one, number two, they ought to be looking, their core mission is transit. Well, the best, most flexible transit service is bus service. So they could cut the West Rail project, they could cut a bunch of the light rail and trim LIMET TriMet down to a point where they actually could provide reasonable service for the people in the Portland metro area at an affordable cost. But the board of directors, all most all appointed by the governor, uh refuse to make those hard decisions and force the discussion onto what can the people afford and what is the best, most affordable service we can provide.

SPEAKER_00 7:32

So they're just going to keep on doing what they're doing, try to keep the wheels on the bus turning, but at the end of the day, they're they're financially broke. They're bankrupt. Yes. Except the wheels haven't stopped turning yet.

SPEAKER_01 7:45

No, and and sadly, another frustrating part is they're wanting to spend $350 million on their 82nd Avenue bus rapid transit system that's going to eliminate a lane of traffic in each direction for cars.

SPEAKER_00 7:58

And it's going to jam up traffic forever. That is Representative John Lee. He represents District 18 position two. John, thanks very much. Back in a moment, you got the Lars Larson show. I want to talk about Los Angeles and a solution for the homeless.