Steering Programs Requires Care, Too

Under the best of circumstances public transit is an easy target for shortsighted critics who contend that subsidizing partially empty buses is a waste of tax dollars.

So the Spokane Transit Authority had its hands full fending off attack even before a $61,000 discrepancy appeared in the van pool program known as Rideshare.

Give STA credit for facing the embarrassing situation responsibly. Once transit officials realized revenues from the program were short an average of nearly $2,000 a month over the past three years, they called in the state auditor’s office for more specialized scrutiny.

In STA’s $33 million annual budget, $61,000 isn’t all that conspicuous but it is nearly 20 percent of the Rideshare revenues over the three years involved.

It wasn’t a matter of theft, the state auditor has concluded, just sloppy oversight.

Under Rideshare, STA provides a van and contracts with a private individual to drive, collect fares and submit the receipts - 45.3 cents a mile - to STA. That amount is estimated to cover depreciation, operation and upkeep of the vehicles. But for 1997, 1998 and most of 1999, no one was making sure the amounts remitted matched the mileage driven. Some drivers misunderstood the rules and several were sporadic about submitting payments and reports.

Nobody was looking over their shoulders.

The foul-up might still be undetected if an STA maintenance worker hadn’t found several uncashed personal checks in a van last September.

As a result of the incident, the Rideshare coordinator was forced to resign in December and STA has reorganized administration of the program to assure more accountability.

Those steps are reasonable, but they don’t explain how the transit system could have left a program so vulnerable in the first place.

If the coordinator wasn’t doing her job, the problem should have been caught by backstops built into the system, not by raw luck.

An effective transit system is an asset to a city. It reduces traffic congestion and pollution. By reducing the number of cars on the streets it takes pressure off parking, not to mention drivers’ nerves, and makes affordable transportation available to youth, senior citizen and low-income populations.

To do all that effectively it needs not only the public’s subsidy but also its good will - something it can’t earn without demonstrating efficient management.