Word: mta
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Dever program for obliterating the MTA deficit in 1949 has two divisions. Six million dollars, according to his plan, can be saved yearly by refinancing the bond issues and modernizing the bookkeeping system. The remainder, some $5,000,000, must be paid off by some form of public levy...
...present there is a bill before the State legislature providing for a change in the depreciation system and the recall of the Metropolitan District Obligation bond issue. The same bill would transfer the ownership of all transit structures (subways, elevated lines) from the various cities and towns to the MTA. In addition, Dever has proposed that the MTA, since it is now completely State owned, be relieved of all State taxes...
...public levy problem, however, is not so easily solved. Since 1918, the cities and towns through which the El ran absorbed the yearly deficit. But these lesses had been reasonable; the towns could pay them off without too much difficulty. Now the towns cannot cover the MTA excess expenses without raising their own property tax rates. Consequently, they have rebelled against the old system...
Dever has offered two methods for reallocating the deficits but both have met loud protest from the groups who will have to pay. First, he wanted the State legislature to determine that the MTA lines and the subways were "highways" and, as such, were to be maintained by the receipts from gasoline and other automotive taxes. The car owners objected to this plan; they argued that persons who paid a gas tax were the least likely to use the MTA. And this program was disregarded entirely early this year, when the State Supreme Court ruled such action illegal...
When the gas tax solution fell through, the governor proposed his second alternative--the absorption of 12 1/2 percent of the annual loss by 14 "fringe" communities that do not actually have the MTA service but whose residents frequently use the MTA system. But these towns fail to see why they should have to pay such a percentage if the rest of New England, which certainly benefits from the MTA, has to pay nothing. Besides that, the metropolitan cities and towns will still have to cover 87 1/2 percent of the losses...