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Fragile TransLink agreements in pieces after Clark comments on audit

March 26th, 2012 · 57 Comments

Catching up on last week’s events, the story of the week was the confusion after Premier Christy Clark didn’t just announce an audit of TransLink — that was welcomed by mayors — but went on to say that she would no way allow a vehicle levy or other “new tax” to pay for transit projects.

(Realize this is all seems ancient as we now are witnessing the John van Dongen defection unroll, but for the record, I’m posting this anyway.)

The most recent fallout ash that has rained down is the news that mayors will take a look at whether they can cancel all transit expansions in the current “Moving Forward” plan if they are forced to pay for it through a property tax.

I started asking about this Friday because I remembered that mayors had asked staff to lay out for them, at a TransLink mayors’ council meeting last fall, what would happen if some part of the money for Moving Forward didn’t come through. They wanted to be assured that they wouldn’t be stuck with projects half-completed. Staff at the time reassured them that projects would be structured in a way that they could be cancelled if expected waves of new money didn’t appear.

Although they’re checking into the legalities, my memory of that meeting makes me think it must be possible to cancel some of the projects.

And, just to catch up, here are the two previous stories I wrote prior to today’s, as the TransLink-audit-vehicle levy weirdness unfolded.

Saturday’s story here and Friday’s story here. (Don’t be put off by the similar headlines on the two stories. They really are very different.)

 

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  • MB

    Moreover, Bill

    Meanwhile, what about jobs? I have to admit that I started laughing when I saw The Wall Street Journal offering North Dakota as a role model. Yes, the oil boom there has pushed unemployment down to 3.2 percent, but that’s only possible because the whole state has fewer residents than metropolitan Albany — so few residents that adding a few thousand jobs in the state’s extractive sector is a really big deal. The comparable-sized fracking boom in Pennsylvania has had hardly any effect on the state’s overall employment picture, because, in the end, not that many jobs are involved.

    And this tells us that giving the oil companies carte blanche isn’t a serious jobs program. Put it this way: Employment in oil and gas extraction has risen more than 50 percent since the middle of the last decade, but that amounts to only 70,000 jobs, around one-twentieth of 1 percent of total U.S. employment. So the idea that drill, baby, drill can cure our jobs deficit is basically a joke.

    Why, then, are Republicans pretending otherwise? Part of the answer is that the party is rewarding its benefactors: the oil and gas industry doesn’t create many jobs, but it does spend a lot of money on lobbying and campaign contributions. The rest of the answer is simply the fact that conservatives have no other job-creation ideas to offer.

    And intellectual bankruptcy, I’m sorry to say, is a problem that no amount of drilling and fracking can solve.

    Paul Krugman, NY Times, march 15, 2012.

  • spartikus

    In 1972 the Club of Rome predicted we would exhaust our natural resources in the short term, and in particular, oil in less than 10 years.

    Speak of the devil. From the newswires just yesterday:

    A new study from researchers at MIT and produced for an international think tank, says that the world could suffer from “global economic collapse” and “precipitous population decline” if people continue to consume the world’s resources at the current pace.

    Smithsonian Magazine writes that Australian physicist Graham Turner says “the world is on track for disaster” and that current evidence coincides with a famous, and in some quarters, infamous, academic report from 1972 entitled, “The Limits to Growth.”

    Produced for a group called The Club of Rome, the study’s researchers created a computing model to forecast different scenarios based on the current models of population growth and global resource consumption. The study also took into account different levels of agricultural productivity, birth control and environmental protection efforts. Twelve million copies of the report were produced and distributed in 37 different languages.

    Most of the computer scenarios found population and economic growth continuing at a steady rate until about 2030. But without “drastic measures for environmental protection,” the scenarios predict the likelihood of a population and economic crash.

  • MB

    I think you need to be a little more current than 40-year old suppositions, technology and political economy, Bill.

    Today people are grasping with real, not theoetical resource supply and demand issues. Is there a law against using our free will to question business-as-usual? Isn’t there a more intelligent response for its defenders than mocking the questioners? To some of us, mockery, anger and disbelief are the first few stages of eventual realization and acceptance. If only that process would speed up to building alternatives before we hit $3/litre and take a serious economic hit.

    I haven’t even touched on something called “net energy.” Let’s just say that your ‘unlimited’ shale oil + gas (as well as deep sea and oil sands products) are indeed more limited and expensive than you care to admit. The US military, German miltary, Exxon, Shell, the IEA and a host of others say so. These are not exactly public sector organizations filled with radical eco-fascists.

    What this means locally is that we need TransLink to be better funded by senior governments, that we need to tie land use planning to transit, that we need to re-examine our urban design and inter-city and international transportation precepts, and that we need to stop ignoring real resource supply and demand issues before they become serious problems.

  • MB

    Hey Sparti, you’re hard wired to your news port, aren’t you?

    I take the Club of Rome as the first warning, and low and behold it’s coming to pass. Too bad the article contains hot words like “collapse” and “disaster.” These make conservative’s eyes glaze over.

    It’s been scientifically proven that the radical conservative mind set suffers from Low Effort Thought (seriously!) and it is common to reach simplistic conclusions on complex Big Issues in these circles, like resource depletion and climate change.

    I finally have an explanation for the loony tunes comments made by the religious right that permeates the Republican party.

    And also for some of the policies and statements made over the years by Reformers and Harper conservatives, some of which are as repulsive as a Harper sex tape.

  • Bill

    MB, I thought your motivation for leaving the competitive private sector after 21 years was to seek the less stressful life of a public servant – better pension with less hassle. It turns out you only want to do your bit to save mankind from self destructing. My apologies.

    On a more positive note, seems like those polar bears are doing just fine based on a higher census than expected. And the solar panel industry in Germany is closing up shop as a result of the ending of subsidies there. And the price of carbon credits in Europe are hitting new lows – can it just be a matter of time before they close like the Chicago exchange did last year? Each day the news just keeps getting better.

  • MB

    I see you prefer yet another deflection, Bill.

    My personal motivations about anything are not up for discussion on this blog.

    On the other hand, I wish you and the Fabula mob a great long weekend.

  • spartikus

    Hey Sparti, you’re hard wired to your news port, aren’t you?

    Some say it’s unnatural.

    Others say Netvibes is the RSS reader that packs the most information into the least amount of screen real estate. #tradesecrets

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