By Heather Curtis
WMAL.com
WASHINGTON — (WMAL) The chair of Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s board Jack Evans said D.C. will double its contribution to Metro in the next fiscal year so the transit system doesn’t have to raise fares, cut service and layoff employees, but that promise comes with a caveat: Maryland and Virginia would also have to double their subsidies.
To close a nearly $300 million budget gap in FY18, WMATA’s General Manager Paul Wiedefeld proposed increasing jurisdictional subsidies to WMATA by $130 million or 15 percent more than FY17. He also called for raising peak fares by a dime, off-peak fares by a quarter, increasing the amount of time between trains, and getting rid of a total of 1,000 positions.
Evans told the finance committee during a meeting Thursday D.C. would put in $94 million instead of the $47 million in Wiedefeld’s proposed budget. He said the mayor and city council are in favor of doing what they can to avoid Metro cuts but admitted he hadn’t asked the mayor if she would get behind doubling the city’s contribution to the transit system.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan and Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe have already said they won’t give WMATA more money until reliability and safety improve.
Evans and Wiedefeld gave different answers when asked what would happen if Maryland and Virginia refused to give WMATA more money.
“If you don’t have a budget, you don’t have money, July 1 next year, the fiscal year ends June 30, then you’re out of luck, and you don’t run the system,” Evans told WMAL Wednesday.
“I just put out the budget, lets let this work through,” Wiedefeld said at a press conference Thursday.
Wiedefeld will put out his final budget proposal in December. A public hearing is tentatively scheduled for the week of Jan. 30. A final budget will be adopted in March.
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