The Orange County Transportation Authority will have to cut bus service by at least another 150,000 service hours – affecting more than 20 routes – in September if the state eliminates a sales tax on gasoline. (Photo by Erik Holmes)

ORANGE – Bus service in Orange County will likely take another hit beyond the 150,000 service-hour reduction already scheduled in March, according to the county’s transit boss.

Will Kempton, Orange County Transportation Authority CEO, said another service cut in September of at least 150,000 hours will be necessary if the state carries out a proposal by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to end the transportation sales tax on gasoline, an important funding source for local transit.

“We cannot live outside of our means, so we will be forced to make a tough choice here in the next couple months,” Kempton said.

If an additional 150,000 service hours were cut, it would reduce the frequency and number of buses on more than 20 bus routes throughout the county. It would bring to 28 percent the decrease in county bus service since its peak of 1.9 million hours in 2008.

A service reduction also would likely require OCTA to lay off more employees, Kempton said.

He said a decision on a possible September cut is likely in March or April, well before the state budget process is complete and any transportation funding cuts are final.

“The longer we delay … the more we’re going to have to cut because we’re incurring costs that we literally can’t afford as we go into the next fiscal year,” he said.

Schwarzenegger’s budget proposal, released in January, calls for the state sales tax on gasoline – which legally must be used to fund local transportation – to be replaced by an excise tax on gasoline, which would instead go toward shoring up the nearly $20 billion shortfall in the state budget. Transit advocates have called the proposal an end-run around the legal requirement that gas tax revenues go to local transportation.

Statewide, local transit agencies would lose an estimated $1.6 billion. The $5.6 million OCTA’s bus operations received in fiscal 2009-2010 from the gas tax amount to about 3 percent of the system’s operating budget; in previous years, the tax made up about 10 percent of the transit budget.

Combined with sharply declining sales tax revenue – the largest contributor to OCTA’s bus budget – and declining ridership, elimination of the gas tax would require further cuts to bus service in O.C.

“The state goes and pulls the rug out from under us with these dollars that local agencies have come to count on that provide operating assistance for transit,” Kempton said. “This is not good news for transit at all. … The long term implications are just huge.”

A service cut in September would be the fourth such reduction since the beginning of 2009.

The agency cut 133,000 hours last March, 100,000 hours in September and 150,000 hours in November.

Kempton said he is hopeful – but not necessarily optimistic – that state lawmakers will shoot down Schwarzenegger’s proposal and restore transit funding.  Kempton is trying to delay for as long as possible the decision on whether to cut bus service further, hoping the political tides will turn against elimination of the gas tax. There has been some opposition to the idea from lawmakers, he noted.

But Moira Topp, a lobbyist who represents OCTA in Sacramento, told the OCTA board of directors Jan. 25 that Schwarzenegger’s proposal likely will prevail because of the state government’s dire financial straits.

“The sentiment … has been, ‘We’ve already made a decision [to cut] transit, and we will take the money,’” she said.

Kempton said the repeated service reductions are beginning to take a toll on the OC community. He noted that transit cuts disproportionately affect lower-wage workers who depend on the bus system to get to work, shop for groceries and take their children to the doctor.

“That’s a social impact as far as I’m concerned,” he said. “If you’re focused on trying to provide the safety network and protect all of these social services, transit if one of those services.”