Metro faces huge budget deficit; King County Executive proposes plan to close the gap

King County Metro Transit is facing a budget deficit projected at $500 million through 2013, and King County Executive Kurt Triplett on Aug. 6 proposed a 9-point budget action plan to close the gap while preserving as much bus service as possible. read the Executive's news release

Metro’s largest source of revenue is receipts from the nine-tenths-of-a-cent sales tax. Because of the global economic slump, that revenue stream is down dramatically. Metro faces a projected $213 million deficit for the 2010-2011 biennium. Economic models project that the earliest Metro Transit’s sales tax revenue might begin to rebound is 2014.

Metro's budget deficit is not a short-term, two year problem that can be solved with stop-gap measures, but at least a $500 million deficit over the next four years that continues to grow beyond that time frame.

Executive Triplett's action plan is intended to erase Metro's budget deficit, balance the budget and preserve as much service as possible. Steps in the plan are to defer planned bus-service expansion (except RapidRide and approved Service Partnership agreements), make capital program cuts, make other non-service-related cuts, raise new revenue through a property tax swap, tap into operating reserves, increase fares by 25 cents in 2011 (in addition to a planned 25-cent fare increase in 2010), use fleet-replacement reserves to help stabilize the revenue base, pursue opportunities to gain operating efficiencies that a performance audit is expected to identify, and reduce bus service by roughly nine percent systemwide over the next two years.

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