An effort to revive the conversation on the best way to fund public transit faces opposition from one of Valley Regional Transit’s funders: Ada County.
In January, the VRT board, which includes representatives from cities and counties in its service area, and other stakeholders, approved a plan to ask state lawmakers for taxing authority.
The change would allow transit agencies to ask voters to pass funding levies or bonds. That funding model could replace what currently comes from county and city coffers.
“The idea is to begin the discussion now, and hopefully by next year have it ripe enough that we can begin more active discussion on it,” said VRT CEO Elaine Clegg at the Jan. 5 VRT Board of Directors meeting this year.
Public transit in Idaho doesn’t receive state funding. Agencies rely on voluntary contributions from the communities they serve for most of their budget.
VRT’s current operational budget is about $30 million. Roughly half of that comes from local cities and Ada County, but Boise funds the lion’s share. Other revenue comes from federal grants, rider fares and advertising revenue.
Capital projects usually add another $5-$10 million to the budget, but this year that ballooned to nearly $40 million from one-time federal grants and carryover from the Main Street Station project in downtown Boise.
Clegg said they do the best they can with that funding, but, “we're not getting enough to provide the kind of service that we'd like to.”
Canyon County and many of its smaller cities have cut contributions to zero, and the city of Eagle reduced its contribution in 2024. Those cuts meant VRT had to reduce service. Overall ridership is down, but other service changes have led to more riders on certain routes, and on-demand ridership continues to increase.
“We have not been able to grow with growth,” Clegg said. ”Even as the valley has doubled population, we have about the same amount of services.”
The proposal to become a taxing district – like emergency medical service or mosquito abatement – included draft legislation, and while VRT’s board approved the motion to move forward, it wasn’t unanimous. Strong pushback came from Ada County Commissioner, and VRT Executive Board member, Tom Dayley.
“I'm uncomfortable with having precise language of legislation,” Dayley told fellow board members.
He’d rather start the process with general conversations and fewer specifics, Dayley told Boise State Public Radio. Lawmakers see specifics, he said, and they start thinking through the immediate budget impact. He also sees the end result of VRT’s proposal as new property taxes, an unpopular ask, especially in an election year for state lawmakers.
Just days after the VRT board meeting, Ada County Commissioners unanimously approved a resolution formally opposing VRT’s proposal. Commissioner Ryan Davidson, also a VRT Board member, said he supports the public transit the county has now, but doesn’t see a reason to keep increasing funding.
“We're always presented with this proposal in various different forms, ‘well, if we just put a lot more money into the bus system, more people will ride it.’ And that obviously is not something that really can be proved,” Davidson said at the commissioner’s Jan. 13 meeting.
Canyon County Commissioner Zach Brooks made the same argument. He said if cities in his county want public transportation, they’re going to have to pay for it. Asking Canyon County homeowners to fund a new property tax for transit would go down in flames, he said, adding that the bulk of the county is just too rural to use or support public transit. And Brooks disagreed with the notion that public entities should bear the financial risks of, ‘if you build it they will come.’
Clegg says transit advocates have been trying to break out of that circular argument for years.
“It's really hard to convince people that if you do provide more service, that you'll attract more riders,” she said. “There's plenty of evidence from other portions of our region that, in fact, that is true.”
She identified metro areas like Reno, Nevada, and Spokane, Washington as communities similar to Boise with far more robust public transit systems. Bringing VRT’s budget in line with those areas, Clegg told the VRT Board, would require about tripling the agency’s current public funding.
Clegg said she was caught off guard by Ada County’s resolution against the VRT proposal. She thinks the county misrepresented the potential cost of property taxes VRT could impose if it were granted taxing authority.
The county’s resolution in opposition specifically called out the maximum taxing rate from VRT’s proposal. Clegg said the rate listed in the draft legislation is about 10 times VRT’s current budget, and while the agency would intend to ask voters for more funding than they have now, it wouldn’t come close to the maximum rate identified in the proposal. But levy rate calculations need headroom, because if property values decrease, the rate must increase to generate the same amount of revenue.
Dayley said he likes the accountability in public transit’s current funding structure, but he is open to discussing giving transit agencies taxing authority. He just disagrees with the way VRT is doing it.
“For us just to put a dollar amount in there, a fixed amount in there as our beginning discussion point, that's a whole different ballgame.”
He said he would appreciate more public feedback on the issue of funding public transit.
Clegg isn’t sure where else to start. She knows it’s an uphill battle, and even if VRT gets taxing authority, it would then have to convince two-thirds of voters to approve a new tax, some of the same voters in the Treasure Valley who have voted down funding for public schools and first responders in recent elections.
“I certainly understand people's lack of support for paying more taxes. That's kind of endemic in our society. I also understand, because I hear it every day, their desire to have more services. So somehow we're going to have to square that. I don't know exactly how, except to have this conversation,” she said.
Some state lawmakers will hear VRT’s pitch Thursday; it’s Idaho transit day at the statehouse, an event from 9-1 in the Lincoln Auditorium hosted by the Community Transportation Association of Idaho.
