Thanks to you raising your voice, the budget draft is here, and it includes transit funding! But there's still more to be done. |
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Thanks to thousands of people making calls and sending emails, additional essential transit funding is in the draft state budget that was released yesterday by state legislators in the Senate and Assembly. For the first time, the draft includes $1.1b over three years to transit agencies for operations, and restores $2 billion in previously announced cuts to transit capital funding which is proposed to be made flexible for use for transit service. The Senate-Assembly still needs to approve this, and then it will head to the governor's office for his signature. If passed, this would help keep our transit, and our city, moving. It is a huge step in the right direction, but falls short of the total need of $5 billion for transit operations over 5 years, so more funding will be needed. That's why we still need your help. We generated over 10,000 calls in a week to the negotiating legislators and the governor. This major grassroots momentum got us more than we had, which is why we need to use it to keep fighting for what we need. We need you to call Governor Newsom and tell him to sign the bill. Importantly, we also need him and the legislature to provide more funding by using higher-than anticipated federal state highway funds to fund transit service — this way, we can avoid transit cuts. Click here to call Governor Newsom's office and urge him to: -
Approve the budget proposed by the legislature reversing the $2 billion in transit capital cuts and providing $1.1 billion for operations -
Support using one time federal highway funds to further meet transit operations funding needs. If you need more information or talking points, check out Senator Scott Weiner's or SFTR member Cyrus Hall's helpful Twitter threads. |
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SFTR and its members are grateful to our leaders and champions of transit. Please join us in saying a huge thank you to the people who negotiated this deal, including: Senator Scott Wiener, Assemblymember Phil Ting, Senator Nancy Skinner, Senate Speaker Toni Atkins, and Assembly Pro Tem Anthony Rendon. Thank you for listening to and fighting for the needs of riders. |
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