Maryland slams Metro’s ‘black hole,’ ‘obfuscation’

OPINION:

In the 1996 sports business/rom-com “Jerry Maguire,” wide receiver Rod Tidwell tells agent Jerry Maguire, “Show me the money.”

It’s one of the most memorable lines from La-La Land — and it’s the perfect metaphor for public spending by any government entity. Most notably, at this particular junction, the entity is mass transit.

The king of mass transit in the D.C. region is Metro, which operates rail, bus and paratransit systems in Northern Virginia, Maryland and the District. Metro was indeed transportation central for getting the masses to and for the nation’s Fourth of July festivities. If something goes terribly wrong in the nation’s capital, other than the usual Beltway political shenanigans, the world knows.

Questionable sucking sounds coming from the public troth are a different matters, however.

Sure criminal affronts such as public corruption and outright fraud grab headlines, as do allegations of influence peddling, which former Metro Board chairman Jack Evans currently faces.

Yet, Mr. Evans’ clouds aside, Metro faces a deeper problem.

The governor of Maryland, who’s responsible for pouring his state’s share of Metro funding into mass transit coffers, has made an offer Metro officials and regional leaders can’t afford to refuse.

On July 1, Maryland, like D.C. and Virginia governments, was due to plunk down $55.59 million in capital funding, one-third of the pot. Maryland didn’t say its cupboards were bare, and it didn’t say it never would pony up the funds to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, or WMATA.

What Gov. Larry Hogan said is “Show us the money.”

“This is the latest unfortunate but necessary step the state of Maryland believes it must take in response to an ongoing pattern of fiscal obfuscation and a lack of cooperation from WMATA,” Maryland Secretary of Transportation Pete Rahn wrote in a letter to the Metro Board of Directors and General Manager Paul Wiedefeld.

The letter claims WMATA authorities have failed to articulately detail how money was spent in the past and how it plans to spend money in the future — and Maryland isn’t going to stand for it.

Federal, D.C. and Virginia should pay close attention to this sentence in particular. “WMATA’s books cannot continue to be a financial black hole, absorbing every dollar it can but providing no information or data that Marylanders expect from public institutions,” Mr. Rahn said.

The words “black hole” and “fiscal obfuscation” are terms generally understood by bus and rail riders who don’t hide behind green eyeshades.

Where money comes from and where it goes is taught in Spending 101. Yet, what Maryland is saying, and quite clearly, is that Metro authorities are simply avoiding speaking truth to numbers.

No government institution should be permitted to get away with such.

If WMATA has scrubbed it books and knows its fiscal books, spreadsheets and spending are in pristine order, then dust them off and hand them over to D.C., Maryland and Virginia authorities, and turn over proof to Democratic and Republican officials’ outstretched hands.

Too often public bureaucrats and their political cover ask for public dollars for a specific (perhaps well-intentioned) purpose, but lack a receipt. It’s called unchecked spending.

Maryland’s governor wants WMATA to prove itself publicly accountable. In other words, “Show us the money.”

⦁ Deborah Simmons can be contacted at dsimmons@washingtontimes.com.