Transit

Two-thousand fourteen was a banner year for our movement, hands down. The first move to require standardized subsidy-cost reporting! The first half of a legally-binding two-state cease fire deal! The first state ban on tax-break commissions! A big surge found in state disclosure of subsidies! Big improvements to our Subsidy Tracker, enabling first-ever mash-ups!

For Release Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Contact: Greg LeRoy 202-232-1616 x 211

“Bosses for Buses”
Study: Employer Support for Transit is Surging Locally but Fractured Nationally

Responding to the nation’s public transportation crisis, the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) and Good Jobs First (GJF) announced today the launch of Americans for Transi

Good Jobs First today published a grassroots organizing manual for riders of public transportation seeking to preserve and improve transit service.

The April 1 deadline for the Bronx Parking Development Corporation to get its act together is no prank. Thanks to a glut of parking space at the new – subsidized to the hilt - Yankee Stadium, the parking garages, also subsidized to the hilt, have gone so unused the owners are struggling to pay its bondholders. It was widely reported that the $237 million in private activity bonds to finance the garage were going to default at the end of next week. However, today Juan Gonzalez at the Daily News reports that directors at the firm agreed to dip into its debt reserves (again) to pay the bondholders as well changes to its operations, like getting approval for expenses from an appointee chosen by the bondholders.
 
We can’t say New Yorkers didn’t see this coming.

Largely lost in the partisan bickering over the stimulus has been the law's enormous positive impact on improving government transparency. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) is not just the most transparent federal spending bill in U.S. history—the changes it pioneered will endure even after the stimulus winds down.

Last week the airline JetBlue

Last month, the City of Chicago offered a substantial tax increment finance (TIF) subsidy of $25 million to an ailing United Airlines (UAL) if it promised to relocate its operations center to the Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower).

Chicago-area advocates of more sensible growth and land-use policies got a boost this week when Chicago Tribune columnist John McCarron urged the region’s public officials to see one upside of the painful economic crisis: a chance to put the region’s “suburban sprawl machine” into reverse.

In California, an historic effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from passenger vehicles by curbing sprawl will likely