On Friday, we got an earful from several members of the Tucson City Council who were upset about our coverage of their budget meeting — specifically the roughly 100 words we spent on fare-free transit.
This isn’t a mea culpa.
We still think Councilwoman Nikki Lee’s defeated motion to “develop a long-term strategy to improve the financial sustainability of Tucson’s transit system,” eventually leads to a formal vote on whether to bring back bus fares.
But after rewatching the meeting, it’s clear the moment deserved a deeper dive.
To be clear, nothing the council members said during their budget meeting was the final nail in the coffin for either side of the debate over whether Tucson’s pubic transit system should remain free for riders.
As for the motion itself, Lee proposed working with the Regional Transportation Authority to develop “a long-term strategy to improve the financial sustainability of Tucson’s transit system,” while also spending the next 90 days gathering community feedback on fare-free transit.
Lee’s motion received a total of three votes — including support from Councilman Paul Cunningham, who has long wanted to reinstate fares, and Councilwoman Selina Barajas, who has been an advocate for fare-free transit.
The motion failed, but, as we wrote on Friday, “the thin margin should make anyone who cares about fare-free transit a little nervous.”
It’s that line that seems to have annoyed Barajas, who said the vote was simply about taking public feedback.
“My vote on Tuesday was in support of deeper community engagement and greater clarity. The Ward 5 Office has heard from residents with a wide range of perspectives on transit fares and what comes next. Transit riders, bus drivers, businesses, educators, students, and families connected to our public transportation system - all deserve to be heard and I will continue to center community voices in my decision making,” Barajas said.
Taking feedback from the public only leads to one realistic conclusion — a vote in the future on fare-free transit in Tucson. It would be weird to get all that public comment and just stick it in a drawer somewhere.
Plus, we’ll note that the city is plugging its $44 million budget hole for FY27 with $39 million in one-time solutions.
They can’t, for example, keep raising parking fees every year.
Fare-free transit has been a persistent pressure point in Tucson’s budget conversations for years, and, until that vote, the dividing lines have been pretty clearly drawn — two votes to reinstate fares, five votes to keep them free.
Here’s what Barajas — who was elected in November — said about her decision to side with the charge-fares crowd.
“We do owe it to our community to deliver a transit system that truly serves everyone. And it must be reliable, safe and financially stable. Without a consistent funding strategy, service quality declines, safety concerns grow, and the very people who rely on transit the most are impacted,” Barajas said.
Now, there may be a lot of ways to “improve the financial sustainability of Tucson’s transit system.”
But the obvious one that the council has been debating for years would be making people pay to use it again.
That point wasn’t lost on Vice Mayor Lane Santa Cruz, who argued Lee’s motion was just a backdoor way to achieve her goal of reinstating fares.
“I think it’s disingenuous coming from a council member (Lee) who has consistently said that they’re against fare-free transit and that they wouldn’t vote for a budget that continued to have fare free,” Santa Cruz said.
Councilwoman Miranda Schubert, who voted against the motion, pushed back on an argument from proponents of re-introducing fares that bringing them back would generate a meaningful revenue stream.
The latest figure touted by city officials has been that reinstating fares would bring in $8.5 million per year, although this figure counts on reverting to the fare model last used by the city before the COVID pandemic.
Schubert pointed to a recent study that suggests as many as 71% of current riders would qualify for reduced or free fares, depending on who the city decides is eligible — a dynamic that could significantly blunt any projected revenue gains.
“So frankly, just to be candid, I think it’s a waste of time to continue to threaten to reinstate fares when we know that 71% of the users of the system qualify as low income,” Schubert said. “Having a universally accessible transit system should be celebrated and also, properly marketed. That’s actually never happened. We haven’t really given our system a chance to fully express the potential of being fare free.”
Mayor Regina Romero noted that with the passage of RTA Next, the city will be getting millions more in funding for mass transit security.
The city spent $68 million in the last fiscal year for mass transit — which includes other transit services like Sun Van — and is projected to spend roughly $63 million in the current fiscal cycle.
And Romero offered up a somewhat fresh solution: She wants the RTA to re-negotiate intergovernmental agreements with Oro Valley, Sahuarita, Pima County and Marana, saying the city lost as much as $2 million annually in transit-related credits.
“We really need to go back to the table … to redo the intergovernmental agreements that we have with them to really clarify and clean up that imbalance of the city of Tucson having to carry those funds for other jurisdictions,” Romero said.
The mayor is also optimistic that the city could receive as much as $2.5 million a year for mass transit safety from the recently passed extension of the RTA, but those funds still require a vote at a future RTA meeting.
At the end of the day, that’s still less than 20% of what some people on the council think Tucson could raise by simply reinstating fares.
For what it’s worth, we like the idea of Tucson providing free public transit, assuming there’s a way to pay for it. And there could be a clever solution that both keeps fares free and doesn’t simply drain the city’s already strained general fund. But we haven’t seen it yet.
And that’s the real problem with free transit: Tucson paid for free bus rides with COVID relief funds back when the city was awash in that federal money. And we never really figured out a long-term solution on how to pay for it without that infusion of federal funds.
Although it’s very possible that part of the solution might be a regional one, a steady influx of cash from the RTA.
So while Lee’s motion failed, perhaps Barajas’ decision to support that motion may actually be a good sign for fare-free transit.
Because if our leaders don’t have the guts to say we can’t afford it anymore — or the skill to figure out a way that we can afford it — free transit will continue to be up for debate every time the city hits a budget crunch.
Alma vs. Democrats: Democrats in Legislative District 20 will decide tonight whether to censure their Democratic state Rep. Alma Hernandez. The resolution that’s up for a vote in Hernandez’s home district states Hernandez “expressed support for policy objectives aligned with former President Donald Trump’s ‘Project 2025’” and other actions that don’t align to Democratic Party principles. But watch for fireworks, as we’re told that Hernandez is prepared to fight the allegations at tonight’s meeting.
Don’t fight the pope: Latino Catholics, who have long sided with the Republican Party over its stance on abortion, may be a difficult demographic for Republicans to win this year after President Donald Trump started beefing with and trash talking Pope Leo XIV, the New York Times’ Jennifer Media reports from the St. Francis de Sales Roman Catholic Parish in Tucson. And that could spell trouble for Southern Arizona Republican Congressman Juan Ciscomani, an evangelical Christian who narrowly won his last election while emphasizing his biography as a Mexican immigrant and a devoted father of six children, Medina writes.
“It is not just a very serious lack of respect — it is a mortal sin,” Tucson Catholic Maria Ramos told the Times.
Cancel him, too: Kemper Marley, the agriculture and liquor magnate widely suspected of (but never charged with) ordering a hit on journalist Don Bolles back in 1976, still has his name on an agricultural research building at the University of Arizona, the Daily Star’s Tim Steller notes. As the UA is removing the name Cesar Chavez, who was also never charged or convicted of the sexual assault crimes he now stands accused of, it should consider taking Marley’s name down, too, Steller argues. The difference between the two building names, however, is Marley’s family paid $6 million to get his name on that building, as they have done with other buildings across the state.
“(I)f that's the basis we're judging building names on, then we should also reconsider the name of the Kemper Marley building. The accusations were never proven, but they are also well-documented and relatively likely to be true,” Steller writes.
Independent local journalism relies on your support, not support from the Marley family. Please consider upgrading to a paid subscription today!
A bunch of comics walk into city hall: Earlier this month, we noted that Bisbee stand-up comedian Doug Stanhope showed up at the City Council meeting to deliver his comedy routine after the town’s comedy club, Chuckleheads, closed. Well, that idea took off, and now more displaced local comics are following suit, the Herald/Review’s Matt Hickman reports, with a roundup/critique of their sets.
War of opeds: Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly penned an oped in the Wall Street Journal responding to the Journal’s editorial board’s oped about Kelly’s original oped in the Republic earlier this month arguing against a national school voucher plan. In the original oped, Kelly argued vouchers are bankrupting Arizona. The Journal’s editorial board then accused him of pandering to the teachers’ unions. Then on Sunday, Kelly shot back, arguing “public schools across the country will pay a price” if states adopt the national voucher model.
Here are the top events this week for those who want a front-row seat to local politics.
The Democrats of Greater Tucson meet virtually at noon today. The guest speaker is Steve Huffman, the Community Relations Manager for the Pima Association of Governments. (Register here)
The Tucson Unified School District Government Board will meet on Tuesday at 4 p.m. at 5145 E. 5th Street. (Here’s the agenda and live stream)
The Pima County Republican Club meets on Tuesdays at 11:30 a.m. at The Kettle just west of I-10 on 22nd St.
We’re moderating a debate for the GOP candidates for state Senate in LD17 on Thursday as part of our collaboration with the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission. Tune in live on Youtube at 6 p.m., or catch the recording any time on Clean Elections’ Youtube page.
There a few protests planned locally on Friday as part of nationwide May Day rallies. The big one is at El Presidio Plaza at 10 a.m.
Did we miss an event? Email Joe to get it on our radar.
Please don’t tell Twitter personality William Coffin (yes, we know it’s a pseudonym) that we’ve always had a big professional crush on Thelma Johnson. (Also, we assume, a pseudonym.)
Seriously, we privately mourned when she left Twitter and/or died that one time.
And now, she’s apparently visiting Tucson.
Send us a DM, Thelma, and we’ll buy you the best damn ice tea in the Old Pueblo.