Now he’s concerned!?

Why wasn’t he concerned when the Mayor and County Executive asked him to help back in December?!

Too late Jay. You did nothing to help the people of St. Louis.

how exactly would nixon have done anything back in december? he’d won the election. he was not the governor yet. am i wrong? how daft.

While he couldn’t have done anything concrete in December, it could have and should have been on his first-things-to-do-once-in-office list. He can’t act like this was the first he heard of this!

When gas went over $2 a gallon and eventually up to $4, I really had a hard time getting enough money for gas to conduct my business. Then, with the last 15 months of recession, I have had a hard time remaining in business and had to take on additional debt. I sure hope Jay Nixon can help me out with my transportation costs. I would like to park my vehicle and take public transportation, subsidized by government funding, to get around town to where I need to go. Please, Jay, help us out with government funding of our transportation. There is no bus service in my town. I am forced to provide my own transportation, which cuts into the money I earn from my work. That is not fair. I shouldn’t have to fund my own transportation, at least not all of it. Please have the State of Missouri fund public transportation for all of us so that we will be united in passing new taxes to fund it for all of us. Thank you for understanding our dilemma, to either pay our own way or to have all to pay our own ways.

Here is my two cents Dooley and his lackies let Metro wither at the vine siphoned money from Metro for road projects and labor and promised to work the get out the vote for Metro in November. Thanks Charlie for your lack of help. Now let’s talk about viable candidates to run for County Executive on either side. Dooley is defunct.

That’s OK, I am worried about Jay Nixon and his ability to protect his state from the Socialist Movement from the Federal Government. Maybe we should watch each other?

With all do respects; I think it is time for a FRESH journalist!!! This story is SO stale. The county has spoken, they pay the most tax, and now they have the most reduced service’s. METRO has brought this on themselves, but Mr. Leiser will not present that side of the story.

No wonder, A.P. is replacing the Post-Dispatch as a news media. Mr. Leiser “WILL NOT ASK THE REAL, TOUGH QUESTIONS!”. The state of MISSOURI should with hold all tax monies until METRO fixes it’s problem’s!

lwingo, you always call for Leiser to ask the “tough questions” but never give examples. If you would have taken the time to learn about Metro’s finances, which are ALWAYS available and were on their website for a long time (haven’t checked lately), you would realize what an idiot you are that this is NOT Metro’s fault. They can’t operate on a deficit, they get 20% of the Operating Costs from fares, which is the industry standard. Pretty much the rest of their money comes from Sales Tax Revenue, which HAS NOT kept up with inflation, HAS NOT been enough. Metro did what they could to prevent cuts, such as salary freezes, raising the age of retirement, cutting back on medical benefits, etc. You would much rather complain than learn the facts. Disgusting.

The Governor doesn’t have much to do with the transportation funding in Missouri. The Department of Transportation handles it. The legislature provides funding for the DOT.

The easy answer is to blame Nixon, but why not blame the General Assembly and MODOT and the taxpayers who voted down the tax increase?

They are as responsible as the Governor who has been office for less than three months.

GO GO GOAT DADDY! YOU ROCK. LISTEN UP, COMPLAINING, BLAMING FOOLS. CLEAN YOUR EARS OUT.

The thing that gets me about this story is the fact that Metro is now going to some place to try and bail the program out…the very program that they ran into the ground with mismanagement of money. Believe me, I feel bad for the everyday people this mess has hit the most…it’s not fair to those people one bit. But darn these people that can’t seem to run their companies and just expect us to bail them out. When will all this bailout madness end? I sure wish I could just dial somebody up to help me cover my bills if I was short.

I wish Democrat Sen. Claire McCaskill had been concerned enough about it to have secured an earmark for St. Louis Metro, yet she voted to keep John Murtha’s earmarks in the spending bill. I guess she likes Pennsylvania better than St. Louis. I mean if we have to pay for Pennsylvania’s earmarks, we might as well get some too.

i can smell the political manure thru cyberspace

Jay hates St. Louis. I’ll remember that and encourage all of my neighbors too when his next election comes around.

This guy is as bad as Blunt.

We have no one to blame but City officials and County residents

1. Why do people keep moving further and further from the City center and keep expecting the same public services? They should be forced to pay to build new streets, sewers, electric, and public transportation, themselves. There should be an extra tax to having to extend all of these services the further they move out into the farmland.

2. We should blame City officials for not hiring the right people to see these problems coming down the pipeline and doing nothing about it. Why do we use the same buses that are used in the county? Why don’t we redevelop the streetcar for the City of St. Louis, so we don’t have to compete for fuel that makes more sense used out in the county? Why don’t we use electric streetcars that don’t pollute the air, the same way buses do when they are stopped in traffic and at stoplights, causing the worst asthma rates in the country?

It’s time for the City officials to stand up for their constituents, and it’s time for county residents to pay even more for extending services out to their neighborhoods.

http://stlstreetcar.blogspot.com/

STLStreetcar

I’ve made sure that I’ve read through all of the concerns regarding this article. I don’t believe that METRO just decided to hop on the “Bailout” wagon. This was something in the making last year. The announcements were made about 1 year ago. They weren’t trying the scare tactic at all. This is something that becomes a shame on us all that rely on METRO. We heard the signs, we were warned, and yet we still turned our heads and pretended like we didn’t know what they were talking about in November regarding Proposal M.

I read an article that explains that just about everyone that were responsible for the bad decisions are either gone or on their way out. This isn’t the time to condemn METRO. This is the time to embrace it. They’ve frozen salaries, hiring, shaved many people off of the payroll just to give St. Louis the little bit that they have left. The best that these “hate warriors” can contribute after all of that is more negativity.

I agree with some of the bloggers. If you feel like the reporter wasn’t asking the “Tough Questions”, then he should’ve given an example of what type of question to ask. If you feel like METRO needs to get their house together, take a look at the website that has constantly informed the public of their funding status.

Metro doesn’t deserve to live a life sentence for a handfull of people (Frmr CEO and Boardmembers) that made a bad decision. They’re gone already! It is up to us to pick up the pieces and make it what it should be!

To New St. Louisan…Thank you, Thank you, Thank you. As an employee of Metro, I appreciate your words. There is nothing harder than reading the ridicule for a company that you have given 25 years of service to. I realize there are many opinions to Metro’s recent service cuts, which is evident in the above comments, but now is not the time to point fingers. Now is the time to move forward and find a solution. I have personally witnessed the lay-offs of my fellow co-workers and friends, so reading some of the above comments hurts beyond words. Many of Metro’s employess have sacrifised in theses trouble times (no pay raises in several years, cuts in benifits, etc.), yet we remain steadfast because we believe in public transportation and what it can offer our great city. It is a shame that someone new to St. Louis gets it while the rest remain absorbed in blame.

I have been following this Metro thing for awhile now, and it no longer amazes me as to the uninformed that like to spout their opinions without the tiniest bit of knowledge of what the real truth is.

First of all, Metro is not in trouble for mis-management. Could it have made better choices in some areas, yes. Metro’s problems go beyond the short sighted people who seem to have nothing better to do then bash anyone they feel like, for whatever the reason. Transit has never made money, EVER. Someone suggested that private companies be allowed to take over the lines Metro can no longer support. Let them go for it. There is nothing stopping them. Oh, but wait, for them to be profitable no one could afford to ride them. Public Transit exists for a reason. It performs a function that no private company can. But back to my about Metro’s problems. Metro resources have been going down for years. The feds have lowered what it will fund for many years, and part of that plan was for all funding to end next year. For a time, however, state and local governments were making up the difference in one way or another. Now that has stopped too. What kills me is that people like Tom Sullivan never talk about that. Another thing, The government can fund all the CAPITAL projects they want. Then what? Without operating funds, they just sit unused. And for those of you who don’t know this already, you can’t use CAPITAL funds for Operations, or the other way around. We as St. Louisians, and as Missourians need to decide what we want. Second class cities, or first class ones. Then we need to make sure our voices are heard loud and clear. But please, please make sure you have all the facts first. One last thing, I don’t use Metro, but see it’s benefits. I for one like fewer cars on the roads I drive on.