Senator Jay Costa:  Later today I’m happy to report that we’ll be going to the Senate floor and voting on an anonymous amendment that’s going to address many of the concerns that you have here today.  The dedicated nature of funding will continue in place.  Most importantly, there will not be a fiscal cliff or a transit cliff in eight years, that it’ll be sustainable funding as we go forward for the next several decades.  That is what is important.  That’s what you’ll see take place later today.

I’m very, very happy to report that there is a bipartisan, strong bipartisan effort to make certain that we address not only transit funding, however, but transportation funding as a whole.  The time has come for us to approach this matter for a number of reasons.  First and foremost, with regard to transit as we indicated, we’ve been able to work with our Senate Republican colleagues, Senator John Rafferty and Senator John Wozniak, the two chairmen of the Transportation Committee, as well as Senator Scott Notti and Pileggi and myself and Hughes.  We’ve all been working collectively to make certain that we address the issues you’ve talked about.

And folks, I will tell you the truth is that without your advocacy, without for the past two years fighting to make sure we had proper transit in this commonwealth and specifically in regions of our commonwealth and our counties that we certainly need the ability to let folks get to and from work and to make certain that we have 24/7 coverage because that’s the nature of our workforce today.  Without your advocacy here today and what you’ve done the last couple of years we would not be at the precipice of putting together a transportation bill that’s appropriate that addresses the needs of transit.  We will be doing that in the next two days.

You’ll see a vehicle come out of the senate that’s going to reflect the needs that you all have address.  But let me tell you two things.  One, we need you to support the members who support transit and transportation funding.  But secondly and most importantly, we should not allow transportation funding to be conditioned at all as it relates to the line of spirit privatization proposal that’s been put forth.  That transfer funded, thank you, transportation funding is far too critical as a whole, particularly transit but also transportation funding and the safety of the commonwealth residents should not be jeopardized or put at risk and conditioned upon line of spirit privatization.  Let those issues stand on their own.  We know where we’re going to stand with transportation and we also know were going to stand against privatization and support modernization.  That’s what we need to do.