A political advocacy group has filed a lawsuit against the city of San Antonio, alleging it broke state law by agreeing to pass along sales tax revenue to VIA Metropolitan Transit to help build the Green Line, a planned rapid bus route running up and down San Pedro Avenue.
Last year, the city signed an agreement with VIA to hand over its share of a 1/8-cent sales tax increase that voters approved in November 2020, to go into effect next year. Under the structure of the Advanced Transportation District, a taxing district that shares a board with VIA, half of the additional funds collected will belong to VIA and a quarter to the city, with the other quarter being used as a local match for state and federal grants.
The lawsuit was brought by SAFA Action, also known as Catholic Family Apostolate, a group that often supports conservative causes and has butted heads with the city before. The suit, filed in state district court in Bexar County, accuses the city of “unconstitutional delegation of (its) decisionmaking power” to an “unelected body” – namely, VIA’s board of trustees. In other words, the suit alleges the city is taking taxpayer money and putting it outside the control of elected leaders.
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“The city can’t delegate authority to spend tax dollars to another government authority,” Jerad Najvar, a Houston attorney representing SAFA Action, during a Friday news conference. “It’s important because we’re talking about a substantial amount of money.”
The city’s share of the sales tax increase will amount to about $13.5 million a year, he said.
The lawsuit contends the city’s agreement with VIA amounts to a violation of the Texas Transportation Code. The lawsuit argues that while the state code describes how a taxing district such as the Advanced Transportation District can pass funds to governmental entities, it does not specifically say that the entities can pass the funds elsewhere.
Three of the members of VIA’s current nine-member board were appointed by the city of San Antonio, three by Bexar County and two by the other municipalities within the Advanced Transportation District, including Alamo Heights and Shavano Park.
The lawsuit asks the court to stop the city from passing its share of the sales tax increase to VIA.
City spokesperson Brian Chasnoff said Friday that the city has not yet been served with the lawsuit. “We will review the allegations made, research the facts of the case and will defend the city based on the merits of the case,” he said.
In a written statement, VIA noted that voters “overwhelmingly approved” the sales tax increase in the 2020 election; 67.8% of voters supported the measure, according to the official results published by Bexar County.
Since then, “VIA has worked steadfastly to deliver more and better transit options that meet the evolving needs of our community,” the agency said in the statement.
The Green Line is an “advanced rapid transit,” or ART, route that will run 10.4 miles from the South Side, near the vacant Lone Star Brewery, through downtown all the way to San Antonio International Airport north of Loop 410.
The buses will have their own lanes for much of the way, along with station platforms where riders will pay before getting on board. Traffic signals will be synchronized to keep them moving. VIA expects the buses to arrive every 10 minutes on weekdays and every 15 minutes on weekends, offering a frequency of service that does not currently exist in San Antonio, especially as a shortage of drivers has forced VIA to reduce service on many of its routes since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.
VIA recently began utility work on the project and says it expects to have the buses running in 2028. The price tag is a hefty $480.8 million, the bulk of that being covered by a $268 million grant which the Federal Transit Administration awarded VIA in December. VIA plans to contribute $54.1 million raised through the sales tax increase, and the Advanced Transportation District will issue revenue bonds to chip in another $153.7 million.
VIA plans to build a second rapid transit line, known as the Silver Line, running east-west from Our Lady of the Lake University through downtown to the Frost Bank Center, at a cost of $322 million.
For part of the way, the Green Line buses will travel in their own lanes along San Pedro Avenue, and stretches of the thoroughfare’s center-turn lanes will have to be removed, according to VIA’s preliminary plans.
Along with SAFA Action, also known as the San Antonio Family Association, the lawsuit was brought by four San Antonio residents, including Patrick Von Dohlen, the group’s leader, who has launched unsuccessful bids for the District 9 City Council seat. Two of the plaintiffs say in the lawsuit that they live off of San Pedro.
The Green Line’s construction “will require fundamentally altering and damaging San Pedro Avenue so that it is far less amenable to travel by normal vehicles,” the lawsuit alleges.
In recent years, SAFA Action has protested pro-abortion-rights measures being considered by the council, and Von Dohlen was among the activists who sued the city claiming that it violated the state’s so-called “Save Chick-fil-a” law after the council denied the chain’s request to open a restaurant at San Antonio International Airport.
The group is being represented by Najvar, a Houston attorney who last year represented a New Braunfels couple accused of being part of the “Trump train” that boxed in a Biden-Harris campaign bus the week before the 2020 presidential election.
At Friday’s news conference outside San Antonio City Hall, leaders of SAFA Action held up signs saying, “STOP the VIA Monster, Instead Fix Potholes and Streets.”
They voiced additional concerns about the Green Line, saying it would cause gentrification, hurt the small businesses along San Pedro and contribute to traffic congestion. A package of zoning amendments the council approved last year allowing for denser development close to rapid transit lines will chip away at the historical neighborhoods north of downtown, they said.
Mike Knuffke, a board member with SAFA Action, called the Green Line a “boondoggle.”
“At least Project Marvel has an economic stimulus potential,” he said. “With VIA, there is no economic stimulus. It is a drain.”
The lawsuit also points to a clause in San Antonio’s charter stating that the City Council “shall have and exercise all powers now or later conferred on the city.”
“By agreeing to shovel this money to VIA, San Antonio politicians would be removing the funds from the accountability of San Antonio voters,” the lawsuit states. “Even if VIA scrupulously ensures that the funds are spent on the bus rapid transit project or other permissible uses, they will be spent in VIA’s discretion rather than the discretion of the San Antonio City Council.”
The city passes along taxpayer dollars to many nonprofits and other entities. But the reallocation of the sales tax increase is different, Najvar said, because in those instances the organizations typically outline how they will use the funds in grant applications.
“It’s always a limited amount of money,” he said. “Here, the city signed over tax revenue in perpetuity.”