Oakland County's L. Brooks Patterson says he'll oppose broad effort to fund mass transit

Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson said Wednesday he would oppose asking voters across all of Oakland County to help fund a regional mass transit system.

Only those communities that currently “opt in” with local property taxes to support SMART bus service should be included in a millage proposal to support regional mass transit, Patterson said.

His comments took aim at just the type of millage question that voters in Oakland, Wayne and Macomb counties saw on their ballots in November and defeated, deciding against it in Oakland County by a razor-thin 1% margin last fall. Since then, transit boosters have been quietly debating whether to revive the failed proposal and put some version of it before voters again, perhaps as soon as this November.

But Patterson, who stayed on the sidelines of the issue last year and declined either to endorse or criticize the millage measure, was adamant in his annual State of the County speech Wednesday night in Pontiac, delivered before about 600 business and political leaders. If he gets his way, and especially if Macomb County leaders follow the same pattern, the result likely would be an underfunded system, mass transit boosters said.

Patterson has never been a strong proponent of mass transit, but he was especially pointed Wednesday night about opposing a mass-transit millage vote "in communities that won't get any benefit," he said.

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Patterson argued that any millage question placed before Oakland County voters should appear only in communities that currently “opt in” for SMART bus service, and that residents of the “opt-out” communities -— who've voted not to support SMART — should not be forced to vote either for or against a system he said they won’t use. Oakland County's nine “opt-out” communities include Novi, Waterford, Rochester Hills, Bloomfield Hills, Sylvan Lake and Keego Harbor.

“Some leaders south of 8 Mile want me to force these communities in (to a millage vote) against their will. They call it leadership. I call it betrayal,” Patterson said.

“I want you to know, I will not force those communities into a plan that will not benefit them. I can’t do it, I won’t do it, and I will never — ever,” Patterson said, interrupted by applause and the loudest cheers of the night.

As the noise died down, Patterson quipped, “In rehearsal, this is where I wanted to have the 'Battle Hymn of the Republic' piped in,” sparking laughter.

Patterson’s demand to constrain the funding reach of future mass transit in his county would consign the system to failure, said Megan Owens, executive director of the Transportation Riders United, a nonprofit group based in Detroit.

“Going town by town does not create a regional system. It leaves people in some areas without a system. It makes buses go through places like Bloomfield Hills, where they can’t stop, on their way to Pontiac.

“Unfortunately, this is what we’ve seen from Brooks Patterson for 40 years. He has no willingness to think regionally,” Owens said after Patterson's speech.

Some planners have suggested that “if Oakland and, for that matter Macomb, don’t want to get on board, we should be going ahead just in Wayne and Washtenaw. That would be a shame because it wouldn’t be a regional system,” she said.

The Democratic Party leader of the Oakland County Board of Commissioners said he was not surprised by Patterson's comments on mass transit.

"This is the type of thinking that led Amazon and their 50,000 jobs to reject southeast Michigan” for its new hub of offices, said Oakland County Commissioner Dave Woodward, D-Royal Oak.

“I am optimistic that other leaders can prevail” to ensure that a future mass transit system includes all of Oakland County," Woodward said, after watching Patterson's speech from the audience at Pontiac's recently renovated Strand Theatre.

In contrast, Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel, also in the audience, said he agreed with Patterson’s take on regional transit.

In an apparent slap at mass-transit booster Dan Gilbert, Hackel said:

“Some of the folks who are well-to-do down in Detroit, as well as some of the other leaders, are trying to force this. But our 870,000 people in Macomb County made it perfectly clear last time (in the November election). They’re not interested in mass transit.”

Macomb voters soundly defeated last fall's mass-transit initiative, with 222,806 voters opposed and 148,159 who voted yes. Hackel said Macomb County thoroughly supports SMART bus service.

But, he added, “Nobody is coming to me and saying, ‘Let’s fix regional transit.’ They come to me and say, ‘Let’s fix the roads.’ I hear that every day.”

Contact blaitner@freepress.com