Pennsylvania Auditor General Jack Wagner, unsuccessful in his attempt to block the spending, then called on the board to early next year dedicate most of the unspent $10 million to two transportation projects cut from the agency's 2012 capital budget: a bicycle and wheelchair ramp on the Camden side of the Ben Franklin Bridge ($3.2 million) and the reopening of the long-closed Franklin Square subway station on the PATCO line in Philadelphia ($3.5 million).
The board on Wednesday also approved the DRPA's operating and capital budgets for 2012. The agency operates four toll bridges linking Philadelphia and South Jersey and the PATCO commuter rail line.
The agency's operating budget will be $126.8 million, essentially the same as this year. Total spending, including debt payments and biennial bridge-inspection costs, is slated to be $275 million, a 4 percent increase from this year.
The capital budget, for such things as bridge repairs and rebuilt PATCO railcars, was set at $125 million, about $25 million less than for the current year.
The budgets were approved without dissent. But the economic-development spending was not.
Wagner argued the $29.7 million - the last of nearly $500 million borrowed and spent on such things as stadiums, museums and concert halls over the last 14 years - should go for projects that directly benefit bridge toll payers and PATCO riders.
He said the DRPA was violating its own 2010 resolutions not to spend any more economic-development money on non-transportation projects.
"This is all about who we are and why we are here," Wagner said. "We're here to represent John Doe and Jane Doe traveling the bridges and riding PATCO."
