On March 10, Pima County residents will decide whether to fund another 20-year, $2+ billion transportation plan after the Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) failed to deliver on the last one. Two propositions will appear on their ballot this month related to this plan.
Proposition 418 would approve the new “RTA Next” transportation plan. Proposition 419 would extend the existing ½-cent sales tax to fund it. Both propositions must be passed for the plan to move forward. If approved, the new tax would begin April 1, 2026, just a few months before the original RTA plan officially expires in June.
The RTA is an independent taxing district specifically for Pima County. Its board is comprised of elected officials from local, tribal, and state governments that approve and oversee transportation projects. Back in 2006, voters were promised countywide improvements to roads, transit, and other infrastructure, funded by a 20-year timeline and a dedicated ½-cent sales tax increase. Fast forward to 2026, and several projects are unfinished, or never even started at all. Now, voters are being asked to extend the tax for another 20 years to finish what should have already been completed. That’s not a plan; it’s a bailout.
The project list for the RTA Next consists of multiple road improvements, bicycle infrastructure upgrades, transit improvements, and more. Many of these are the projects left unfinished during the first 20 years. They continue to blame their failures on Covid, the great recession of 2008, population growth not matching projections. The reality is that the actual problem is staring themselves in the mirror. As one longtime Tucsonan put it, the endless delays and mismanagement was caused by “chronic political dysfunction on the RTA board.” Tucson reworked projects midstream, let costs spiral, and is now shifting the financial fallout of those decisions onto taxpayers countywide.
Even if every project in RTA Next was worthwhile (spoiler alert, they are not), the RTA has already shown it cannot be trusted with another 20-year blank check. They had their chance. They failed. Repeating the same process and expecting a different result isn’t planning, it’s literally the definition of insanity. County residents are being asked to pay again, with no guarantee they’ll see meaningful benefits this time either.
Evidence of dysfunction within the RTA board was also clear in the ousting of the longtime RTA executive director. In June 2025, Farhad Moghimi was fired in a narrow 5–4 board vote. Critics claimed he favored unincorporated areas of Pima County over the City of Tucson, while Tucson officials complained that city residents were contributing a disproportionate share of tax revenue without seeing corresponding improvements.
Moghimi, who led the RTA since 2013, became the convenient scapegoat for two decades of delays and mismanagement. His replacement? Former Tucson city manager Mike Ortega, appointed as interim executive director, at a salary of $356,000, significantly higher than his predecessor’s. So much for accountability.
Opposition to RTA Next spans both sides of the aisle, though for very different reasons. Some on the left argue the plan is too car-centric and spends too much on roads rather than buses, bike lanes, and transit expansion in pursuit of climate goals. One critic even claimed it “fuels climate change.” Others complain it doesn’t spend enough on transit. The contradictions would be funny if taxpayers weren’t footing the bill. One headline even stated, “Opponents of the RTA Next proposal say that it spends too much on roadways and not enough on buses.”
But the most overlooked issue is who really gets hurt by this plan, the residents outside the City of Tucson. RTA Next locks in the same flawed funding model that prioritizes urban transit spending while pulling tax dollars from the entire county. Roughly a quarter of the plan’s funding is earmarked for transit, much of it for fare-free systems already heavily subsidized by Tucson’s general fund. The result is a familiar imbalance. Residents in rural communities and unincorporated areas are expected to bankroll transportation priorities that overwhelmingly benefit the urban core, whether they use them or not.
Ballots will be mailed out on February 11th, and Pima County residents can expect to start receiving them that same day if not that week. The last day ballots will be accepted is March 10th. Approving Propositions 418 and 419 would commit county residents to another 20 years of taxes for a plan that has already failed to deliver on its promises.
Voters have already given the RTA 20 years. The results speak for themselves. There is no justification for giving them 20 more, and no reason for taxpayers to gamble on history repeating itself.
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