Court Opinion

ID: 9716289
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 06:33:17.931099+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:43.442846
License: Public Domain

Concurring Opinion by
Judge Rogers:
I concur in the court’s conclusion. However, the majority’s extended discussion of whether the impost here in suit is a tax or a license fee carries the implication that if it had been found to be the latter it would be permissible. I recognize that the majority’s opinion also declares that the City may not prohibit SEPTA from operating its buses in the City unless it obtains and pays for a license, but the emphasis oh this holding is so slight and the attention given to the nature of the *295City’s charge here in suit so great, that I fear the opinion will provide encouragement for other efforts to exact public revenue from SEPTA’s users or to regulate its activities. SEPTA is a State agency trying, against odds, to alleviate, for southeastern Pennsylvania, one of its most urgent problems, the inadequacy of mass transit. As the Metropolitan Transportation Authorities Act of 1963 (MTA), Act of August 14, 1963, P. L. 984, as amended, 66 P.S. §§2001, et seq., clearly states, the Legislature never intended that SEPTA, in the performance of its vital mission, should be subjected to exaction, regulation, licensure, interference or any importunity whatsoever by the political subdivisions which happen to exist within its service area; rather it was supposed that these political subdivisions would provide subsidy to SEPTA in the interest of their citizens. The City of Philadelphia has been and continues to be most generous in its financial support of SEPTA, and its efforts in this case to extract from SEPTA a substantial sum of money is as strange as it is legally futile.
In short, I would hold simply that MTA prohibits the City from making the charge in question, whatever it might be called.