Compromising Public Health for a States' Rights Ideology: The Governor of Arizona Nullified a Federal Law during a Pandemic

On October 27, 2021, I rode on two mass transit buses in Phoenix, Arizona. Both drivers were knowingly and willfully violating the federal regulation (42 CFR sec.s 70-71), which requires transit operators to wear masks during the pandemic even when they are situated behind a plexiglass barrier. One of the drivers, whom I had twice before seen not wearing a mask, again had lowered the plexiglass window pane between the driver and customers paying.  The first time, I had asked her to put a mask on, given the federal regulation and her proximity to the passengers boarding. Replying as if making an announcement, she said, “If anyone feels unsafe on the bus, they can get off and wait for the next bus.” That prompted a passenger to insult me. The company subsequently backed up the driver's refusal by saying that the federal law doesn't apply to buses in Arizona. It did, so the company violated federal law with impunity.

 

I reported this incident to the regional bus authority and the city of Phoenix. Nevertheless I saw her maskless more than a week later and then during the following week. I did receive a voicemail from TransDev, a bus-operating company contracted by Metro Valley, informing me that regardless of the federal law, the company policy does not require bus drivers to wear masks. In fact, a representative from Metro Valley defiantly declared on a subsequent phone call that drivers can let maskless passengers board—again, in violation of federal law. Company policy apparently can nullify federal regulations in Arizona, a U.S. state with special needs. 

Even though the FBI told me that it looks to local law enforcement agencies to enforce federal regulations, a supervisor at one of the police sub-stations told me that his department would not enforce the regulation. “Oh, so they want to dump it on us,” he said. Astonishingly, he claimed that only law passed by his state’s legislature is “real law in Arizona.” About a week later, a police transit supervisor told me that the chief of police had told the non-supervisory patrol employees not to enforce the federal regulation, and this directive had come down from the governor.

As shocking as such corruption is, the immature, even pathological behavior of the second maskless bus driver I witnessed on the morning of October 27, 2021 told me after I had asked her to put on a mask that she didn’t care if a federal regulation requires drivers to wear masks. “I don’t care. Go ahead, call the FBI,” she said with a daring tone of presumed impunity. She also encouraged me to call the local police after I said I would contact them too. “They don’t wear masks either,” she shouted. Yes, shouted. I replied that I was ending the conversation, which she ignored until I went to the back of the bus. She then accused me of threatening her. “Get off my bus!” she exclaimed angrily even though she kept the bus in motion. She was clearly making up an excuse to get me in trouble for having asked her to comply with U.S. law. What a strange, absurd mentality, at least outside of Arizona. Not surprisingly, she had let a maskless man ride. While walking to the back door to exit the bus, the maskless old male passenger felt entitled pick up the baton from the driver and shout “I’m vaccinated; I don’t have to wear a mask” at me. I knew he was ignorant so I did not comment. Nevertheless, she kept shouting his presumed factoid to me as he got closer. After he left, the driver once again began shouting insults at me, having dismissed my statement that I was done with the conversation. She called me a dumbass and a weirdo, and told me in a dismissive and hostile tone, “Go back to your institution!” My stop was coming up, so I could not get off the bus, but I did not want to hear any more from the childish driving having a temper-tantrum. So I began repeating, “I don’t talk to local creepers.” I had said this to the maskless passenger too.  “I won’t let you ride on my bus ever again,” the driver said. It is significant that she referred to her bus, in repeating, “I won’t let you ride my bus ever again,” when in actuality the city of Phoenix owns the bus and she does not have the authority to ban anyone from ever riding “her” bus ever again. Even were the bus her own, she would still be required to follow federal law, though she clearly believed otherwise.  She even put her two hands to her ears while operating the bus like a kid would do, and angrily repeated, “I know you are, I know you are,” after I declared that I do not talk with local creepers.  It was surreal that any bus driver would behave like a four year-old. “What are you in kindergarden?” I replied. Even when I was walking out of the bus and then outside of the bus, the driver was yelling insults, so I continued repeating my line. It was incredibly pathetic that a four year-old’s mentality would stop her temper-tantrum only to pick up her phone to call her supervisor, and yet the bus company’s customer service does not allow passengers to speak with a supervisor of the drivers in real time even when a driver is not only abusing his or her authority, but is having a temper-tantrum. It is precisely because the drivers know that they can misbehave with impunity that they go on the offensive even more by claiming that a passenger is misbehaving. It is not surprising that drivers tend to presume impunity in violating a federal regulation geared to ending a pandemic. It is not surprising that several drivers in 2020 and 2021 felt entitled to ignore the local and federal laws, respectively, requiring that passengers and drivers wear masks. Some drivers actually wore their masks to cover only the chin area as if that constituted compliance. Arizona’s pre-college education ranked 49^th out of the 50 states at the time. Go figure. Presumptive arrogance combined with astounding ignorance is a toxic combination.

I submit that this last driver was so brazen at least in part because there really is no accountability in the local mass transit system, which includes Metro Valley, the regional transit authority and TransDev, a private subcontractor that operates the buses, which are owned by the city of Phoenix. Both Metro Valley and TransDev have told me that their policies allowing maskless riders and drivers invalidate the federal law. By the way, a local police patrol employee informed me (when he was off duty) that bus drivers are not federal employees to the federal law does not apply to them. “So you locals are ok with the federal money you get from the feds for your mass transit, but that doesn’t obligate you to follow their regulations,” I concluded. He gave a thumbs up. Three weeks earlier, a patrol supervisor informed me that the only “real law in Arizona is that which goes through the state legislature.” There is virtually no enforcement of masks on the light rail by security guards either. They illegally impersonate police officers by wearing silver badges, yet have admitted that Metro Valley won’t allow them to enforce the local ordinance in 2020 and the federal regulation in 2021. I think the guards are more interested in intimidating passengers to feel the pleasure of being dominant (albeit certainly not superior in any way) than in enforcing even federal law.

It is strange seeing three or four guards on one half of a car yet not one of the Allied Security employees are enforcing the federal law as it is even stated on on-board signs declaring, “Per Federal Law, Masks Are Required.” Once when I heard a train’s operator make an announcement at every stop, I pressed a red button at an intercom with the driver. The drivers want passengers to report problems, so it was ironic that a young black guard rushed to me (I had not seen him in the back) and demanded to know what I had been talking about. I asked him twice to lift his mask from his chin to cover his mouth and nose. He obviously felt entitled to break the law even though signs on the doors and windows were obvious. Without even waiting for me to answer his question, he became very hostile toward me and declared that if he ever sees me use the intercom again, he would kick me off the train. As I was leaving the train, I passed by the operator’s open window. “Of course we want you to use the intercom to report things like you did—that many passengers are ignoring my announcement!” I asked her to report the guard.

In short, the arrogance, corruption, and incompetence at the state, city and mass transit levels at least in Phoenix are such that someone who is not used to such a sordid, ignorant, and hostile culture cannot but be astonished—jaws-dropped astonished. Not only does the bus company ignore reports of illegal behavior; the company claims that its policy, which contradicts federal law, is the only thing that the company acknowledges as valid. How could anyone at a company believe that a company policy nullifies a federal law? How could a police chief tell her police force not to enforce a federal law, when according to the U.S. Department of Justice, the F.B.I. routinely relies on local law enforcement to play a role in enforcing federal law. Yet in Phoenix, Arizona, a police supervisor specializing on transit refused to acknowledge that state officials ever enforce federal law. “They want their laws enforced? They will have to send feds to enforce them.”

Strong and Weak Management: The Case of American Bus Companies and Regional Transit Authorities

By the end of the 2010’s, city officials in several American cities were rethinking bus service in a fundamental way; the passenger-fare revenue model was being questioned, and in some cases replaced with a model that fit better with serving poor people and changed local business environments. Yet the downside effects on the bus companies of trends, especially regarding ridership, may have been the result of internal organizational factors immune to a change in the revenue model. I contend that city officials and the managers of bus companies should resist the temptation to view a new model as a cure precisely because some problems, internal to the companies, could go on and silently undermine analysis of the new model such that it could erroneously be discontinued. To be sure, being willing to question a longstanding model is a mark of managerial strength. Indeed, it is precisely the managers of bus companies and regional authorities who are mired in longstanding assumptions who would tend to have the most difficulty in dealing with troublesome internal problems. 

Providers of goods or services must adjust to changing local environments, which in turn are impacted by broader trends. Bus companies and regional authorities in the U.S. faced increasing traffic congestion as well as decreasing ridership from 5.6 billion in 2008 to 4.67 billion in 2018.[1] Also, competition ranging from electric scooters to ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft were literally driving people away from buses nationwide, according to transit officials. Light rail and subways, which do not have to fight street congestion, also saw ridership decline, but not as much as buses. There was also the argument that the very poor, including the homeless, who generally rely on bus service, are least equipped to pay for it. Many universities were already using the student-fee model for university bus service, spreading the cost wide enough that the students could afford the service. Alternatively, only students who used the service could have paid for it, which would have been particularly hard on poor students.

In the altered environment in which bus companies found themselves by 2020, the concept of free fares on some or all bus routes was drawing increasing support in several cities. “Advocates in Massachusetts claimed that free buses would speed up boarding times, draw more passengers, aid poor residents and help reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.”[2] Michelle Wu, a member of the Boston City Council who supports free transit, remarked, “If we’re truly treating it as a public good that has benefits to everyone when everyone uses it, then we should remove barriers.”[3] To the extent that poor people are especially in need of a public good, charging a user free can essentially privatize the good for the poor.

The poor may go without transportation needed for their very sustenance, or resort to fraud. In Phoenix, Arizona, for example, people needed only go to a convenience store to buy reduced-fare cards otherwise reserved for the elderly and disabled. As of 2020, enforcement on the buses was rare; few if any drivers asked to seek the accompanying ID of discount fare-riders. Even on the light rail, security employees intent on staring at passengers as if they were all conducive to violence would not bother to even ask to see the ID. In fact, passengers who had not paid were let out at the next platform, from which they could easily board the next train. Lest the shady passengers get all the blame (though surely they deserve a lot for their sordid attitude alone), the revenue model itself was culpable because it did not adequately take into account the extremely limited financial resources and vital transportation needs of the very poor. Such a regional transit authority and its bus operating companies would not likely be willing or able to address internal problems, such as rude drivers and horrendous (and risky) driving. Phoenix buses were widely known locally for these two things. Also, it was not uncommon to see three or four transit security employees in half of a light-rail train car staring at passengers as if the latter were prisoners.

Put another way, city and transit officials in the Phoenix metro would not be likely to analyze, let alone perceive the free-rides option because they were so preoccupied with, and yet unsuccessful at, stopping the ticket fraud in order to boost revenue from riders. Getting serious with bus drivers who were rude and/or bad drivers was something beyond the reach (and will) of the bus operating management and regional transit authority. Moreover, the political environment in Arizona was such that a majority of the voters would have balked at the prospect of paying for poor people to ride free. Minimizing tax increases fared much better in that political climate.

A world away, in Lawrence, Massachusetts, the region’s transit authority in September, 2019 stopped collecting money on three routes that go through the poorest parts of the city. Lawrence used $225,000 in reserves to waive fares for two years. Lawrence Mayor Dan Rivera explained the rationale for free rides. “We could support those citizens to mobilize themselves out of poverty.”[4] The regional transit agency said ridership on the three free lines climbed quickly—up about 24% in the first few months from a year earlier.

In Olympia, Washington’s capital, a ballot measure in 2019 that boosted transportation funding helped the Intercity Transit agency start offering free service on all buses in January, 2020, according to Ann Freeman-Manzanares, the system’s general manager. Fares there amounted to $2.7 million annually, a small portion of the agency’s budget, and some of that is spent maintaining fare boxes and collecting cash. “It actually was surprising to us when we started digging deep how much it costs to collect fares,” Ms. Freeman-Manzanares said.[5]

In Kansas City, the local transit authority was overhauling its bus service and already offered free rides to veterans and students. The authority aimed to completely cancel fares by May, 2020, Chief Executive Robbie Makinen said. The city council voted unanimously in December, 2019 to find about $8 million a year to cover free buses, which were already heavily supported by taxpayers.

Meanwhile in Phoenix, bus drivers regularly held up their buses waiting for passengers to dig for more coin—not having bothered to do so before boarding. Also, the fare machines on the buses were old, and thus particularly susceptible to breaking down, in spite of the priority on revenue from passengers. The bus operating companies and the regional authority erroneously accepted these intangible and tangible costs as necessary in part because the managers assumed the passenger-revenue model being used to be fixed rather than possibly replaced.

Generally speaking, a mind wetted to one way of thinking as if a blind card set in a highly rutted dirt road is likely to accept as necessary too many costs because another way of thinking, a broader one, would be necessary to take into account other models even though their costs would be lower. A mind willing and able to perceive and think beyond its groves is necessary. Though such a mind is likely to be more motivated and able to take on seemingly intractable internal problems, such as rude drivers and bad driving (e.g., accelerating too fast, and braking too hard), even being willing to think wider may not be sufficient. Hence it is possible that the continuing internal factors (i.e., problems within a bus company) could sabotage a new model’s perceived efficacy.

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[1] Jon Kamp, “Cities Offer Free Buses in Bid to Boost Flagging Ridership,” The Wall Street Journal, January 14, 2020.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.