WASHINGTON — Amtrak said on Thursday it had not accepted all of the conditions of a tentative bailout agreement with the Bush administration, but the deal was not in danger of collapsing, according to a wire service.
David Gunn, the railroad’s president, stressed to reporters that talks were intense but centered on two of several requirements for Amtrak, the country’s only national passenger rail service, to get an immediate $100 million loan from the U.S. Treasury.
A loan guarantee or direct appropriation from Congress for up to $170 million would come later this summer.
“It is absolutely vital we reach an agreement on this,” Gunn said. “It’s the quickest way to get cash into Amtrak.”
Amtrak said last week it needed at least $205 million in government help to keep its trains running through September.
Gunn said he might have to seek a shut down shortly after July 4 without the first half of the proposed rescue plan in place. That money would carry the rail service into August.
He would not discuss the hurdles faced by negotiators, but the White House has demanded management and operating reforms. Amtrak lost $1.1 billion in 2001 and only has about $100 million on hand to begin July.
“We are close,” Gunn said of talks to finalize the agreement. “I am reasonably hopeful.”
The Washington Post reported on Friday that negotiations were bogged down over administration proposals that could lead to hundreds of layoffs at the national passenger railroad.
Citing unnamed sources, the Post said the White House had demanded that Amtrak not enter labor agreements that would prevent work now done by union workers to be contracted out, and that it set a cost-cutting goal for next year.
The tentative plan would require Amtrak to improve its fiscal discipline and performance, and adjust accounting procedures. It also would make the railroad provide the government with a better understanding of its assets and liabilities as well as cost controls and revenue options.
Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta told a Senate hearing earlier in the day that the Bush administration was trying to inject more discipline and more accountability into Amtrak operations.
Gunn said some of the bailout criteria require changes that the railroad already has made and will continue to make. “But a couple of items we won’t accept,” Gunn said.
Key Democratic lawmakers balked at supporting the proposal outright, and criticized the Bush administration for considering solutions that could worsen debt-ridden Amtrak’s already-dismal financial health.
While half of the Senate and many House of Representatives members support a current proposal to appropriate $205 million for Amtrak, some believe any resolution that forces it to borrow more money is unwise.
“Is saddling Amtrak with more loans when the railroad is already $4 billion in debt an appropriate solution to the problem?” Sen. Patty Murray, a Washington state Democrat who chairs the appropriations subcommittee on transportation, asked Mineta.
But Republican John McCain, an Arizona Republican and a strident Amtrak critic, said hard choices had to be made on the rail line’s future.
“In the interest of straight talk, we will give them what they want. We know it’s not going to shut down,” McCain said.