Transit dealing

There are a good many details still to be ironed out regarding the proposed purchase of Kelley Transportation Co., Cape Girardeau's taxi service, by the Cape Girardeau County Transit Authority. The goal of the purchase, transit authority officials say, is to provide more and better public transportation all over the county.

Currently, the transit authority primarily serves residents outside Cape Girardeau. This is because the city has a contract with Kelley Transportation to provide rides to city residents who use subsidized taxi coupons. City officials say transferring the taxi-coupon program to the transit authority would require special approval.

But city officials don't know very much about the proposed purchase or what it would mean to Cape Girardeau residents who need and want better transportation services. That's because the yearlong negotiations between the private taxi company and public transit authority have been held in secret leading up to last week's announcement by the transit authority that the sale is pending.

Because of the private-public nature of the negotiations, neither the city's taxpayers nor those in the county know how much the transit authority intends to pay for the taxi company, what specifically is being purchased in the way of a taxi fleet, how the purchase would provide better service to city residents or why the transit authority is planning to borrow money from a bank to make the purchase when Cape Girardeau County has a year-end balance in excess of $10 million.

County transit officials say those details can't be made public just yet. If final negotiations fail to produce a deal, they say, the secrecy is needed to protect confidential information being shared by Kelley Transportation.

In the end, the transit authority may be making a wise move toward serving more county residents in need of public transportation. But taxpayers won't know those details until the deal is struck. Taxpayers will have little recourse if, by some chance, they don't like it.