Rail Passenger Assocation Dues Increased

[Anderson]

As to the RPA dues increase, one thing I would note is that dues have not been raised in line with inflation over the years. From the December, 1974 newsletter I got the following dues levels:

Contributing: $10
Participating: $25
Sponsoring: $50
Sustaining: $100
Life: $500 (or more)

I picked up a lifetime membership about five years back for $1000 (since I got sick of having to remember to pay). In real terms, I got a steal (that "should" have been somewhere close to $5000 adjusted for inflation). If the "contributing" membership level is equivalent to the membership level now, a bump to $50-60 isn't unreasonable. If you're considering it the "participating" membership...well, that would be in the range of $125-150 while "Sponsoring" and "Sustaining" are in line with the higher regular advocate levels ($250-300/500-600).

The biggest issue is really that the increase all hit at once, but as much of that is on prior management as anything.

(My local party unit recently hiked its dues twice in three years for similar reasons. We apparently hadn't raised our dues since at least the late 1980s, and I think it might have been since the early 80s or late 70s. From what little I can tell, and accepting that the plural of "anecdote" is not "data", this is apparently a pretty wide problem.)

 

[neroden]

Actually the way in which Amtrak does accounting is governed to a significant extent by the FRA under the able guidance of the Volpe Center, all driven by a set of vague instructions from the Congress interpreted by Volpe. Of course Amtrak has contributed mightily to the confusing situation, mainly by using opaque and sometimes unchanged inherited cost allocation plans, but they did not do it all on their own, nor can they fix it all on their own, no matter how much some want to believe that they can, and are just being obstructionist on their own. Suffice it to say that they are not jumping up to change the parts that they seemingly can either, but that is the normal behavior of established bureaucracies.

I suspect that "this is the way we've always done it" is predominating in the accounting department at Amtrak. Even though they seem to have for many areas started out by copying Penn Central accounting practices which were actually deliberately fraudulent when they were done by Penn Central...

There have been some efforts by some groups within Amtrak to do actual tracking of expenses, but they've been few and they've been poorly supported by management.

It actually does cost money to fix the accounting system; perhaps a Congressional earmark for Amtrak which can *only* be used for renovating the accounting to actually track expenses per station, per car, per locomotive, and per train (in order to eliminate "allocations") would be the way to get it fixed.

 

[keelhauled]

As to the RPA dues increase, one thing I would note is that dues have not been raised in line with inflation over the years.

Oddly enough, neither has my income...