State lawmakers returning to Harrisburg from their summer recess face a legislative plate heaped with contentious issues left over from the July budget battle. Among the fall agenda issues are Gov. Ed Rendell's energy proposal and his push for biomedical investment through the creation of the Jonas Salk Legacy Fund. Lawmakers are also expected to consider two bills that would make teacher strikes illegal, and there is a proposal to restrict passengers in cars driven by young drivers. Other issues to be worked on include improvements to the state's weak open records law and reforms to the scandal-plagued Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency and Turnpike Commission.

Despite the importance of all those issues, room on the agenda must be made for a continuation of the debate over transportation funding. In July, Rendell and lawmakers had agreed to a plan to charge tolls on Interstate 80 to raise about $1 billion a year for roads, bridges and mass transit. But the plan to toll I-80 is in jeopardy due to opposition from some members in Congress, so Rendell has returned to his earlier plan to lease the turnpike to a private entity in exchange for huge up-front payments that would be invested to produce up to $1 billion annually for roads, bridges and mass transit.

While the condition of roads and bridges is on everyone's mind, mass transit funding also will be part of the discussion. It's widely understood that public transportation is vitally important and requires subsidization. But it also is important for taxpayers to understand one of the most problematic issues facing mass transit — fiscal mismanagement.

A reminder of that appeared last weekend in a Pittsburgh newspaper's report on bonuses paid to retirees from the Port Authority of Pittsburgh, where 618 PAT retirees are collecting an extra $500 a month until they turn 62. The article painted a picture of an organization that set up sweetheart deals for early retirement so that people could leave their jobs while still in their 50s, or even 40s, with generous pensions. This suggests that PAT had lost sight of its mission — providing efficient public transportation.

These $500 monthly bonus checks are small change compared with the pension of former PATChief Executive Officer Paul Skoutelas, who retired at age 52, with a monthly pension of $9,066. This gilded pension came to light only after Skoutelas announced plans to go to court in response to the PAT board voting to trim his pension to about $6,000 a month because a supplemental pension plan that boosted Skoutelas' monthly check into the stratosphere had not been approved by the board.

To show that there are excesses on both sides of the labor-management divide, the former head of the union at PAT, who retired in 2000, reportedly receives a $4,065 monthly pension check.

To give the current PATboard and management some credit, their attempts to rein in costs prompted the lawsuit and the news coverage.

Still, taxpayers need to understand the scope of the financial self-serving and waste at PAT, which presumably can also be found at SEPTA, the public transit agency serving Philadelphia. Any discussion of more state funding for these big mass transit agencies must come with strict cost-control measures and mandated audits.

Taxpayers should be sympathetic to public transit users who need the bus or train service to get to and from work. But state tax dollars should benefit riders, and not be wasted on bloated bureaucracy or gold-plated pensions and benefits.

When Rendell and state legislators talk about the need for a dedicated funding stream for mass transit, taxpayers should listen — but they also should remember the financial mess at PATand the need for transparency, accountability for spending and serious cost control.