ROCHESTER, N.Y. The Rochester public transit agency, which was found guilty earlier this year of violating Federal Transit Administration rules and ordered to stop providing illegal school bus service, is pressuring the FTA to allow it to operate school bus routes.

According to the United Food & Commercial Workers Union Local One, Rochester Genesee Regional Transit Authority is trying to get FTA officials in Washington to reverse a decision by a regional FTA administrator who found the transit agency was violating federal rules prohibiting public transit agencies from operating school bus service.

FTA Regional Administrator Letitia Thompson ruled against the transit agency in January, issuing a cease-and-desist order requiring the service be halted.

In her ruling, Thompson said the service provided by RGRTA Transit "contravenes the purpose and intent" of FTA rules and, "in some of its characteristics, specifically violates the (FTA) school bus regulations."

But, in a letter sent to the union last month, the FTA said it was reconsidering its cease-and-desist order.

"Now the transit agency is putting outside pressure on FTA to reverse itself and allow the transit agency to operate school bus routes (that) Congress mandated are not public transit routes," the union said in a letter it sent to Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y.

The union wants Slaughter and other area congressmen to send a "strong message" to FTA Administrator Jim Simpson and FTA Chief Counsel David Horner "not to reverse the FTA cease-and-desist order."

In its complaint, the union said the service provided by Rochester Genesee Transit displaced nearly 70 school bus drivers, and it amounted to more than $6 million in annual school bus work denied to Laidlaw Education, their employer.

It is fascinating that the union, which represents drivers, is carrying the water for Laidlaw.

Rochester-Genesee Regional Transit is a long-time violator of FTA rules.

Early in this decade, John H. Kemp of Kemp's Bus Service in Avon, N.Y., went on a one-man crusade to stop the rogue agency from violating federal charter bus rules, which it was doing repeatedly. The FTA ruled in 2002 that the transit agency had violated the rules by running a variety of prohibited services.