(The following story by Ed Mendel appeared on the San Diego Union-Tribune website on June 13.)
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Arnold Schwarzenegger may be building an image as the green governor, but Democratic legislators say his state budget flashes a red light on funding for buses, light rail and a high-speed rail system.
The governor wants to use sales tax revenue from soaring gasoline prices to help balance his overall spending plan, a $1.3 billion shift opposed by Democrats who want to use the money to increase funding for public transit.
Schwarzenegger also wants only a bare-bones budget for high-speed rail, proposed to stretch from the Los Angeles area to San Francisco. But the executive director of the long-delayed project warns that the meager funding could finally kill it.
Opponents of the governor’s proposal say cutting funds for public transit conflicts with his national image as a leader in combating global warming, which relies heavily on reducing emissions from automobiles.
“You can’t pose for the cover of Newsweek as the savior of global warming one day and then turn around and slash funding for public transit the next,” Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, D-Los Angeles, said famously after the governor issued a revised budget proposal last month.
Public-transit funding is one of the biggest issues, in dollar terms, as a two-house committee works on a final version of the $145.9 billion budget proposed by Schwarzenegger for the new fiscal year beginning July 1.
“That’s probably one of the closing issues in the budget,” said Assembly Budget Committee Chairman John Laird, D-Santa Cruz, who is presiding over the two-house budget-writing committee this year.
The Senate version of the budget would give transit all of the $1.3 billion that the governor wants to shift to other programs. The Assembly budget takes only part of the transit money sought by Schwarzenegger, $468 million.
“There may be a need to use some of it, as the Assembly did, and figuring that out is the question,” said Senate Budget Chairwoman Denise Ducheny, D-San Diego.
Under the governor’s proposal, transit would still get an increase in state funding next year, up $300 million to a total of $1.54 billion, said H.D. Palmer, a spokesman for Schwarzenegger’s Department of Finance.
But a regional planning official said the governor’s proposal would cost the two San Diego County transit systems $30 million – a $23 million loss for the Metropolitan Transit System and $7 million for the North County Transit District.
“Without those dollars, the operators will have to scale back their operations at a time when they should be expanding,” said Gary Gallegos, executive director of the San Diego Association of Governments.
Most of the $1.3 billion that Schwarzenegger wants to shift from transit, $827 million, is sales tax revenue from soaring gasoline prices distributed under a plan enacted in the early 1970s.
Former Senate President Pro Tempore James Mills, D-San Diego, pushed a plan that imposed a sales tax on gasoline for transit, which was offset by lowering the sales tax on other goods.
The governor’s proposal would use the $827 million in revenue to pay for school-bus service, which his aides argue is a form of public transit.
Schwarzenegger’s plan also would use $144 million in transit funds to pay for shuttle service to regional centers for the developmentally disabled and $340 million to pay off transportation bonds.
By shifting the transit funds to those programs, the governor’s proposal allows $1.3 billion in the general fund to be used for other programs, helping balance his spending plan.
Progress on a long-sought bullet train would be slowed to a crawl under Schwarzenegger’s budget, if not halted altogether.
The state created the California High-Speed Rail Authority in 1996 with the vision of one day whisking passengers from Los Angeles to San Francisco in less than 21⁄2 hours, reaching speeds of 220 mph.
“Fly California, without ever leaving the ground” is the authority’s motto.
The authority’s board voted last month to limit the first phase of the project to a line between Anaheim and San Francisco. San Diego was excluded until later, in part because of regional proposals for “maglev” trains.
Ultramodern trains moving at 300 mph or more on magnetic levitation, instead of steel wheels, have been proposed from San Diego to Los Angeles and from San Diego to a new airport in the Imperial Valley. However, the fate of the larger high-speed rail project is uncertain. A public vote on a $9.95 billion rail bond, originally scheduled to appear on the statewide ballot in 2004, has been repeatedly postponed.
Now the governor is proposing that the budget for the high-speed rail authority, $14.3 billion this fiscal year, be reduced next year to $1.2 million – enough to keep the staff and pay the rent.
“A network of high-speed rail lines connecting cities throughout California would be a tremendous benefit to our state,” Schwarzenegger said in a newspaper commentary last month.
But the governor said the estimated cost of the system has increased to more than $40 billion. He said voters should not be asked to approve a $9.95 billion bond until a source for the rest of the funding is found.
The high-speed rail authority’s executive director, Mehdi Morshed, said about 75 contractors have been hired to begin engineering work. He said that if let go now, few of the “extraordinarily talented” contractors are likely to reapply.
“We have everything mobilized,” Morshed said. “We need the money to continue the work.”
The Senate version of the budget would provide $40 million for the high-speed rail authority, and the Assembly version $50 million – both less than the $68 million sought by the authority.
“If the governor prevails in the process, I think the project is for all practical purposes a goner,” Morshed said.