PHOENIX - The players at the table working to boost California's transportation funding began showing their cards Wednesday, when lawmakers in Sacramento began consideration of several bond-related propositions aimed at raising infrastructure revenue.
Gov. Jerry Brown in June called a special legislative session on transportation funding in a proclamation that cited $5.7 billion of annual unfunded road infrastructure repair requirements.
Gas taxes, the traditional source of road project funding, bring in only $2.3 billion a year.
The California Department of Transportation has said that something must be done because it no longer has a stable long-term revenue source that it can depend on.
That something will have to be at least somewhat bipartisan, because while Democrats have a sizeable majority in both the State Assembly and Senate, they do not have the two-thirds supermajorities that would be needed to pass a tax hike on their own.
On Wednesday, members of the Senate's extra session Transportation and Infrastructure Development Committee, chaired by San Jose Democrat Jim Beall, shot down an idea to redirect unsold high-speed rail bonds for road maintenance.
The committee voted 8-3 against SBX1-3, the rail bond redirection bill sponsored by Sen. Andy Vidak.
Vidak, a Republican who represents Fresno, Tulare, Kern, and Kings Counties, told the committee that voters should get a chance to revisit a 2008 bond measure which authorized $9 billion for the high-speed link between Southern California and the San Francisco Bay Area.
Vidak wanted the issue to go before voters again in June 2016, and his bill would have halted sales of bonds to support high speed rail except for funding to support the blended system in the San Francisco Bay area.
That project is coming in far over budget and is also being challenged in court with a trial set for early next year.
Sen. Robert Hertzberg, a San Fernando Valley Democrat, told the committee it should carefully consider its responsibility to be visionary in solving the state's problems and take care not to be shortsighted.
"The first 'bridge to nowhere' was the Golden Gate Bridge," Hertzberg said. "That's what it was called."
The committee discussed a proposed state constitutional amendment that would prohibit gas tax revenues from being used to secure the issuance of bonds, as well as prohibit the legislature from borrowing revenues from fees and taxes imposed by the state on vehicles or their use or operation.
In the end, the panel did not take a vote on it. Beall said he wanted to work on that measure with its sponsor, San Dimas Republican Bob Huff.
"I think it's important," Beall said.
The committee also discussed Beall's proposal to raise the gas tax and some registration fees in order to fund transportation. Californians already pay some of the highest taxes at the pump, according to the American Petroleum Institute, shelling out a total of almost 61 cents per gallon between state, excise, and federal taxes. The national average is about 49 cents per gallon. Gas tax increases are generally unpopular, and are considered a political third rail by many.
The committee passed Beall's measure 9-2.
Assemblyman Jim Frazier, a Sacramento-area Democrat, was also holding a roundtable on transportation funding late Wednesday.
