PHOENIX – A California legislative committee tasked with fixing the state’s transportation funding woes kicked off its work Friday.
Committee members vowed not to let the difficulty of the choices facing them prevent a solution from emerging.
The committee, made up of five members of the state Senate and five from the state Assembly, was formed several weeks ago after the full legislature was unable to produce workable legislation during the closing days of the regular session in September.
Gov. Jerry Brown had already called a special session to focus on transportation funding which was running concurrently with the regular session, and the conference committee is now continuing as part of that special session.
California is facing a roughly $2.4 billion shortfall between its infrastructure maintenance requirements and what gas taxes are providing each year, the Brown administration has estimated.
Brown, a Democrat, proposed his own $3.6 billion framework in September that would include a new $65 vehicle registration fee as well as hikes to the gas and diesel taxes. That idea is popular with state and local government advocates, but it did not find a footing with lawmakers in the closing days of the session.
“I think recent events have put road repair and maintenance at the top of our minds,” said Sen. Jim Beall, a San Jose Democrat who co-chairs the conference committee, referencing recent storms that have caused road washouts in California and South Carolina.
“There is widespread agreement that the problem is dire and the need for solutions is urgent,” Beall said. “Lots of ideas have been generated, and now it’s time to sort through those ideas.”
Democrats have majorities in both the Assembly and Senate, but not the two-thirds supermajority that the California’s constitution requires for tax increases.
Republicans have opposed raising gas taxes or other fees without additional oversight of the California Department of Transportation and more efficient use of general fund money for infrastructure.
Brown’s proposal includes some of those measures, California State Transportation Agency secretary Brian Kelly told the committee Friday, though Republicans on the panel said they think plan is too reliant on petroleum use remaining constant and might not include enough Republican policy concepts.
A sticking point is weight fees charged to commercial vehicles that are currently used to pay debt service on bonds issued for transportation projects. Republicans are interested in redirecting some of those fees for other transportation needs, but the Brown administration has refused to back down.
Keely Bosler, chief deputy director of the State Department of Finance, told the committee that debt service on the state’s bonds is a growing part of the state’s expenditures and that shifting the fees would cause an annual $1 billion hit on the general fund.
Jimmy Gomez, an Assembly Democrat from Los Angeles who is co-chairing the committee with Beall, said the committee has a duty to face the problem now even if it might be unpleasant.
“We can no longer kick the can down the road. We have to deal with this problem in a fiscally responsible manner,” Gomez said.
Gomez said the choices the committee has to make will be hard for some lawmakers and some of the public to stomach, but said that cannot be a deterrent.
“It is our fiscal responsibility to make these hard decisions,” he said.
If the committee does agree on legislation, it will still need to be approved by both full houses before it reaches Brown’s desk.
