Posted on 03/05/2006 12:50:27 PM PST by NormsRevenge
With the clock quickly ticking down to a Friday deadline, political observers are offering a June gloom forecast on the odds that California voters will see an infrastructure bond on the primary ballot.
Many note that just last week, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger took a significant step backward from his earlier position that a bond measure aimed at shoring up California's crumbling infrastructure must move forward this spring.
"The key thing here is that, if you're lucky you can do it for the June ballot," Schwarzenegger told reporters at a Capitol news conference Thursday. "Both parties agree that we should not really, you know, kind of think about that (June ballot) so much, but let's think about doing it well and doing the right thing. ... One way or another we are going to get it done."
Jack Pitney, government professor for Claremont McKenna College in the Los Angeles area, said the governor's comments, coupled with the sheer complexity of the issue, suggest voters will not see the measure until the November election.
Next Friday, March 10, is the deadline to place a measure on the June 6 primary ballot.
"When Gov. Schwarzenegger isn't being optimistic, that's a clear sign of slow progress," Pitney said. "When Gov. Schwarzenegger is cloudy, you shouldn't predict sunshine."
Legislators from around the region are also gloomy in their forecasts.
"I don't think we will make the June ballot, but there is always room for a miracle," said Sen. Christine Kehoe, D-San Diego. "I think we are aiming for November."
According to Sen. Denise Moreno Ducheny, D-San Diego, June is iffy because the governor is pushing to roll a wide variety of infrastructure proposals into one package. There just isn't time, she said, to address all the issues involved.
In the Thursday news conference, Schwarzenegger defended his global approach to addressing the need for more roads, schools, prisons, courthouses, flood-control levees and water projects.
"Why not sit down and look at all of those things?" he asked. "It's not like we have to redesign the wheel. We know what we need."
Fixing the system
Ducheny said another obstacle to making the primary ballot is Republican lawmakers' push to add features they have long wanted ---- such as relaxed environmental laws and a guarantee that gas sales-tax revenue funds only transportation ---- before offering up their support. Although the Democratic Party controls both houses, some GOP votes are needed to reach the required two-thirds threshold.
"Those are really policy issues," Ducheny said of the GOP requests. "They ought to be done in policy bills."
Sen. Dennis Hollingsworth, R-Murrieta, said, however, that reform of the state's environmental review process needs to be part of the bond package.
"We need to make sure that, as a part of that, we are reforming the bureaucratic system in Sacramento that prevents us from building roads, freeways, schools and levees until years after they are needed," Hollingsworth said. "We don't think there is any point in going into so much debt unless we fix the system that has caused part of the problem."
Assemblyman Mark Wyland, R-Escondido, said lawmakers also need to figure out how much borrowing California can handle before putting a measure on the ballot.
"Anyone who drives on our freeways knows that we need more roads," Wyland said. "We just need to make sure we can afford ... the interest and principal on the bonds out of our future budgets. It's just like a mortgage on a house. It's good to buy a house, but you've got to make sure that the mortgage is something you can afford."
Schwarzenegger, in his annual State of the State address in January, proposed issuing $68 billion in bonds between June and 2014 to launch the biggest public works campaign in California since the one former Gov. Pat Brown marshalled in the 1960s.
The general obligation bonds would be paid out of the state's general fund over many years. The money would not come directly out of taxpayers' pocketbooks, but Sacramento's obligation to pay off debt would cut into available funding for state programs.
Wyland and Assembly Republicans have proposed a pay-as-you-go alternative that could lead to less borrowing. That plan would spend $36 billion over the next 10 years directly out of the state's annual revenues.
On the Democratic side, Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland, introduced legislation to place a $10 billion bond on the ballot to fix levees and build transportation systems.
Millions at stake
California's cities and counties, and a host of business groups that would directly benefit from infrastructure projects, launched a campaign last week to spur the Legislature and governor to come up with a compromise by Friday. Chris McKenzie, executive director for the League of California Cities in Sacramento, said the local-government-and-business coalition is not concerned about the precise mix in the package; the group just wants something on the ballot in June.
Using Schwarzenegger's proposal as a yardstick, as much as $620 million could be at stake for San Diego County and $265 million for Riverside County, for transportation alone.
In San Diego County, road-building agencies could get $250 million for widening Interstate 5 from the Interstate 805 merge to Highway 76 in Oceanside, $110 million for widening I-805 and building Interstate 905 along the border, and $100 million for widening Interstate 15.
In Riverside County, $265 million is targeted for widening severely congested Interstate 215 between Murrieta and Moreno Valley. That freeway ---- bisecting the county's fastest-growing area ---- wasn't slated for improvements until the middle of next decade, and a bond could accelerate that by years, said George Johnson, Riverside County's transportation director.
"The cities and counties throughout the state have done a lot of things to bring funding to the table," Johnson said.
Examples include Riverside County's Measure A, a half-percent sales tax that funds freeways, and its regional developer fee of $7,200 for each new house that builds new four-lane and six-lane roads. San Diego County's TransNet, also a half-percent sales tax, is another example.
"Those are going to go a long way toward investing in transportation systems," Johnson said. "But we also need the state to step up to the plate and fund their share of what needs to be done."
Unless the governor and lawmakers step up to the plate quickly, the window of opportunity to put a bond on the June ballot will close.
Some suggest narrow focus
The only way to seize the opportunity at this point, Ducheny said, is to simplify matters. She suggests focusing on a $10 billion to $12 billion measure directed at the state's most immediate needs, which she considers transportation, levees and housing. Schools, prisons, courthouses and other projects should be saved for later, she said.
"Our shot at June is to focus on the things that are on the top of everybody's lists," Ducheny said.
The way Kehoe sees it, Sacramento would have been better positioned to make the June ballot had Schwarzenegger not spent the weekend in Columbus, Ohio, for a bodybuilding event.
"I am reluctant to criticize the governor, but this is the kind of work period when it would be good to have the governor in the Capitol encouraging Democrats and Republicans to work together to put a measure on the June ballot," Kehoe said. "This is where the governor's lack of follow-through really shows."
For his part, Schwarzenegger said he offered to stay in Sacramento if legislative leaders determined his presence was needed.
The Field Poll determined last week that Schwarzenegger's infrastructure proposal enjoyed broad support among all major voting groups in the state, and that 56 percent of Californians overall backed it. Still, said Pitney, if the ballot measure moves to November, the outcome will be less clear.
"It will be a more complicated mission because simultaneously he (Schwarzenegger) will be trying to get people to vote for him and for the measure," Pitney said.
For that reason, Kehoe would prefer to avoid the general election.
"I worry that, with the politics of the November election, the bond will become a political football," she said.
On the other hand, conventional wisdom would suggest that the bond's chances would be better in November, said Shaun Bowler, a UC Riverside political science professor. General elections tend to have a broader and more liberal electorate that is more comfortable with government spending proposals, he said.
As for politics, there wouldn't be much room for candidates to challenge Schwarzenegger's re-election on the basis of his support for a bond, Bowler said.
"Arnold can go back and say, 'Look, I'm trying to fix something here and the Democrats are just being obstructionists,' " he said.
I won't argue that California desperately needs to improve its infrastructure.
But if they'd spend the money they're currently wasting in so many ways, they wouldn't have to keep borrowing billions of dollars.
That is the rub isn't it. California is squandering its substantial public resources on a feel good, public safety net that, of recent, is closer to a foreign aid package than domestic policy.
It is a disappointment that the CRP appears hell bent to support a group that appears unwilling to reverse this ominous trend but appears, instead, to have fallen in line with other progressives who want sharp increases in taxes, through massive additional borrowing, to further expand the public largess.
The party is partially at fault, but these bond proposals wouldn't occur without voter approval.
As long as the voters continue to say "please take billions more from me" it's not going to stop.
Opposing Any Further Increase In State Or County Indebtedness, Etc.
That we, the members of the California State Grange, do express our opinion as being opposed to any further increase in our state or county bonded indebtedness, rate of taxation or total tax levy, whether direct or indirect, until such a time as our population shall have increased within the state to such an extent as will make our funded debt and our taxes to be raised per capita more nearly in proportion to a sane figure based upon the earning power of all individual citizens.
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