CA: GOP seeks impact on bond initiatives

Riverside Press-Enterprise ^ | 2/16/06 | Jim Miller

[NormsRevenge]

SACRAMENTO - For the fourth year in a row, Assemblyman John J. Benoit, R-Palm Desert, has introduced a bill to overturn a 2002 law restricting school districts' ability to hire private companies for busing and other services.

The measure is part of a package of bills presented Wednesday that Assembly Republicans want reflected in any legislation asking voters to approve borrowing billions for new roads, schools and other public-works infrastructure.

But Benoit and other Assembly Republicans left open the possibility that they would support bond legislation even if it lacks their proposals.

Benoit said his bill, AB 2024, would help schools more efficiently use billions of dollars in proposed school-bond money.

"There are qualified people ready to do the work that schools are barred from hiring," Benoit said.

Steve Maviglio, a spokesman for Assembly Democrats, called Benoit's bill "a nonstarter" that has little to do with school bonds.

"It's a recycling of a bad idea that even the governor has shown no interest in," Maviglio said.

Gov. Schwarzenegger is pushing a $222.6 billion public-works construction plan that includes $68 billion in borrowing over the next decade.

Some Democratic lawmakers have introduced their own bond proposals.

A bond package could go before voters as early as June, but Schwarzenegger has said he also is open to a November bond initiative.

Putting a bond on the ballot requires the votes of at least some Republicans in the Democrat-majority Legislature.

Benoit, a former Coachella Valley school trustee, first introduced a contracting-out bill in 2003. It failed.

In summer 2004, Assembly Republicans insisted that the change be part of any budget deal. They ultimately dropped the demand. A similar bill died in 2005.

Besides Benoit's school contracting-out legislation, other pieces of the Assembly Republicans' bond package would:

Devote a portion of future general-fund revenue to roads, higher education, and other infrastructure projects.

Eliminate the Legislature's ability to suspend Prop. 42, the 2002 law transferring the sales-tax on gasoline to roads and public transit.

Pay back past Prop. 42 loans now totaling about$3 billion.

Allow private companies to design and build road projects instead of having state workers do all the design work.

Give governors the power to suspend environmental-review rules when federal or state officials declare an area to be at risk of an imminent levee breach or flood threat.

Suspend the requirement that levee-improvement projects cause "no net loss" in wildlife habitat.