State Budget Cuts Funds for Transit District

RECENT NEWS (Jan 22): The radical proposal by our Governor to eliminate the sales tax on gasoline and diesel fuels is clearly a wrong approach to resolving our State's budget problems. It would, besides stimulating increased unemployment, ensure that State support of public transit will disappear, in spite of recent court rulings. Read the following to learn the details.

The first two hours of the video at the right constitutes a truly educational experience—just how the politics in Sacramento works. It's a video of an informational hearing on January 21, 2010, before the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee chaired by Senator Denise Ducheny from San Diego. The topic is the Governor's proposal to eliminate the current sales tax on gasoline and diesel fuels. This would ensure that state support for public transit in California would completely disappear. Representatives from all the relevant admisitrative agencies are present (including many transit districts), along with representatives from a number of environmental groups, so you can get a good feeling as to what the political flavor is in the State. That all of those addressing the Committee spoke in opposition to the Governor's proposal is remarkable. One wonders how such a proposal has managed to get as far as it has.

We highly recommend that you have a look at this video. Just click on it, and put it up on your screen using the “full screen” button. Note that the first minute or so has no sound, but not to worry. If you don't have time to watch the full two hours, note that you can click on a particular time in the bottom time bar, at which point the video will reload and start at that time. The elapsed time is shown at the left. Here are some highlights:

  • The hearing itself starts at 00:02:00 when Chair Ducheny summarizes the hearing topic, with the Governor's proposals to be presented by the Legislative Analyist's Office (“LAO”) and the Department of Finance. (“Finance”). At about 00:03:00, she calls on Jessica Digiambattista of the LAO to make the initial presentation. She is followed by her co-worker Eric Thronson.
  • At about 00:10:50 Ducheny calls on Mark Monroe of the Department of Finance. She asks about funding for transit at approximately 00:12:00, and is obviously not pleased with Monroe's response.
  • At 00:13:30 Ducheny calls on Senator Alan Lowenthal from Long Beach (“This is mind-boggling …”). Lowenthal provides a clear history of state funding for transit—very informative.
  • At 00:29:40 Senator Mark Leno from San Francisco speaks. Mark Monroe's responses to his questions are not appreciated by Leno.
  • At 00:42:40 Ducheny invites Caltrans Director Randell (Randy) Iwasaki to speak. He also responds to a few questions asked by senators. It's clear that Caltrans' focus is mainly on roads and highways.
  • At 01:00:39 Ducheny invites James Earp, the Vice-Chair of the California Transportation Commission (CTC) to speak. He finds the proposal “troubling” and “puzzling”, and urges that a better solution be found.
  • At 01:18:30 Josh Shaw of the California Transit Association (CTA) speaks. He is clearly outraged by the proposal, and provides a clear description of the lawsuit filed by CTA against the State, recently decided in CTA's favor by the State Supreme Court. To avoid having to follow the law by reducing transit funding to zero is obviously wrong. For his written comments on this hearing (and the source of this video) click on this link. Josh now sends us email alert messages regarding transit issues, which we'll post from time to time.
  • At 01:25:30 DeAnn Baker of the California State Association of Counties (CSAC) provides extensive detailed information regarding transportation funding issues.
  • At 01:42:45 our own Senator Joe Simitian offers a few remarks that indicate that he too is troubled by the Governor's proposal.
  • At 01:48:20 Kathryn Phillips of the Environmental Defense Fund offers to provide information about what other states are doing with regard to this issue—an offer that is welcomed by Chair Ducheny.
  • Right after a good statement by Michael Endicott of Sierra Club California, at 01:54:30 Barry Broad of the Teamsters Union offers some strong language in opposing the Governor's proposal, during which he gets into it a bit with Chair Ducheny. Is this a good lesson in how not to be a persuasive lobbiest?

Meanwhile, here's a snapshot of our local situation:

17 Express Bus

The Highway 17 Express loads passengers in downtown Santa Cruz on a Friday afternoon last November. There was not enough space on the bus, and many of those waiting were left behind to wait for the next bus. Photo by Debbie Bulger.

The Highway 17 Express bus service between Santa Cruz and San Jose—a service that began following the 1989 earthquake and has been consistently improved since then—provides the essential public transportation link to the outside world for Santa Cruz County.* If you want to go to San Jose, or San Francisco, or their airports, or for that matter, anywhere else in the world, this is your bus. Providing 26 round trips on every weekday and 15 round trips on weekends and holidays, the Highway 17 Express is increasingly popular. It's so popular, in fact, that on many trips there are more passengers than seats on the bus, so riders must either stand or sit on the floor for the 50-minute ride to San Jose.

But don't expect this service to improve any time soon.

What you can do

  • Write to State Senator Joe Simitian and Assemblymember Bill Monning. Urge them to work to ensure the sale of the Transit Bonds as soon as possible, so that work can continue on the MetroBase facility and that our aging and polluting diesel buses can be replaced. Also urge them to advocate for effective long-term State funding for public transit.
  • Stay informed. We'll update this page as the situation changes, so bookmark it and visit it from time to time. And feel free to send a note to our Transit District (click here) to let them know you appreciate the quality of service they provide.

As a result of demands by Governor Schwarzenegger and minority members of the State Legislature, the State budget adopted on February 20 eliminates major support for public transit systems statewide. The result is a loss for the Santa Cruz County Transit District (METRO) of approximately $46 million over the years 2009 through 2013, an amount that is far from being offset by the expected $5 million in Federal Economic Stimulus funds. Particularly egregious is that the State Transit Assistance Program, which would have provided approximately $24 million to METRO, is being phased out statewide.

In addition, METRO will not receive $22 million from the Public Transportation Modernization, Improvement and Service Enhancement Account, which derives from Proposition 1B, a $3.6 billion bond measure passed in 2006 to benefit public transit, but which has yet to provide any money to public transit owing to diversion of funds by Governor Schwarzenegger and lack of the sale of the bonds.

The transit funds that are being cut would have gone primarily toward completing the MetroBase maintenance, storage and administrative facility ($22 million) and replacing 30 diesel buses ($15 million) with cleaner compressed natural gas vehicles. Additional maintenance and improvement projects make up the remainder.

METRO is currently under order from the California Air Resources Board to replace its diesel buses with less-polluting compressed natural gas buses by 2012. However, unless that deadline is extended [update April 14: This date has been extended to 2015.], METRO will have to reduce its fleet from the current 83 buses to 52 buses, which would mean a 38% decrease in METRO bus service and the loss of jobs for 150 METRO employees.

Halting construction of the MetroBase facility will not only mean that our bus fleet will not be efficiently and effectively maintained; it will also mean the elimination of some 325 jobs in 2009.

Without funding, progress toward complying with statewide global warming laws—AB 32 and SB 375—will just not happen.

This page was last updated on February 10, 2010.

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* For a description of how the Highway 17 Express service came into being, click here.


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