SACRAMENTO >> As the Legislature on Wednesday convened special sessions on transportation funding and health-care savings, lawmakers took their first step toward raising taxes and fees on motorists.
Members of a Senate committee tackling a multi-billion backlog of roadway maintenance passed legislation sponsored by Sen. Jim Beall, D-San Jose, that would generate $4 billion annually for repairs by increasing the gas tax 12 cents and boost vehicle registration fees.
“We don’t want to dump the cost of our horribly maintained infrastructure on the next generation,” Beall said. “It will be too late to solve the problem if we delay.”
The bill passed 9-2, with all the yes votes coming from Democrats. The two no votes came from Republicans, and two Republicans abstained.
The measure will be heard next in an appropriations committee before heading to the Senate floor, where support from Republican lawmakers will be vital to its survival because it needs a two-thirds vote to pass — and Democrats lost their supermajorities in both houses of the Legislature last year.
Democrats are floating several possible tax increases to repair potholes and bridges, but Republican lawmakers have rejected the ideas. They are instead urging the state to shift money from other programs to pay for infrastructure.
In Oakland Wednesday morning, Brown joked that as governor in 1982 it was the Republicans who wanted him to raise the gas tax, but he talked them down to a lower figure before he agreed.
“I can understand where the Republicans are coming from. But the potholes don’t wait; the congestion doesn’t wait,” he said at a news conference attended by Bay Area business leaders and Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins, D-San Diego.
Although Brown urged bipartisan cooperation in repairing the state’s roads, bridges, ports and other infrastructure, yet studiously avoided saying how he wants it done.
He wouldn’t say whether he supports Democratic moves to raise gas taxes or vehicle registration fees. And he wouldn’t say whether he supports Republican moves to cut jobs from Caltrans or to siphon money from the state’s high-speed rail and cap-and-trade greenhouse gas reduction programs.
“My approach to bringing people together is not to prematurely close the door,” he said. “I’m not going to put all my cards on the table this morning.
“This is a big challenge. How we’re going to get to the end of it isn’t exactly clear this morning.”
But he said he didn’t know how things would work out when he delved into California’s water infrastructure bond or closing the state’s yawning budget deficit. Yet both ended up getting done with bipartisan support, he noted.
Building such support now means not starting with any set-in-stone positions, he said.
“I’m staying above the fray here. … What you’re getting here is the opening chapter in a longer novel,” he said. “I find this particular approach of mine has worked in the past and I will continue to use it.”
Some Republicans have indicated they’re open to hiking the gas tax for the first time in more than 20 years — but only if the money is restricted to transportation improvements.
Brown telegraphed his support for raising prices at the pump in his January inaugural address when he asked Democrats and Republicans to do the “impossible” and craft an agreement to improve transportation infrastructure. Current revenue from California’s 42.35-cent gas tax covers only a fraction of the state’s annual highway repair needs.
Last week, business organizations such as the California Chamber of Commerce and the Silicon Valley Leadership Group said any deal should seek to raise at least $6 billion annually by raising gas and diesel taxes and increasing vehicle registration and license fees.
Assembly Speaker Atkins made no bones about it: The state needs more money to grapple with its aging roads and bridges, so California must move “to the next generation of transportation funding” with bipartisan buy-in on “a new, fair funding stream that benefits all California communities.”
Getting the Republican votes needed for any tax increase “could be a bumpy road,” Atkins said, but “the one thing we can’t afford is for it to be a dead end.”
Jim Wunderman, president and CEO of the Bay Area Council, said the world envies this region’s thriving economy, but “we can’t take it for granted” because the momentum is being threatened by inadequate infrastructure and housing. Taxes are unpopular, he agreed, but the major companies that are his organization’s members support whatever measures are needed to play catch-up after years of deferred maintenance.
Carl Guardino, CEO of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, said his organization’s 390 CEOs agreed “how critical it is that we move forward with thoughtful transportation improvements.” It’s not a tax-and-spend issue, he said, but rather “it’s an issue of invest and prosper.”
“We need a Butch and Sundance moment: ‘I’ll jump if you jump,’ “ Guardino said, evoking the image of Paul Newman’s and Robert Redford’s famed movie characters leaping from a cliff.
Republicans, he said, must be willing to make the leap for new tax revenue, and Democrats must be willing to make the leap for administrative reforms.
“We can do it together if we jump together,” Guardino said.
Oakland is a prime example of the overwhelming need, City Council President Lynette Gibson McElhaney said. Its bustling port is the nation’s fifth-busiest, supporting tens of thousands of jobs across the region, yet its roads are in terrible repair and the city can’t afford to repave them. The city has $42 million in shovel-ready road-repair projects, she estimated, without which residents and local commerce continue to deal with costly auto repairs while bicyclists risk life and limb.
Assembly Transportation Committee Chairman Jim Frazier said that after years of deferred maintenance before and during the Great Recession, “we now have a desperate need for funding, and now is the time to act” with “a ‘go bold or go home’ approach.”
Frazier, D-Oakley, later Wednesday convened a roundtable forum in Walnut Creek with other Assembly members from both sides of the aisle — including Susan Bonilla, D-Concord, and Catharine Baker, R-Dublin — as well as Caltrans Director Malcolm Doughterty and other local officials to discuss transportation funding solutions.
