December 2001

Table of Contents

Cal-Tax Home

Email Editor

Ballot Proposition 

Allan Zaremberg is president of the California Chamber of Commerce.

Traffic in California is bad, and getting worse. California has the third most deteriorated roads in the nation (only Missouri and Louisiana rank lower). More than 6,000 bridges and overpasses are officially classified as either structurally deficient, or no longer meeting highway safety/design standards.

And California has the most congested urban traffic in the nation (Los Angeles is first, San Francisco/Oakland is second, and San Diego, Sacramento, San Jose and San Bernardino/Riverside are all high on the list as well).

For California businesses, traffic congestion is a matter of dollars and cents. More than three-quarters of all the goods shipped in California travel by truck, and when those trucks are stuck in traffic, the meter is running for California’s businesses. That’s one of the reasons traffic congestion costs Californians an estimated $20.7 billion annually.

Proposition 42 on the March 2002 ballot will help provide funds to make our roads safer and to relieve traffic congestion – without new taxes and without a tax increase.

Proposition 42 would require that the sales tax on gasoline, a tax we are already paying at the pump, be used to help solve California’s transportation problems.

That’s why Proposition 42 is strongly supported by a broad coalition of business and taxpayer groups, labor and transportation, public safety, local governments and commuters – including the California Taxpayers’ Association and the California Chamber of Commerce, California State Automobile Association, California Business Roundtable, California Alliance for Jobs, California Fire Chiefs Association and California Organization of Police and Sheriffs.

Proposition 42 will put our tax dollars to work in every city and county in California. That money, about $1.4 billion a year, will help meet the cost of fixing potholes; repairing dangerous roads, bridges and overpasses; upgrading interchanges and highways; improving transit services, and speeding up delivery of ongoing traffic relief projects.

Proposition 42 will create a reliable source of transportation funding, which will make long-term planning possible. That planning in turn means the state can use our money more efficiently to meet its huge backlog of transportation improvements. To make sure we get the most for our dollars, Proposition 42 provides for an annual audit to help guarantee that those transportation projects are delivered on time and on budget.

Besides speeding up long-overdue work on transportation improvements, Proposition 42 also will lead to the creation of thousands of new jobs at a time California needs them most. Every dollar spent on highway improvements generates roughly six times that amount in economic benefits.

It all adds up to this: Proposition 42 means safer roads and traffic relief, without new taxes. To find out how you can join the California Taxpayers’ Association, the California Chamber of Commerce and the rest of the broad-based coalition and help pass Proposition 42 in the March 2002 election, call Dana Rambo at Taxpayers for Traffic Relief, (650) 340-7048. You can also get more information online at www.yesprop42.com.