This article is from Cal-Tax Digest, published
by the California Taxpayers' Association.
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The governor should be applauded for raising transportation to a higher level of importance in the political/legislative agenda. He has called for $3 billion in pay-as-you-go funding over the next four years that will provide more miles of pavement per dollar invested. Money will go into cement, not interest payments.

In addition, the governor proposes a $2.2 billion general obligation bond issue that voters can approve on the November ballot. It makes sense to reduce borrowing when surplus revenues are piling up, as they are now in record amounts. Yet when financing capital improvements that will benefit future Californians who will be paying off the debt, bonds are a defensible part of the mix of funding concepts. Unlike local general obligation bonds, state bonds do not raise taxes.

Coming up with the funding is only part of the gridlock solution. The question is whether Caltrans is up to the task of getting myriad projects designed and built without delays. The Legislature's nonpartisan fiscal analyst is among those skeptical of the state's ability to gear up for such a mammoth engineering program.

Governor Davis has indicated willingness to turn to the private sector to help get the job done, and that, too, is a step in the right direction.

The California Taxpayers' Association (Cal-Tax) agrees that the Legislature and governor must be vigilant to prevent the building program from being caught in a bureaucratic traffic jam in Sacramento.

California needs all of its resources, public and private, to ease gridlock on freeways. However, short-sighted court decisions based on archaic constitutional language have made it hard for the state to utilize the private sector's talents in this area.

That is why a broad coalition of business, taxpayers, labor and government interests qualified the Fair Competition and Taxpayers Savings Act for the November ballot. It will provide flexibility to state and local governments can form public-private partnerships with qualified engineering and architecture firms when it makes sense to do so. The 49 other states are already doing it.

What's at stake? Billions of dollars in wasted time as freeway bottlenecks keep commuters from their jobs. The American Highway Users Alliance, a 68-year-old highway lobbying group, recently reported that commuters in Los Angeles, the San Fernando Valley and Orange County are wasting $1.1 billion a year idling in traffic at four of the region's most congested interchanges.

It will be increasingly difficult for California to sustain its economic growth when its workers and commerce are stuck in traffic.

-Larry McCarthy is president of the California Taxpayers' Association (Cal-Tax).

Larry McCarthy