BILL ANALYSIS
SENATE TRANSPORTATION & HOUSING COMMITTEE BILL NO: SB 607
SENATOR ALAN LOWENTHAL, CHAIRMAN AUTHOR: ducheny
VERSION: 4/13/09
Analysis by: Art Bauer FISCAL: yes
Hearing date: April 14, 2009
SUBJECT:
Imperial county transportation commission
DESCRIPTION:
This bill creates the Imperial County Transportation Commission
and provides that it is the successor agency to the Imperial
Valley Association of Governments (IVAG).
ANALYSIS:
Existing law:
1. Authorizes local agencies to voluntarily form joint
powers agencies for purposes of conducting regional
transportation planning, the administration of the terms
and conditions of the Transportation Development Act TDA,
and related planning activities. (The TDA program,
California's basis transit funding program, is funded from
a percent local sales tax in each county.) The County of
Imperial, the seven cities in the county, and the Imperial
Irrigation District (IID) formed a joint powers agency to
perform regional transportation planning and related
activities.
2. Creates several transportation planning agencies for
carrying out regional transportation planning,
administering the terms and conditions of the TDA, and
related planning activities.
3. Designates the Southern California Association of
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Governments (SCAG), the multicounty transportation planning
agency for the counties of Imperial, Los Angeles, Orange,
Riverside, San Bernardino, and Ventura.
4. Transfers the responsibility for allocating TDA revenues
in the jurisdiction of SCAG to county transportation
agencies and to Imperial County.
5. Requires county transportation planning agencies with
the jurisdiction of the SCAG-the Los Angeles Metropolitan
Transportation Agency, the Orange County Transportation
Authority, the Riverside County Transportation Commission,
and the San Bernardino Associated Governments-to enter into
various agreements with SCAG pertaining to the division of
responsibility between SCAG and the county commission for
conducting regional transportation planning.
6. Authorizes SCAG to prepare the long-range regional
transportation plan (RTP), to coordinate the plans of the
county commissions with the RTP, to resolve conflicts
between the plans of the county commissions and the RTP, to
prepare the overall work program for its area of
jurisdiction as a condition of receiving federal funds, and
other related tasks.
This bill:
1. Creates the Imperial County Transportation Commission
(ICTC) to conduct specified transportation planning and
related activities within the incorporated and
unincorporated areas of Imperial County.
2. Establishes a governing board consisting of up to 15
members of whom ten will be voting members, one designated
nonvoting member, and up to up to four nonvoting,
ex-officio members. The ten voting members include one
representative from each of seven incorporated cities in
the county, two members of the Imperial County board of
supervisors, one member representing the IID. A designated
nonvoting member representing the state Department of
Transportation (Caltrans). The four nonvoting, ex-officio
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members, whom the voting members may invite to participate
on the governing board include, one member representing the
State of Baja California, one member representing the
municipality of Mexicali, Mexico, one member representing
the national government of Mexico, and one member
representing any federally recognized Native American tribe
in Imperial County.
3. Authorizes the voting members of the board to elected
officers, establish procedures, retain and set the
compensation of staff, establish board committees composed
of at least three board members, adopt an annual budget,
and an administrative code, and commission an annual audit.
4. Authorizes the board to appoint a technical advisory
committee of all the transit operators in the county, all
the incorporated cities in the county, the county of
Imperial County, and Caltrans.
5. Authorizes ICTC to use up to one percent of the revenues
in the local transportation fund for the agency's
administrative and program responsibilities.
6. Mandates that ICTC, in consultation with its members and
the public, prepare a three-to-five-year short-range
transportation plan that includes a transportation
improvement program to include all transportation projects
funded with state, local, and federal funds in the county.
The development of the transportation improvement program
shall be coordinated with SCAG and shall be consistent with
SCAG's regional transportation plan.
7. Mandates ICTC and SCAG to enter into a memorandum of
understanding specifying the process for preparing the
transportation improvement program.
8. Authorizes ICTC to continue to manage the TDA program,
including allocating funds to transit operators and local
streets and roads.
9. Authorizes ICTC to prepare the short-range transit plan
require by TDA.
COMMENTS:
1. Purpose . This bill coverts a voluntary organization, the
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Imperial Valley Council of Governments, to a statutory
regional transportation planning agency, the ICTC.
2. Background . For about 30 years the county, cities, and
the IID of Imperial have operated a regional transportation
planning agency, the Imperial Valley Association of
Governments (IVAG), created by a joint powers agreement
among the participating jurisdictions. This bill formalizes
in statute the joint powers agency by creating the ICTC.
There is a separate transportation agency in Imperial
County called the Imperial County Local Transportation
Authority, which manages a local, voter-approved
transportation sales tax. The tax was scheduled to expire
in 2010, but last November, Imperial County voters approved
a 40-year continuation of the tax.
3. Governing board composition is unusual . One of the
unusual features of this bill is that the governing board
includes a special district, the IID. County officials
argue that most of the roads in Imperial County are
adjacent to canals and drains operated by IID, or adjacent
to the right-of-way of IID electric transmission lines. The
philosophy underlying the governing boards of statutorily
created regional transportation planning agencies is that
they are forums for representatives from general purpose
local governments, all of whom have both transportation and
land use responsibilities. The governing boards may serve
as a venue to coordinate intergovernmental land use and
transportation decisions. This is especially important
with the increasing emphasis on coordinating land use and
transportation decision, as exemplified by SB 375
(Steinberg), Chapter 728, Statutes of 2008. If this model
were followed elsewhere, the Metropolitan Water District
would have a voting position on the governing boards of the
four county transportation commissions in the Los Angeles
basin. While Imperial County appears rural today, by 2020,
it will likely have sufficient population to be designated
a small metropolitan planning organization, much as Shasta
and Butte counties are today. The committee may wish to
consider an amendment to remove the IID from the governing
board and assign a position for the IID on the permanent
technical advisory committee. The committee may further
wish to consider an amendment that would replace the IID
representative with a citizen representative appointed by
the ICTC governing board. This is a practice followed by
many other transportation planning agencies, including the
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Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA), which is
also located in the jurisdiction of SCAG.
4. Unclear who appoints the Caltrans representative . As
amended, this bill removes the governor's authority to
appoint a representative to ICTC's governing board. Where
there is a state representative on the governing board of a
regional transportation planning agency, the governor makes
the appointment. Typically, the governor appoints the
Caltrans district director in which the planning agency is
located. In the case of ICTC, it would be the Caltrans
district 11 director who is responsible for managing
Caltrans' programs and projects in San Diego and Imperial
counties. The formulation of the appointment in the current
version of the bill has the Department of Transportation
making the appointment. A "department" cannot make an
appointment. The committee may wish to amend the bill
authorizing the governor to appoint a representative of
Caltrans, as a nonvoting, ex-officio member, to the
governing board of ICTC.
5. Limits funding for administrative purposes . Existing law
generally provides regional transportation planning
agencies to use up to three percent of TDA revenues, which
are deposited in the Local Transportation Fund, for
planning and administrative purposes. That formulation was
in this bill as it was introduced. A recent amendment to
this bill limits funding for administrative and planning
purposes to one percent. The argument of county officials
is that the local sales tax program limits administrative
cost to one percent of sales tax revenues, and this bill
should be consistent with that practice. The local sales
tax program however, is a project development and
construction program. As such, the cost of the project
development, primarily environmental documentation,
preliminary engineering, and final engineering, is assigned
to the specific projects. There is no need for the sales
tax agency to perform ongoing transportation planning,
because it will be the responsibility of ICTC. The
conventional formulation provides ample local discretion to
determining the amount of funds for administration and
planning, as the governing board can set the amount at any
level, including one percent, up to the three percent cap.
With the growing expectations of regional planning, as
described above, the obligations of ICTC will undoubtedly
grow in the future. The committee may wish to amend the
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bill to reflect the language as introduced, which allows up
to three percent of the funds to be used for carrying out
ICTC's responsibilities.
POSITIONS: (Communicated to the Committee before noon on
Wednesday,
April 8, 2009)
SUPPORT: None received.
OPPOSED: None received.