BILL ANALYSIS Ó
SENATE TRANSPORTATION & HOUSING COMMITTEE BILL NO: AB 57
SENATOR MARK DESAULNIER, CHAIRMAN AUTHOR: Beall
VERSION:
3/12/2012
Analysis by: Art Bauer FISCAL: Yes
Hearing date: June 12, 2012
SUBJECT:
Metropolitan Transportation Commission
DESCRIPTION:
This bill increases the membership of the Metropolitan
Transportation Commission (MTC) from 19 to 21 members.
ANALYSIS:
MTC serves as both the regional transportation planning agency,
a state designation, and as the metropolitan planning
organization (MPO), a federal designation for the nine-county
San Francisco Bay Area. The Bay Area counties include Alameda,
Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa
Clara, Solano, and Sonoma. When created in 1970, MTC was the
first statutorily-created transportation planning agency in
California.
MTC is responsible for preparing the regional transportation
plan, a comprehensive long range planning document that
establishes planning and funding goals for the development of
mass transit, highway, airport, seaport, railroad, bicycle, and
pedestrian facilities. Other responsibilities include
prioritizing regional transportation investments, distributing
certain state and federal transportation funds to local
agencies, and reviewing local projects to determine their
compatibility with the regional transportation plan. Changes
over the years in state and federal laws have strengthened the
roles of regional transportation planning agencies and MPOs, and
have given MTC an increasingly important role in financing Bay
Area transportation improvements. More recently, SB 375
(Steinberg) assigns the leadership to MTC for the integration of
land use and transportation planning through the preparation of
a sustainable communities strategy as part of the regional
transportation plan.
Existing law establishes a 19-person governing board, 16 of whom
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are voting members. The appointing authorities of the voting
members are as follows:
1.Two members from the City and County of San Francisco, with
one member appointed by the mayor and one member appointed by
the board of supervisors.
2.Eight members, two each from the counties of Alameda, Contra
Costa, San Mateo, and Santa Clara. The city selection
committee in each county selects one member and the board of
supervisors select one member.
3.Four members, one each from the counties of Marin, Napa,
Solano, and Sonoma. The city selection committees of each
county nominate three persons whose names are forwarded to
their respective boards of supervisors. Each board then
selects a city-county representative from its county.
4.One member appointed by the Association of Bay Area
Governments (ABAG).
5.One member appointed by the Bay Conservation and Development
Commission (BCDC).
Three non-voting members are appointed as follows:
1. One member appointed by the California Secretary of
Business, Transportation & Housing.
2. One member appointed by the United States Secretary of
Transportation.
3. One member appointed by the United State Secretary of
Housing & Urban Development.
This bill :
1.Increases the membership of MTC to 21 by adding two new voting
members, the Mayor of Oakland and the Mayor of San Jose. The
mayors may serve or may appoint a member of their respective
city councils.
2.Requires that the BCDC appoint a member, provided that member
shall be a resident of the City of San Francisco and shall be
approved by the Mayor of San Francisco.
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3.Provides that no more than three members of MTC's governing
board may be residents of the same county.
4.Sets the initial term for new commissioners appointed by the
mayors of Oakland and San Jose to end in February 2015.
COMMENTS:
1. Purpose . According to the bill's author, the reasons for
giving seats to the cities of San Jose and Oakland include the
following:
They are among the largest Bay Area cities in terms
of both population and households.
They will each play a leading role in the Bay Area's
efforts to comply with the state's greenhouse gas
reduction requirements.
Their combined total of 1.2 million workers
represents 1/3 of the entire Bay Area workforce.
Oakland and San Jose have a combined total of
183,000 daily transit commuters, which represents more
than 50 percent of all transit commuters in the Bay Area
as a whole.
In the case of adding a third representative for San
Francisco, the bill codifies BCDC's informal practice of
appointing a resident of San Francisco to MTC.
The bill's sponsor, MTC, argues that a change in the
representation structure is needed to implement the
requirements of SB 375 (Steinberg), which seek to focus new
development within the existing urban core and near public
transit stations. To achieve this goal, MTC writes that "a
strong partnership with the cities of San Francisco, Oakland,
and San Jose is essential." In light of this need, MTC
argues, "The time has come to modify the Commission's
structure so that it ensures representation for the Bay Area's
three largest cities."
2. History of MTC appointment . MTC's existing arrangement for
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selecting board members seeks to balance population and
jurisdictional representation between the five large counties
and the four small ones. To meet this goal, the larger
counties--Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo, and Santa
Clara--are assigned two members, one representing the board of
supervisors and one selected by a city selection committee.
When formed in 1970, San Francisco's representation on MTC
presented a unique problem because it was a consolidated city
and county, it was the region's third most populous county,
and its most populous city in the region. To resolve the
issue of representation for San Francisco, the legislation
creating MTC gave both the mayor and the board of supervisors
appointments. In remaining smaller counties--Marin, Napa,
Solano, and Sonoma--to balance city and county representation,
the cities nominate slates for an appointment to MTC and the
boards of supervisors select an appointee from the slate. The
representation scheme balanced large and small jurisdictions.
3. MTC and the management of regional transportation planning .
Among MTC's important activities is to manage the flow of
transportation revenue among the Bay Area's cities, counties,
and transit agencies. Through the regional planning process,
MTC establishes policies and priorities that govern the
expenditure of transportation funds. MTC also coordinates
funding for transportation projects between local governments,
transit districts, and the State Department of Transportation
(Caltrans). Because of MTC's success at managing the linkage
between transportation planning, policy making, and funding,
it is recognized as among the most effective regional planning
agencies in the country and the benchmark of excellence among
similar agencies. MTC achieved this reputation through
collaboration and consensus building. Contentious votes are a
rarity at its meetings.
After legislation to merge the two agencies failed in 2002,
MTC and ABAG established a process to improve inter-agency
collaboration with the formation of the Joint Policy Committee
(JPC). According to a report of a joint MTC-ABAG task force,
the purpose of the JPC is "to advance integrated regional
planning and. . .to comment on and review any substantial
regional plans or strategies that are devised by either
agency. . ." In 2004, SB 849 (Torlakson), Chapter 849,
added the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) to
the JPC, required that every county in the region be
represented on the JPC, and required it to review and comment
on the regional transportation plan, the ABAG housing element,
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and the BAAQMD ozone attainment and clean air plans. AB 2094
(DeSlaunier), Chapter 442, Statutes of 2008, added the San
Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission to the
JPC.
With the enactment of SB 375 and its requirements placing a
greater emphasis on coordinating land use and transportation
investment decisions, MTC is attempting through this bill to
strengthen the decision-making process for implementing SB 375
and its goal of better land use planning to reduce automobile
travel. To this end MTC, in recent years has become ABAG's
major funder. In addition, JPC's member agencies are using
the required update of the regional transportation plan to
produce an integrated regional transportation and land use
plan that encompasses the goals of SB 375.
RELATED LEGISLATION:
SB 878 (DeSaulnier) requires the Joint Policy Committee to
access the alternative institutional concepts for addressing the
emerging regional issues resulting from the requirements to
limit greenhouse gases, the Bay Area's need to create a regional
economic development strategy, and the land use and
transportation policies of SB 375. Pending in Assembly Local
Government.
SB 1117 (DeSaulnier) reorganizes the governance of four San
Francisco Bay Area regional agencies: the Bay Area Air Quality
Management District, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission,
the Bay Conservation and Development Commission, and the
Association of Bay Area Governments. Held in Senate
Appropriations.
Assembly Votes:
Floor: 71-5
Appr: 16-1
L Gov: 9-0
Trans: 13-0
POSITIONS: (Communicated to the committee before noon on
Wednesday,
June 6, 2012)
SUPPORT: Metropolitan Transportation Commission (sponsor)
Alameda County Transportation Commission
Alameda-Contra Costa Transit District
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American Federation of State, County, and
Municipal Employees
City of Oakland
City and County of San Francisco
City of San Jose
Contra Costa Transportation Authority
East Bay Economic Development Alliance
Napa County Board of Supervisors
San Francisco County Transportation Commission
Santa Clara Chamber of Commerce and Visitors
Bureau
Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors
Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority
Silicon Valley Leadership Group
Cities Association of Santa Clara County
Sen. Loni Hancock, California Ninth Senate
District
Alameda County Transportation Commission
OPPOSED: Solano Board of Supervisors
Bay Conservation and Development Commission.