BILL ANALYSIS Ó
SENATE COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
DEVELOPMENT
Senator Jim Beall, Chair
2015 - 2016 First Extraordinary
Bill No: SBX1 10 Hearing Date: 9/1/2015
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|Author: |Bates |
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|Version: |7/16/2015 |
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|Urgency: |No |Fiscal: |Yes |
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|Consultant|Eric Thronson |
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SUBJECT: Regional transportation capital improvement funds
DIGEST: This bill requires the California Department of
Transportation (Caltrans) to apportion annually to each regional
transportation planning agency the amount of county share
funding identified in the most recently adopted Fund Estimate.
ANALYSIS:
Existing law:
1)Assigns to the California Transportation Commission (CTC) the
responsibility of advising and assisting the administration
and the Legislature in formulating and evaluating state
policies and plans for California's transportation programs.
A large part of this responsibility currently includes
approving various programs of transportation projects funded
by state and federal funds and proposed by both the state and
regional transportation planning entities.
2)Requires regional transportation planning agencies to
determine a short-term list of specific transportation
projects through a public input process and based on the
region's reasonably expected revenues. This project list is
called the Regional Transportation Improvement Program (RTIP),
which includes the highest priority transportation projects
needed to implement the region's long-term transportation and
land use vision.
SBX1 10 (Bates) Page 2 of ?
3)Requires Caltrans to develop a five-year Interregional
Transportation Improvement Plan (ITIP) consisting of projects
improving interregional movement of people, vehicles, and
goods.
4)Requires, every two years, Caltrans to submit the ITIP and the
regional transportation entities to submit their RTIPs to CTC
for inclusion in a statewide plan called the State
Transportation Improvement Plan (STIP). The STIP is a
five-year program of future state transportation funding
allocations for state highway, intercity rail, and regional
highway and transit improvements.
5)Requires, every two years, Caltrans to develop and CTC to
adopt a five-year estimate of all state and federal funds that
will reasonably be expected and available for projects in the
STIP. This is called the STIP Fund Estimate.
6)Allocates 75% of all the funds available for the STIP to
regions for projects in each RTIP, while the state maintains
25% of these funds for projects identified in the ITIP.
7)Requires, generally, CTC to allocate funds for each project
during the fiscal year that the project is identified in the
STIP, and makes the funding available for that project for up
to three years following the CTC allocation.
8)Requires CTC to compute, based on specific definitions and
parameters, the share of STIP funding the CTC should allocate
to each county over the course of the five-year Fund Estimate
for STIP projects.
9)Specifies that any projects on state highways funded from the
state highway account be completed by Caltrans.
This bill:
1)Requires Caltrans to apportion annually to each regional
transportation planning agency the amount of county share
funding identified in the most recently adopted STIP Fund
Estimate.
2)Requires the Legislature to include in the annual budget act
an appropriation of federal and state transportation funds for
SBX1 10 (Bates) Page 3 of ?
Caltrans to apportion to the regional transportation planning
agencies.
3)Eliminates the CTC's responsibility of allocating funds for
each project in the STIP that is included in an RTIP.
4)Eliminates the CTC's ability to resolve any conflicts between
projects in the various RTIPs.
5)Deletes most of the specific definitions and parameters upon
which county shares are computed and which govern how the
money can be spent.
6)Deletes any reference to county balances and adjustments to
county shares of STIP funding.
7)Allows anyone to do projects on the state highway system, not
just Caltrans.
COMMENTS:
1)Purpose. According to the author, this bill is intended to
speed up delivery of transportation projects by transforming
the STIP process into a grant program for the regions. This
will allow, presumably, each region to focus maximum effort on
delivering high-priority projects instead of wasting time
navigating the byzantine bureaucratic process in Sacramento.
2)Reform is reasonable. Nearly everyone agrees, including the
administration and Caltrans itself, that reforming how
Caltrans operates and how the state plans and funds
transportation projects is necessary and overdue. For
example, in 2014 the California Transportation Agency released
a report by an outside management consultant that described
significant challenges within Caltrans and issued a call for
change. In response, Caltrans released the Caltrans
Improvement Project, which has one goal: to make Caltrans into
a high-performance, efficient, transparent, accountable, and
modern organization. In addition, the Legislature passed and
the governor signed a number of bills in the last few years
that were intended to encourage and facilitate reform of state
transportation. This bill attempts to continue this effort to
improve the state's delivery of transportation projects.
3)Novel idea, poor execution. In essence, this bill attempts to
SBX1 10 (Bates) Page 4 of ?
turn the regional portion of the STIP into a block grant
program in order to create flexibility and reduce bureaucracy.
Practically, however, this bill tries to shoehorn this block
grant concept into an existing allocation and funding system
that seems to be effective as-is. This large-scale
reconstruction of the existing, complex STIP process, without
proper analysis of all the ramifications of the proposed
changes, will lead to a variety of unintended and potentially
dire consequences. For example, this bill eliminates CTC's
ability to make changes necessary to resolve conflicts between
neighboring RTIPs, or to adjust county shares from year to
year in order to reflect changing project costs. Limiting
these CTC mechanisms could do significantly more damage to
regions and the way the state delivers transportation projects
than any potential gains this bill may achieve. Considering
all the challenges this bill could create, it appears to be
potentially very harmful legislation as written.
Notwithstanding the merits of the concept to give regions
their funds with fewer strings attached, the way this bill
executes that concept is fatally flawed.
If the goal of this bill is to increase the amount of funding
the regions control without increasing overall funding, there
may be better ways to accomplish this aim. For example, the
Legislature could simply adjust the statutory distribution
calculation of transportation to send more to the locals and
less to the STIP. This would accomplish the goal without
creating the opportunity for potential unintended
complications the scheme in this bill could encounter. In
order to avoid the various and unknown unintended consequences
of the existing proposal in this bill, the committee may wish
to amend the bill to increase the amount of funding
distributed by formula to the locals by the amount of the
regional share of the STIP, and reduce the regional STIP
funding by a similar amount.
FISCAL EFFECT: Appropriation: No Fiscal Com.: Yes
Local: No
POSITIONS: (Communicated to the committee before noon on
Thursday,
August 27, 2015.)
SUPPORT:
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None received
OPPOSITION:
Sierra Club California
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