BILL ANALYSIS
SENATE TRANSPORTATION & HOUSING COMMITTEE BILL NO: SB 1348
SENATOR ALAN LOWENTHAL, CHAIRMAN AUTHOR: steinberg
VERSION: 4/14/10
Analysis by: Art Bauer FISCAL: YES
Hearing date: April 20, 2010
SUBJECT:
California Transportation Commission guidelines
DESCRIPTION:
This bill provides a procedure for the California Transportation
Commission (CTC) to adopt legislatively mandated policy
guidelines.
ANALYSIS:
Established in 1978, the CTC provides a single venue for
addressing transportation development and funding issues in the
state. The CTC consists of eleven voting members and two
non-voting ex-officio members. Of the eleven voting members, the
governor appoints nine, the Senate Rules Committee appoints one,
and the Speaker of the Assembly appoints one. The two ex-officio
non-voting members are the chairs of the transportation policy
committees in each house. The CTC programs and allocates funds
for the construction of highway, passenger rail, and transit
improvements throughout California.
Existng law authorizes the CTC to adopt policy guidelines for
various transportation programs, but provides little direction
on how the adoption process should proceed. Among the programs
for which the CTC adopts guidelines are the the State
Transportation Improvement Program (STIP) and regional
transportation planning process. The passage of the Highway
Safety, Traffic Reduction, Air Quality, and Port Security Bond
Act of 2006 (Proposition 1B) mandated the issuance of several
new guidelines such as the Corridor Mobility Improvement Account
(CMIA), State Route 99 Corridor Program, the Trade Corridors
Improvement Fund, the Public Transportation Modernization,
Improvement, and Service Enhancement Account and the
Highway-Railroad Crossing Safety Account.
SB 1348 (STEINBERG) Page 2
This bill :
1) Requires the CTC's counsel to review proposed guidelines
for necessity, authority, consistency, reference, and
nonduplication.
2) Stipulates that the words " necessity," "authority,"
"clarity," "consistency," "reference," and "nonduplication"
shall have the same meaning as defined by Section 11349 of
the Government Code, which establishes definitions for
these terms for purposes of rule making pursuant to the
Administrative Procedures Act (APA).
3) Requires that proposed policy guidelines must be
adopted by a majority vote of the commissioners at a public
hearing in which members of the public have had an
opportunity to testify prior to the vote on the proposed
policy guidelines.
4) Requires the CTC to send, at least thirty days prior to
the public hearing, a notice of the hearing to anyone who
has requested it. The notice shall be available to the
public in an electronic format as well.
5) Requires the CTC to maintain a guideline adoption file
containing the public notice, public comments, and minutes
of the public hearing, including the action taken by the
CTC. In addition, the adoption file shall contain a summary
of each objection or reommendation made with an explanation
of how the proposed guideline was changed to accommodate
each objection or recommendation, or the reason for no
change.
6) Requires the CTC to include in its annual report to the
Legislature a summary of the adoption of policy guidelines
during the previous calendar year, including a summary of
the proposed guidelines the CTC considered, commisison, a
description of the action the CTC took, and the
commissioners' votes on guidelines considered.
COMMENTS:
SB 1348 (STEINBERG) Page 3
1) Purpose . With the increase in the number of policy
guidelines that the CTC is adopting, this legislation is
intended to systematize the process CTC uses to adopt
policy guidelines under its purview and to increase the
transparency of the process.
2) Policy guidelines vs. regulations . Policy guidelines and
regulations are two very distinct administrative tools to
manage state programs. Regulations are adopted according to
the terms and conditions of APA. According to counsel,
numerous court decisions have ruled that administrative
regulations are an extension of a statute and carry the
weight of law. Policy guidelines, even when mandated by a
statue, are an elaboration of policy and do not have the
weight of law. Typically, the guidelines are adopted
through a relatively informal process compared to
regulations. To be sure, this bill will add structure,
discipline, and transparency to the process for adopting
guidelines, but it does not invoke the APA. In fact, the
CTC was able to quickly adopt guidelines for implementing
the various programs included in Proposition 1B, which
benefited the public through the acceleration of project
funding. The agility of the CTC would have been impossible
to achieve had regulations been required instead of
guidelines.
3) Definitions reference the Administrative Procedures Act .
This bill identifies specific terms to guide the CTC's
counsel when reviewing proposed guidelines, including
"necessity", "authority", and "consistency". This uses the
definition of these terms found in the APA, but the cross
reference does not convert the guidelines to draft
regulations subject to the APA.
4) Suggested amendment . The committee may wish to consider
amending this bill to require the CTC to maintain the
adoption file of the guidelines be maintained on the CTC's
website to ensure ease of accessibility by the public. A
second amendment that committee may wish to consider is
requiring that hearing notices be published forty-five
rather than thirty days in advance of the CTC meeting in
which the adoption of the guidelines are to occur. This
will allow local and regional agencies to more easily
include on the agenda of regularly schedule meetings a
discussion of the draft guidelines.
SB 1348 (STEINBERG) Page 4
POSITIONS: (Communicated to the Committee before noon on
Wednesday,
April 14, 2010)
SUPPORT: Professional engineers in California Government
OPPOSED: None received.