BILL ANALYSIS �
AB 1645
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Date of Hearing: April 9, 2012
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION
Bonnie Lowenthal, Chair
AB 1645 (Norby) - As Introduced: February 13, 2012
SUBJECT : Highway namings
SUMMARY : Transfers authority for naming highway facilities from
the Legislature to the California Transportation Commission
(CTC). Specifically, this bill : Allows the Department of
Transportation (Caltrans) to expend reasonable sums for name
plaques when the CTC, by resolution, has designated names for
districts, state highways or state highway portions, pedestrian
or bicycle paths, and state highway bridges, and has requested
the placing of name plaques at the boundaries of the districts,
highways, pathways, or on the bridges.
EXISTING LAW :
1)Requires Caltrans to keep in repair all objects or markers
adjacent to a state highway that have been erected to mark
registered historical places and to keep those markers free
from vegetation that may obscure them from view.
2)Authorizes Caltrans to expend reasonable sums for highway
designation plaques when the Legislature, by concurrent
resolution, has designated names for certain districts or
state highway bridges, and has requested the placing of name
plaques at the boundaries of the districts or on the bridges.
(By longstanding custom as well as by more recent Committee
policy, these resolutions have typically specified that the
expense for such signing must be borne by nonstate sources.)
FISCAL EFFECT : Unknown
COMMENTS : The Legislature has, for several decades, named
highway segments and associated facilities (such as bridges,
vista points, and roadside rests) in honor of persons or groups
who have served the state with distinction or made other notable
contributions. In recent years, this practice has become far
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more frequent, despite policies being adopted by both the
Assembly and the Senate policy committees narrowing the criteria
as to when such designations are appropriate. (In the Assembly,
for instance, an honoree must either be deceased or be a retired
elected official, there must be community consensus for the
designation, and the resolution must be authored or coauthored
by the member representing the geographical location of the
designation.)
As these designations proliferate, Caltrans is forced to oversee
an increasing inventory of signs, taking time and effort away
from more important maintenance functions. (Although highway
naming resolutions require the sign fabrication and installation
to be funded by nonstate sources, ongoing maintenance costs are
borne by Caltrans.) Any fixed object within a highway right of
way, such as a dedication sign, can add to the potential danger
to motorists in the instance of run-off-the-road incidents. And
to the extent that Caltrans maintenance forces must tend to
damaged or windblown signs, they themselves are subject to added
exposure to the dangers of working alongside high-speed traffic.
Finally, in the aggregate, the processing of these resolutions
comes at some considerable cost to the Legislature.
The author of this bill proposed a two-year moratorium on
highway namings last year through his introduction of AB 595.
That bill failed in this committee on a 5-5 vote with four
abstentions. A proposed committee policy to impose a similar
moratorium was also unsuccessful. Rather than banning new
designations, as those efforts sought to do, this bill would
simply take the process out of the hands of the Legislature.
While it fails to stem the proliferation of signs, as last
year's efforts would have accomplished, it at least reduces the
legislative workload in processing dozens of resolutions each
session. (In a similar vein, ACR 100 (Lowenthal and Jeffries)
seeks to consolidate highway namings within one "master"
resolution. That bill is also on today's agenda.)
Legislative history : In 2007, Senator Lowenthal authored SB
652, which would have had Caltrans sign highway segments or
facilities upon the request of individual legislators if the
requests were supported by the local city or county and met
various criteria essentially comparable to the standards
traditionally used by the transportation committees in reviewing
highway-naming resolutions. Despite passing both houses with
substantial majorities, the bill was vetoed by Governor
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Schwarzenegger, who stated, "This method could result in an
undesirable plethora of signs throughout our state. Since these
are state highways, any process devised must have the final
authority for the placement of these signs reside at the state
level, either in a full vote of the state Legislature or by
actions taken by the Executive Branch."
Suggested Committee amendments : As noted above, the
transportation committees in both the Assembly and Senate have
policies spelling out in some detail the criteria they wish to
see in highway naming resolutions. If the Committee is inclined
to approve this bill, it may wish to insert some similar
standards into the bill in order to provide a framework for the
CTC's consideration of highway naming requests.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
None on file
Opposition
None on file
Analysis Prepared by : Howard Posner / TRANS. / (916) 319-2093