BILL ANALYSIS �
SENATE TRANSPORTATION & HOUSING COMMITTEE BILL NO: SB 1149
SENATOR MARK DESAULNIER, CHAIRMAN AUTHOR: DeSaulnier
VERSION: 5/1/12
Analysis by: Art Bauer FISCAL: yes
Hearing date: May 8, 2012
SUBJECT:
Regional governance in the Bay Area
DESCRIPTION:
This bill 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.
ANALYSIS:
The San Francisco Bay Area is comprised of nine counties:
Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo,
Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma. It has four major regional
institutions -- the Metropolitan Transportation Commission
(MTC), the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (AQMD), the
San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission
(BCDC), and the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) --
that oversee various aspects of regional planning. In addition,
the Joint Policy Committee (JPC) was established in 2004 to
provide policy overview of the activities of the four agencies.
Each agency's responsibilities are summarized below. Existing
law assigns specific responsibilities to each of the agencies as
summarized below:
1. MTC: Created by statute in 1970, MTC is the regional
transportation planning agency under state law for the
nine-county region. Under federal law, it is also the
metropolitan planning organization for the region. Both
state and federal law require MTC to develop a regional
transportation plan (RTP) every four years. The
multidmodal plan is a vision of transportation development
for the region, and it includes the projects that over the
term of the plan will be included for construction in the
regional transportation improvement program and the state
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transportation improvement program (STIP), both of which
are capital outlay programs. A major transportation
project cannot be constructed unless it is in the RTP. In
addition, MTC allocates resources for the construction of
highway and transit projects and for the operation of
public transit. MTC is also responsible for preparing
travel demand forecasts required by the AQMD in preparation
of air quality plans and by ABAG when it prepares regional
land use plans. SB 375 (Steinberg), Chapter 728, Statutes
of 2008, requires MTC to prepare a Sustainable Communities
Strategy (SCS) as part of the RTP. The SCS is designed to
achieve the targets for greenhouse gas emission reduction
by the integration of regional land use and transportation
planning.
Embedded within MTC is the Bay Area Toll Authority (BATA).
BATA is the legal entity to manage the financing and
operation of the seven state owned-toll bridges. While
legally a separate corporate entity, BATA is governed by
MTC's governing board and managed by MTC's staff. MTC has
other subsidiaries including the Bay Area Headquarters
Authority, a joint powers agency (JPA) between BATA and
MTC, which is intended to own and operate a headquarters
building for MTC and other regional agencies. Another
MTC/BATA JPA is the Bay Area Infrastructure Financing
Authority (BAIFA) which is authorized to plan projects and
obtain funding to pay debt service on bonds issued by the
agency to finance transportation projects. The governing
board of BAIFA consists of four MTC board members and three
BATA members, which is to say all board members are from
MTC's governing board.
Lastly, MTC manages the Service Authority for Freeways and
Expressways (SAFE). SAFE provides emergency roadside phones
and provides various safety services such as responding to
freeway breakdowns and accidents, in order to minimize
their impacts in terms of congestion, public safety, and
air quality, and to increase the reliability of the freeway
system and better manage traffic flow.
2. AQMD: Since 1955, AQMD has been responsible for
pursuing efforts to ensure that the region's air quality
meets federal and state standards. AQMD has direct
responsibility for regulating stationary sources of air
pollutants. This is a very technical, science- and
engineering-based regulatory process. To support its
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regulatory responsibilities, AQMD prepares various control
strategies to reduce emissions and decrease ambient
concentrations of harmful pollutants. More recently, AQMD
has played an important role in assisting to define
strategies to meet the greenhouse emission standards that
the SCS is endeavoring to address.
3. BCDC: Responsibility for planning and regulating the
shoreline of San Francisco Bay rests with BCDC. This
involves minimizing the encroachment of development into
the Bay and surrounding wetlands. With the likely rising
of the shoreline because of climate change, many developed
areas of the bay shoreline are potentially at risk. This
will necessitate revisions to the BCDC's bay plan.
4. ABAG: ABAG is a joint powers agency responsible for
analyzing and forecasting the demographic trends in the
region. ABAG also provides advisory services on regional
land use planning to MTC and other agencies. One of ABAG's
main duties is to allocate to each city and county its fair
share of the regional housing need every eight years prior
to the beginning of each housing element cycle. ABAG
assigns each jurisdiction an overall housing need expressed
in units of housing, and this number is further broken down
into four income categories: very low, low, moderate, and
above-moderate income households. The allocation must be
consistent with the region's SCS. This is known as the
regional housing needs assessment (RHNA). In turn, each
city and county in the region must adopt a housing element
of its general plan that identifies adequate sites with
appropriate zoning that can accommodate its RHNA
allocation.
5. JPC: The JPC, established by SB 849 (Torlakson),
Chapter 791, Statutes of 2004, is charged with coordinating
the development and drafting of major planning documents
prepared by MTC, AQMD, BCDC, and ABAG, because the planning
responsibilities of the four agencies are interrelated.
The JPC responsibility includes reviewing and commenting on
major interim work products associated with each plan.
This bill :
1. Creates the Bay Area Regional Commission (BARC) as the
successor to the JPC.
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2. Defines the regional entities as MTC, AQMD, BCDC, ABAG,
and BATA.
3. Authorizes BARC to employ an interim executive director
who shall serve until June 30, 2015.
4. Authorizes BARC to review and comment on draft and final
plans, including the SCS, of the regional entities.
5. Establishes a 15-member governing board, the members
which will be elected from apportioned districts that
conform to applicable state and federal law.
6. Establishes the term of office for BARC commissioners at
four years, with seven commissioners initially having a
term of two years and eight commissioners having terms of
four years.
7. Requires the initial commission elections, including
both primary and general, to take place in 2014.
8. Provides that the elected commissioners shall take
office the first Monday after
January 1, 2015, at which time the terms of the previous
commissioners expire.
9. The commissioners shall appoint an executive director,
legal counsel, and a chief financial officer by June 30,
2015.
10. Requires the commissioners to direct the
executive director to prepare a draft regional
reorganization plan by December 31, 2015, and to adopt the
final by June 30, 2015. The plan shall emphasize reducing
common overhead cost and integrating various activities,
such as human resources, budget, and financial services,
electronic data and communications systems, legal services,
contracting and procurement of goods and services, public
information and outreach services, intergovernmental
relations, transportation, land use, economic and related
forecasting models, and other similar activities.
11. Organizes the regional entities as divisions of
BARC but continues the governance of each regional entity
by its existing board.
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12. Requires the executive director to prepare an
annual integrated budget which includes the budgets of the
regional entities.
13. Beginning in 2017, requires BARC to issue a
consistency report after reviewing the policies, plans, and
implementing regulations of each of the regional entities
to determine consistency with SB 375.
14. Requires BARC to develop and implement policies,
goals, and regulations, including performance measures,
governing the preparation and adoption of plans prepared by
the regional entities, provided they are consistent with
relevant federal and state laws.
15. Requires the regional entities to submit their
functional plans to BARC for adoption. If BARC finds a
functional plan inadequate, it shall submit findings
underlying its decision to the regional entity, and the
regional entity must redraft its plan in conformance with
the findings.
16. Requires BARC to prepare a 20-year regional
economic development strategy, to be updated every four
years, that addresses the ability of the regional economy
to adapt to changes in technology, market demand, and
direction of the national and international economy. The
strategy must include recognition of unique environmental,
social, and cultural amenities that, in part, define the
region.
17. Requires BARC to ensure that the regional economic
development policies are reflected in the functional plans.
18. Requires BARC to establish a uniform regional
public outreach program to ensure public access to the
decision-making of the regional entities.
19. Requires that funding for BARC come from existing
sources that are currently available to the regional
entities.
COMMENTS:
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1. Purpose . This bill is intended to reform the San
Francisco Bay Area regional planning process in a manner
that reflects the current conditions in the region. Since
1970, when MTC was created, several changes have occurred.
The population of the region has grown by 63%, the state
has regionalized transportation funding and project
prioritization, climate change has created a need to adapt
to a changing shoreline, and the Legislature has required
the integration of land use and transportation planning in
order to address greenhouse issues. After informational
hearings in the Bay Area on regional issues, the author
concluded that the existing arrangements needed to be
reformed. Several witnesses at the hearings argued that the
important decisions being made are not transparent, that
transportation and land use planning need to be better
integrated, and that economic development should be
incorporated into the regional planning process.
2. Accountability . The four regional entities-MTC, AQMD,
BCDC, and ABAG- are large organizations that address
specific functions and are governed by part-time boards.
This governance arrangement, many argue, has performed
well. The governing boards provide general direction, and
the staff executes the policies. Others argue that this
arrangement is no longer valid because of the need to
integrate decisions across functional specialties.
Clearly, the direction from the state is moving toward
policy integration at the regional level. The primary
example is SB 375 and its mandate for integrating regional
land use and transportation. This is the domain of MTC and
ABAG. Addressing the transportation-land use nexus
inevitably draws in issues related to air quality,
especially greenhouse gases, which is the domain of the
AQMD. In the Bay Area, the possibility of rising sea level
affecting shoreline land uses and infrastructure is a
unique region-specific condition that is not amenable to
being addressed by a single entity. This issue is
functionally in the jurisdiction of BCDC. Yet, a
substantial amount of the regional housing stock and
critical elements of the transportation infrastructure are
located within the likely area to be affected by the
incursion of a rising shoreline. It is unclear to many
observers if the current structure of regional governance
can address these cross-cutting issues. Part-time
governing boards focused on a specific function are not in
a position to make policy decisions that cross functional
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lines. This bill endeavors to remedy this criticism by
creating an elected regional governing board.
3. Functional planning remains . SB 1149 does not abolish
the four regional entities. They continue to prepare
regional functional plans, but BARC will provide the
regional policy framework governing the preparation of the
functional plans. The governing boards of the regional
entities remain in place to ensure the adherence to
regional polices and to carry out various activities such
as public hearings. In a sense, BARC is analogous to a
system integrator, responsible for ensuring the
interoperability of the components that comprise the whole.
One of the important aspects of BARC is that it assumes
the overhead activities of each of the agencies, with the
object of reducing duplicate managerial activities.
4. Regional economic development . The Bay Area in many
ways is a region of two economies. The San Francisco
Peninsula and the South Bay are the center of the vibrant
high tech industry. The East Bay and portions of the North
Bay are the centers of an earlier industrial paradigm based
on manufacturing. The latter subregions are characterized
by unemployment or under-employment and are not
beneficiaries of the technology boom. Few regions have
addressed the issue of regional economic development, with
the notable exception of the Seattle/Puget Sound area,
where a business-government partnership under the umbrella
of a regional agency has tried to integrate economic
development into the regional planning process.
This bill, for the first time in California, requires an
economic development strategy in the regional planning
process. It requires BARC to develop a 20-year regional
economic development plan and update it every 4 years. The
functional plans are required to incorporate the relevant
aspects of economic development plan.
5. Issues that need to be considered . This bill initiates
a major reform; as such, there are some issues that require
further consideration. For example, the AQMD oversees a
complex regulatory process that is legalistic and does not
directly relate to the issues addressed in this bill. It
may be inappropriate for BARC to intervene in that process.
Similarly, the funding of the full time BARC commissioners
is not addressed in the bill, but most likely will be in
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future amendments. It is unlikely as this bill is vetted
by stakeholders over issues will emerge that will require
resolutions.
6. Referral back to Rules Committee . Because of the recent
amendments to this bill, the Rules committee has requested
that the committee, if it approves the bill, send the bill
back to Rules for possible re-referral to another policy
committee.
RELATED LEGISLATION:
SB 878 (DeSaulnier) requires the JPC to submit a report to the
Legislature January 31, 2013 describing, among other things,
policies and strategies for a regional sustainable communities
program, for the development of a regional economic development
strategy, and for public participation in regional programs.
This bill is awaiting hearing in the Assembly Local Government
Committee.
AB 57 (Beall) increases the membership of MTC from 19 to 21
members. This bill is awaiting hearing in this committee.
POSITIONS: (Communicated to the committee before noon on
Wednesday, May 2, 2012)
SUPPORT: None received.
OPPOSED: None received.
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