The purpose of the legislative program is to set general principles to guide staff and Board responses to proposed legislative or budgetary issues. The program also notifies state representatives of the Transportation Agency’s position on issues of key importance to the agency.

The recommended action has no direct financial impact.

The 2017 TAMC Legislative Program is focused on maintaining and augmenting transportation funding. Attachment 1 is the final program, and Attachment 2 is the final program showing changes from the draft. The draft program was presented to the Board of Directors on October 26, to all committees in November, and discussed with partner agencies locally and statewide.

Changes include:

• 13S: Support efforts to remove the Transportation Development Act’s Unmet Transit Needs hearing requirement if 100% of the TDA funds are already allocated to transit. Since TAMC already allocates all of this funding to MST, the outdated requirement that TAMC hold the unmet transit needs hearing should be updated. This legislative proposal was suggeseted by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the nine-county Bay Area agency.
• 15S: Support continued advance, lump-sum payments of state funds. This is an issue that affects smaller, more rural agencies, more than it does TAMC, but staff feels we should support their efforts to continue this historical practice in order not to place an undue burden on small agencies.
• 2F: Allow the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) to substitute for the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), without restrictions, and expand the definition of Categorical Exclusions, while retaining environmental protections. Since CEQA is a more stringent law, TAMC staff feels it is redundant and an unnecessary expense and time commitment to need to do duplicate environmental reviews of the same project.
• 5F: Support efforts to change the update timeline for the Regional Transportation Plan from the current four years to eight years. This is a Tulare County Transportation Agency proposal, to align the 30-year plan's update timeline, currently every four years, with the housing assessment update timeline, currently every eight years.

The Executive Committee discussed this program at its January 4, 2017 meeting and recommends this Board adopt the final program.