The main focus of transportation advocates in Sacramento is the $6 billion/year transportation funding package (Senate Bill 1 and Assembly Bill 1) proposed by the legislative transportation committee chairs, Senator Beall and Assembly Member Frazier, and the Governor's draft budget that includes $4.3 billion/year for transportation. The Governor has indicated an April deadline for negotiating a transportation funding package. Attachment 1 is a memo outlining the specifics of these three proposals.
Assembly Member Frazier also introduced urgency legislation (AB 28) to permanently extend Caltrans authority as a federal environmental review (National Environmental Policy Act, NEPA) delegate, authority originally approved in 2006. The legislation has support in both houses and is being fast-tracked through the legislative process - the Assembly approved it on February 13, and it is poised to be approved by the Senate as of this writing.
The deadline for bill introduction was February 17, 2017. One bill was introduced for TAMC’s legislative priorities by the bill introduction deadline:
- AB 696 (Caballero): Department of Transportation: Prunedale Bypass: County of Monterey: disposition of excess properties (web attachment 1).
The Prunedale Bypass right-of-way was acquired with state transportation funding back in the 1970’s. 353 acres had been retained by Caltrans for potential habitat mitigation for future transportation projects; however, Caltrans has reviewed each of the 145 parcels and has determined that the Bypass land has limited habitat preservation value. As a result, the property will soon be on the state list for sale as excess property. Without any change to state law, the proceeds from the sale of this excess property, as with all other highway projects, will accrue to the state General Fund.
This bill would require the net proceeds from the sale of the excess properties from the Prunedale Bypass to be reserved in the State Highway Account for programming and allocation by the California Transportation Commission, with the concurrence of TAMC, to a highway project in the US 101 corridor. This funding would not offset any other funds that TAMC would receive in the State Transportation Improvement Program or from other state sources.
This legislation is modeled on similar bills signed into law for the disposal of excess property in the Highway 238 corridor in Alameda County and the I-710 corridor in Los Angeles County. The net result of this legislation is estimated between $5-12 million.
Attachment 2 is the updated list of transportation legislation pending from last year, and introduced this year, as of March 3. New bills added to the list since the March 1 Executive Committee meeting are indicated with underline. Web Attachment 2 is the Agency’s adopted 2017 legislative program.
Chair Chavez and Agency staff participated in a series of meetings with Central Coast Coalition legislators and transportation legislative experts on March 8. During these meetings, the Coalition expressed support for increasing the State Transportation Improvement Program, general support for SB 1 and increasing funding for transportation overall, and concern about the definition of Disadvantaged Communities.