Gov.’s Budget Plan Skips Transportation Again

California’s urban roadways may be heading for a permanent SigAlert.

For the second year in a row, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed a state budget that includes no money for new highway or mass transit projects.

And for the second year in a row, businesses that depend on the state’s congested road network to get employees to work, bring in raw materials and move goods to market aren’t happy about it.

“The governor is in a pickle, and he has an enormous budget gap to fill,” said Laura Stuchinsky, transportation policy director for the Silicon Valley Manufacturing Group, which represents high-tech companies. “But he needs to find a way to balance the budget and allow some money to flow to transportation so we don’t fall farther behind.”

The spending plan Schwarzenegger unveiled Monday for the fiscal year that begins July 1 would maintain the freeze on transportation projects that began a year and a half ago under predecessor Gray Davis.

Under the plan, which requires legislative approval, more than $1.31 billion in gasoline sales taxes ticketed for transportation needs would be used for deficit reduction and funding for schools, prisons and scores of other programs.

All in all, the corporate community has few gripes about Schwarzenegger’s budget, and many executives have praised the governor for not raising taxes. But transportation spending -- or the lack thereof -- has become a definite irritant for state business leaders.

At the Port of Long Beach, officials are worried about one project in particular -- a $711-million effort to replace the aging Gerald Desmond Bridge. The 36-year-old span, which connects Terminal Island to downtown Long Beach, has been overwhelmed by the recent explosion in traffic at the port.

“The Desmond is an older bridge with just five lanes, no shoulders, and it’s not tall enough for some of the larger ships that will be coming through here,” port spokesman Art Wong said. Some of the port’s bigger seaborne visitors already have to lower their radio towers to make it under the bridge, he noted.

The federal government would pony up much of the money for a new bridge. But local officials are counting on the state to cover at least part of the cost, and the governor’s spending plan could delay the project for several years.

This and other such potential holdups come amid forecasts that the amount of traffic on the state’s roads will increase significantly in coming decades.

“Our highways are growing ever more congested, and our aging road and transit system infrastructure is deteriorating,” warned California Transportation Commission Chairman Robert Balgenorth.

In December, the commission issued an annual report noting that $5.4 billion of projects in the state’s five-year master construction plan have been delayed by at least two years.

With Schwarzenegger’s latest funding plan, that schedule would be set back even further. “We will not be able to fund projects we were directed to plan for,” said David Brewer, the commission’s chief deputy director.

Around L.A., Schwarzenegger’s proposed budget could derail attempts to unplug several troublesome bottlenecks.

Rusty Hammer, president of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, cited several endangered projects, including building northbound carpool lanes on the San Diego Freeway between the Santa Monica and the Hollywood freeways, extending a light-rail line to Santa Monica and expanding a Crenshaw Corridor bus transit way.

“Transportation is not sexy,” Hammer said. “It’s not going to grab a lot of headlines or get people to march on the state Capitol -- not until the roads crumble and goods and people can’t be moved around the state.”

Some of that damage, transportation executives say, may be happening even sooner than Schwarzenegger and other politicians in Sacramento realize.

“You wouldn’t believe all the potholes and how bad the roads have gotten” from the last few days’ rains, said Valerie Liese, president of Jack Jones Trucking Inc. in Chino.

Schwarzenegger, who said Monday that he was “a big believer in roads,” vowed to stop raiding transportation funds in two years -- after he has fixed the state’s finances. He wants voters to approve a proposed constitutional amendment that would put gasoline sales taxes almost completely out of the reach of future lawmakers and governors.

Of course, Proposition 42, passed by California voters in 2002, was intended to stave off such raids on the state’s gasoline sales taxes. But the Legislature has repeatedly mustered the two-thirds vote needed to override the law’s restrictions on how those tax dollars can be spent.

“When we pay the tax, they need to fix the roads,” groused Stephanie Williams, senior vice president of the California Trucking Assn. in West Sacramento.

Gasoline sales taxes aren’t the only endangered transportation funds.

More than $1 billion pledged by Indian tribes as part of a gambling agreement with Schwarzenegger is in limbo because of a pending lawsuit.

In his State of the State speech last week, the governor boasted that the Indian bond money would help fix the transportation mess and create 16,000 jobs in the process. On Monday, however, Finance Director Tom Campbell conceded that he didn’t feel comfortable about counting on the bond money to backstop next year’s budget.

“The bottom line is it points out the need to get the budget under control, or else you’re never going to have the resources to fund transportation,” said Allan Zaremberg, president of the California Chamber of Commerce.

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Times staff writer Julie Tamaki contributed to this report. Lifsher reported from Sacramento, White and Tamaki from Los Angeles.