With bonds approved, the line for billions forms

A day after voters approved the state’s largest public construction effort in four decades, government planners throughout California geared up for an intense competition to secure money for thousands of long-neglected projects to bring the state’s roads, parks, schools and housing into the 21st century.

By design, the $42.7 billion in borrowing authorized by voters Tuesday included few named projects. But hundreds of long-stalled improvements on the wish lists of local governments are likely to be among the first funded. They include the synchronization of traffic lights throughout Los Angeles County, restoration of the concrete-encased Los Angeles River, addition of carpool lanes to the 405 Freeway, widening of major highway arteries in Orange and Riverside counties and installation of pollution-control equipment on hundreds of diesel-spewing school buses.

“There’s been years and years of neglect, where people have said these projects are fine and there’s no state money,” said Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata (D-Oakland), who helped write most of the bond measures.

Much of the money will be up for grabs through competitive grants and annual legislative appropriations. The process will pit cities, counties, schools, nonprofit groups and other private and government entities against each other in a dash for funds.

The flow of applications will begin in the coming weeks, even before the first of the bonds are sold.

“You’re going to start to see the kind of projects that are in the hunt for this money emerge later in November, as scores of agencies around the state conduct local public hearings to adopt their projects for nomination,” said Mark Watts, director of Transportation California, a coalition of contractors, cement suppliers and unions that supported the transportation bond measure.

Although everyone agrees that the flood of money -- estimated at more than $120 billion when federal, local and other funding sources are included -- is needed, serious doubts remain about how quickly projects can be launched. Some guidelines for applications will specify that projects be finished by 2011.

The bond measures -- four of which were placed on the ballot by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature, the fifth by a coalition of environmental groups -- will finance an array of projects.

For transportation, $2 billion is allocated to improve the movement of goods from California’s ports through the state and $125 million to make overpasses and smaller bridges earthquake-safe.

Public transit projects can vie for parts of a $4-billion pot, while local governments are already salivating at the prospect of $11.3 billion dedicated to improving roads and reducing congestion. Much of that will be automatically distributed to local governments through existing formulas.

Many counties formulated plans in anticipation that the bond measures would pass. Art Leahy, the Orange County Transportation Authority’s chief executive, said that his agency had already finished preliminary studies for widening the 405 and 91 freeways and that the agency’s finance officer is visiting New York next week to check the bond climate on Wall Street.

“What we will be doing in the next three to six months, working with a new board, is to establish guidelines and determine which projects go first,” Leahy said.

Many projects will require local expenditures because much of the bond money can be tapped only if there are matching funds.

For housing, there is $135 million to spur the creation of dwellings for farmworkers and $200 million in deferred low-interest loans to help people of moderate means buy their first homes. There is also $345 million in low-interest loans for rental apartments and multifamily housing efforts that don’t contribute to sprawl.

That money could help fund some of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s priorities, including expanding affordable housing in the city. The mayor worked with Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles) to shape the bond propositions so L.A. would be able to draw on as much of the bond money as possible.

“This is a huge boost to what we are doing,” said Mercedes Marquez, general manager of the Los Angeles Housing Department. “Certainly L.A.’s voice was heard on these issues.”

For education, there is $500 million for expansion of charter schools and $1 billion to help overcrowded schools replace portable classrooms with permanent structures. An additional $3.1 billion will be spent by the governor and Legislature to improve and expand campuses of community colleges and the state’s public universities.

For the environment, there is $400 million to buy, develop and restore state parkland and $100 million for nature education and research facilities. More than $4 billion will go to shore up the state’s levees, which play a critical role in supplying Southern California with water.

Yet for all this money, experts agree that it is nowhere nearly enough to quench California’s ever-growing demands. The administration has estimated that the state faces more than $500 billion in infrastructure needs over the next two decades to accommodate a population expected to swell as much as 30%.

Schwarzenegger’s initial plan would have provided almost half that amount, but lawmakers reduced his proposal, saying it was too rich for the state’s taxpayers, who may end up on the hook for up to $3 billion in annual debt payments for decades.

“There’s a lot in there for everybody,” said Richard Little, director of USC’s Keston Institute for Public Finance and Infrastructure Policy.

“But unfortunately, given the state’s long-term backlog for transportation, I don’t see how you could complete the equation without other funding mechanisms,” he said.

Even the architects of projects anticipating money from the new round of borrowing say it will not be enough for all their plans.

The Los Angeles Unified School District, for example, hopes to receive about $585 million to upgrade old buildings and $475 million to construct new ones.

The money won’t be enough, however, to complete the district’s 150-school construction project.

With the cost of putting up a high school running as high as $100 million plus the cost of land, the district says it will ultimately need an additional $1.6 billion from Sacramento.

“There is no end to the projects,” said Roger Snoble, chief executive of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

“All we have is an end to the money.”

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jordan.rau@latimes.com

Times staff writers Howard Blume, Jean Guccione, Duke Helfand, David Reyes and Joel Rubin contributed to this report.

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No shortage of needy projects

Likely projectsListed are some of the hundreds of projects likely to receive funding from the $43 billion in bonds that California voters approved Tuesday. There is no guarantee that the bonds will provide enough money to complete many of the more ambitious projects.

* Add two lanes in each direction to the 5 Freeway between the 605 Freeway and the Orange County line.

* Add carpool lanes on the 5 Freeway, between the 170 and 134 freeways in the San Fernando Valley, and northbound on the 405 between the 10 and 101 freeways.

* Extend the El Monte Busway on the 10 Freeway.

* Widen the 405 and the 91 freeways.

* Synchronize traffic lights throughout Los Angeles County.

* Eliminate all highway grade crossings along the Alameda Corridor rail cargo line, which stretches from the Port of Long Beach to the rail yards near downtown Los Angeles.

* Help plant 1 million trees for L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s urban greenery plan.

* Prevent storm-water runoff from polluting shorelines, such as the Santa Monica Bay’s, to limit beach closures.

* Improve the quality of drinking water and create more water storage.

* Extend the Expo Line from Culver City to Santa Monica.

* Build Villaraigosa’s proposed subway to the sea, extending the Red Line from its current mid-Wilshire terminus at Western Avenue.

* Create a dedicated north-south busway in the San Fernando Valley.

* Construct a new light-rail line in the Crenshaw corridor to Los Angeles International Airport.

* Build a Green Line extension from El Segundo to the airport.

* Extend the Gold Line, which now runs between Pasadena and downtown Los Angeles, to the Inland Empire.

Source: Times reporting