L.A. County sales tax hike for transit hits roadblock

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If the Legislature gives its blessing, county election officials would create a separate "conditional" ballot that general election voters would also consider. Officials said the cost of a second ballot could be as much as $3 million.

On Thursday, a key committee of state lawmakers is scheduled to take up a bill that would authorize a sales tax election.

But even that bill, AB 2321, has been slowed by squabbling among politicians who want more of the tax money to pay for work in their districts, since construction could trigger millions of dollars in jobs and development over the next three decades.

Eastside and San Gabriel Valley officials want more for extending light rail lines east of downtown. Westside officials want the focus on relieving congestion in their area and starting the so-called subway to the sea.

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky called the supervisors' vote "silly and costly." He also said that "this is the first time in my career, which has spanned 33 years, that I have ever seen a Board of Supervisors ever refuse to consolidate an election," using the technical term for approving a ballot item.

Yaroslavsky said he hopes his colleagues will vote to reconsider their action at next Tuesday's meeting.

Last month, the sales tax proposal was approved by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board, whose members include the five county supervisors. At that time, Supervisor Mike Antonovich voted no, Supervisor Gloria Molina abstained and Supervisor Don Knabe was absent.

On Tuesday, Antonovich and Knabe voted no and Molina again abstained. All three then voted against reconsidering their action.

Minutes later, MTA Chief Executive Roger Snoble said the agency would sue to force a consolidated ballot.

"I'm in the process of hiring outside counsel, because we can't hire county counsel because they would have a conflict," Snoble said. "We have a fairly decent chance of going into court and getting that reversed."

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa also sent a letter to the supervisors, asking them to reconsider. "No matter how you cut it," he wrote, "the taxpayers and voters will be the ultimate losers if the board refuses to place the MTA measure on the general election ballot."

The measure, he continued, would be "a down payment toward the many transit and highway improvements this county needs to support our economy, our environment, the needs of the transit-dependent and an overall high quality of life for the people we represent.

"The people of Los Angeles County should have the right to decide for themselves whether they want to invest in their future," the mayor concluded.

Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan, who oversees county elections, told supervisors that a different type of ballot might have to be used for a separate sales tax measure because vote-counting machines might not be able to handle two elections simultaneously.

Many politicians, including Yaroslavsky and Supervisor Yvonne B. Burke, have hailed the sales tax increase as the county's best shot at getting a pot of money that would be controlled locally. Budget woes, the economy and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have made it all but impossible to obtain state or federal money of that magnitude.

And backers of the measure argue that a sales tax hike is the surest way to build costly projects such as the subway, a Gold Line extension to Azusa, the Expo Line, a busway or light rail along Crenshaw Boulevard and other projects.

But with the prospect of $30 billion to $40 billion in revenue, local, state and federal elected officials have been scurrying to insert language into the authorizing legislation to ensure that their pet projects get moved to the front of the line.

During Tuesday's meeting, three supervisors complained that the MTA's spending plan still didn't fairly distribute the money throughout the county.