$9 Million OKd for County Roads in Bill Sent to Deukmejian

Orange County could spend up to $9 million in state transit development funds annually on road and freeway projects under a bill sent to the governor Friday.

However, the legislation by Sen. John Seymour (R-Anaheim) was approved only after complex negotiations and has more strings attached to it than many county officials wanted.

Half of the estimated $9 million the county can spend each year, for example, must be earmarked for local streets and roads, with the remainder going to freeways. Also, the bill must be renewed by the Legislature for the funding arrangement to continue after 1989. (The $9 million represents the interest which has accumulated on the county’s transit funds account.)

Assemblyman Richard Robinson (D-Garden Grove) said he lobbied to put the funding formula and the so-called “sunset clause” into the legislation to ensure that the urban core of the county, which he represents, will get its fair share of transit projects.

Robinson, who is a member of the Assembly Transportation Committee, also admitted that he had a partisan score to settle with Orange County Republicans. He charged that they had inappropriately used politics to shape two major local transportation policy boards--the Orange County Transportation Commission and the Orange County Transit District .

Santa Ana Mayor Daniel E. Griset, a Democrat, was recently ousted from both panels after Republicans expressed fears that he was using them as a political springboard to higher office.

The Senate sent the bill to the governor on a 37-0 vote.

Seymour’s legislation allows Orange County’s idle but rapidly accumulating transit funds to be spent for a variety of road projects.

Following last year’s overwhelming defeat of Proposition A, a proposed one-cent sales tax hike to fund various transportation projects, many of the county’s transit projects seemed to be in limbo.

The transit system’s ambitious plans for a 38-mile light-rail line through the central part of the county, for example, was a prime target of foes of the tax hike and an unwanted stepchild of those who campaigned for it.

County officials have feared that funds might be lost if they weren’t spent soon.

Since that defeat, OCTD has begun studying the feasibility of a less expensive system of exclusive bus lanes along freeways.

The transit system has about $85 million in accumulated transit funds under a state law that gives a quarter-cent of the existing 6% state sales tax to transit development accounts in the state’s most populous counties.

Orange County officials have long feared that unless they started to spend some of the money, neighboring Los Angeles and San Diego counties, which are moving ahead with major transit projects, might convince the Legislature to turn the money over to them.