Upset by Road Delays, Nestande to Seek County Caltrans Office

Angered by delays of up to a year in state highway projects, Supervisor Bruce Nestande said Friday that he will seek legislation in Sacramento to establish a separate Caltrans office in Orange County.

“The hierarchy in Caltrans’ Los Angeles office has too much of a Los Angeles orientation,” charged Nestande, a member and former chairman of the California Transportation Commission. “Los Angeles has so much going on (highway projects) that after several years of observing the process closely, I’m convinced that we need a separate office in Orange County.”

Although both Nestande and state Sen. John Seymour concede that they face an uphill political battle, the Anaheim Republican said Friday that he will introduce the legislation necessary to establish a Caltrans office once county officials inform him of their request. Seymour is a member of the Senate Transportation Committee.

Currently, highway projects in Ventura, Orange and Los Angeles counties are designed, engineered and supervised by the 3,500-person California Department of Transportation office in Los Angeles.

Assembly Transportation Committee Chairman Richard Katz (D-Panorama City) said he remains “unconvinced” that placing a Caltrans office in Orange County will do enough to alleviate what he said are the county’s “very real, very serious” traffic problems.

“You would still need engineers and the project design capability that is lacking right now to make such an office effective,” Katz said, “and money would have to be found to hire more people.”

Also critical of the idea was Jerry Baxter, deputy director of operations for Caltrans’ Los Angeles office. Denying that his office is Los Angeles-oriented, Baxter said that Caltrans officials have opposed previous efforts to establish a new district office for Orange County because “We just don’t believe that creating a new bureaucracy solves anything.”

Last Monday, the Orange County Transportation Commission released a quarterly status report showing that 10 of 20 state highway projects in the county have fallen behind schedule, including a one-year delay in the widening of the Santa Ana Freeway and a seven-month delay in the widening of the San Diego Freeway.

The commission voted unanimously to study the feasibility of having a separate Caltrans office in Orange County. OCTC’s staff plans to complete the study within 60 days.

Previous quarterly reports also revealed significant project delays, prompting Supervisor Thomas F. Riley to sharply criticize Caltrans officials publicly at a county Transportation Commission meeting last year.

Caltrans has attributed the problem mostly to “manpower constraints” and delays in obtaining necessary documents from other agencies.

Nestande said the “slippage” in project schedules revealed by the latest status report had convinced him that a new Caltrans office is necessary.

Caltrans’ Baxter said Friday that his agency is going ahead with previous plans to move some staff into a a small, temporary Orange County office in March for work on the widening of the Santa Ana Freeway.

Statewide, Caltrans operations are divided up into regional districts. A separate Caltrans district already exists for Orange County but only for project-funding purposes.

Caltrans officials said a separate Orange County office would need a staff of about 400 people, including the 200 maintenance workers who are already assigned to state highways in the county.

They couldn’t estimate the cost of such an office.

County officials last week praised Gov. George Deukmejian’s 1987-88 budget proposals, which included a $250-million increase in state highway spending and authorization for 400 new Caltrans employees. Officials said they expected these actions to speed state highway projects in Orange County.

But now county officials aren’t sure of the benefits. Caltrans officials said this week that most of the new employees will be assigned to counties that have adopted their own transportation sales taxes, a move Orange County voters rejected in 1984. And the $250-million boost in highway spending comes from existing transportation funds, not new revenue, and is for existing projects.

Still, Caltrans’ Baxter said Friday he hopes that the assignment of new Caltrans engineers to other counties will “free up” some staff to work on Orange County’s projects.

“We’re very sympathetic to Orange County’s problems,” Baxter said.