Caltrans Says New Office in County to Be Permanent

Reacting to political pressure, state transportation officials reversed themselves and announced Monday that a new Caltrans office in Orange County will be permanent rather than temporary.

County officials, who have agreed to contribute $1 million toward the cost of the new office, have long sought such a permanent facility. They have argued that Orange County freeway projects are far behind schedule and do not receive adequate priority in the state Department of Transportation’s Los Angeles office, which serves Orange, Los Angeles and Ventura counties.

“It’s a direction I was planning to go, but the time frame I had in mind was a little bit longer,” said Caltrans District Director Donald L. Watson.

The new office, opened during a news conference Monday morning in Santa Ana, will utilize computer-aided design technology that will make it a model for other Caltrans facilities throughout the state, Watson said. The office originally was scheduled to house only a dozen engineers and consultants hired by the county Transportation Commission to work on the massive Santa Ana Freeway-widening project. Under the new plan, Watson said, the staff will expand to 80 or 90 within a year.

Johnson’s Bill

But commission members recently voted to seek legislation establishing a separate, full-time Caltrans district office in Orange County. Currently, the county is treated as a separate district for purposes of dividing state highway funds but not for staffing. Caltrans officials have complained that their project staffs are overworked, leading to construction delays.

Assemblyman Ross Johnson (R-La Habra) has introduced Assembly Bill 696, which would require Caltrans to create a separate “district organization, staff and facilities in the county.”

County Transportation Commission Chairman Harriett Wieder said she believed that the Caltrans decision reflected the political clout held by former Supervisor Bruce Nestande at the state level as a member of the California Transportation Commission, which oversees Caltrans, and the pressure brought by local officials.

County Transportation Commission officials said Monday that they still support Johnson’s legislation to ensure that more Caltrans personnel will be transferred to Orange County projects. They said they believed that the bill had influenced Caltrans. They also credited lobbying by Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sepulveda), chairman of the Assembly Transportation Committee; state Sen. John Seymour (R-Anaheim), a member of the Senate Transportation Committee, and the Lincoln Club, a Republican volunteer group that met recently with Gov. George Deukmejian’s transportation advisers.

Stanley T. Oftelie, executive director of the county commission, said that his agency’s decision to pay $1 million of the expected $2-million to $3-million cost “also had something to do with it.”