OCTC Poll Shows Support of Tax for Transportation

By a margin of 59% to 35%, Orange County voters would support a half-cent sales tax for transportation projects if they knew that the tax would cost the average person only $50 to $75 a year for 20 years, according to a new poll released Wednesday by county officials.

Six percent were undecided in the survey of 600 registered voters conducted in early September. It showed that if a half-cent tax measure is written well and is not perceived as a “government or developer-sponsored plan,” it could win in Orange County, according to D.J. Smith, the Sacramento-based political consultant who supervised the poll and evaluated the findings.

The poll was commissioned by the Orange County Transportation Commission in preparation for a possible effort in the next few years to increase the 6% sales tax. The margin of error was 3%. Only people with a high propensity to vote were surveyed, Smith said.

Smith, who has helped Alameda and San Diego counties mount successful sales tax campaigns, said that Orange and Sacramento counties now are the only urban areas in California that do not have such special sales taxes for transportation. A half-cent measure is on the Nov. 8 ballot in Sacramento.

“These are conservative voters. They understand that it’s going to take more money to fix traffic problems around here, but they don’t want government or developers telling them how to do it. . . . The voters love to make those decisions themselves,” Smith said.

A lack of confidence in government was evident.

Fifty-two percent said political leaders have not come up with good ideas for solving traffic problems; 63% said the cities, as a group, and county government have not developed a plan because “they’re so busy arguing among themselves.”

Only 34% of the respondents said that money from a half-cent sales tax would be spent wisely, compared to 49% who said it would probably be spent inefficiently; 17% were undecided.

By a margin of 60% to 30%, with 10% undecided, respondents said they would approve of linking the half-cent tax to a program of withholding the proceeds from local communities that have not adopted a growth-management plan addressing growth and traffic in their areas.

Asked what is “absolutely necessary” in a transportation-improvement program, the findings were:

- 86% want to provide discounted transit fares for seniors and the handicapped.

- 83% would include a countywide system of traffic-signal synchronization.

- 71% include both upgrading an expanding specialized transit services for the elderly and the handicapped.

- 71% say there should be development of commuter car-pool lanes that could be shared with vans and buses.

- 70% would make local street and road maintenance part of such a plan.

- 61% would like bus service to be upgraded and expanded.

- 60% would build new lanes on existing county roads and freeways for the exclusive use of car pools and buses.

In addition, 83% said it is absolutely necessary to complete the widening of the Santa Ana Freeway “five years earlier than currently planned.”