A SPECIAL REPORT ON TRANSPORTATION : A MATTER OF TRUST : Failure to Pass Transportation Tax Attributed to Voters’ Lack of Confidence in Government

Alameda has it. Fresno has it. Even Los Angeles has it.

Does Orange County have it? Nope.

This remains the only urban county in California without a local sales tax to help pay for highway and transit projects.

The issue is credibility, residents say: Why vote for a sales tax to pay for transportation improvements when you don’t believe local government will spend the money wisely?

“We have been paying taxes that supposedly were to be used for freeways, but as I drive on the freeways and roads, you wonder where the money went because it doesn’t look like it’s in the roads,” Clifford Vails of Cypress says.

His view is widely shared, polls have found. In fact, according to The Times Orange County Poll, strong distrust of government is the primary reason Orange County residents reject a tax for transportation.

Only 40% of those surveyed in the poll, conducted by Irvine-based Mark Baldassare & Associates, have a “great deal” or “some” confidence that local government will keep county freeways and surface streets from being hopelessly congested. Sixty percent of residents, meanwhile, have “hardly any” or “no confidence at all.”

“Orange County residents have little faith in their local officials’ abilities to stop traffic from getting worse,” Baldassare says. “Most believe that gridlock is a part of the county’s future.

“People have seen a worsening transportation situation, not only in Orange County but in Southern California as a whole,” Baldassare says. “And who is in charge of transportation? The government. Also, we continue to be in a climate of tax revolt and fiscal populism. And of course, the ideology with this is that you don’t trust government to increase taxes and actually improve the quality of life.”

One of those polled, Robert Sapiro of Huntington Beach, said: “I don’t think the government spends its money wisely, and I don’t trust the people who are doing it.”

Responds Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder: “I don’t blame (voters) for being skeptical and disbelieving. But it’s a regional problem, and we’re not the only part of the transportation system, and the poll results only lead me to believe that Orange Countians don’t have all the facts yet. There’s always got to be a scapegoat.”

The poll did show that 53% of the 600 residents surveyed now favor a half-cent sales tax--the type most often politically successful elsewhere. But while this and other recent polls show that momentum is building for passage of such a tax, experts say the level of support needs to go much higher if it is to survive a hard-fought election.

D.J. Smith, a Sacramento-based transportation consultant who was involved in several of the local transportation sales tax campaigns that have won in California, says that San Diego, Sacramento, Riverside and Contra Costa counties started out with similar survey results, yet managed to turn the situation around to gain strong majorities at the polls.

Political consultants and elected officeholders now agree that the only way to win passage of such a tax measure is to listen to what people want to pay for--not try to tell them what they need-- and then package a ballot measure accordingly.

That’s the lesson that Orange County officials say they did not understand in 1984, when they wrote a 1-cent countywide sales tax proposal, Proposition A, that was rejected nearly 3 to 1.

Altogether, 11 counties now have a local sales tax for transportation purposes: Alameda, Contra Costa, Fresno, Los Angeles, Riverside, Sacramento, San Benito, San Diego, San Mateo, San Francisco and Santa Clara. Voters in Contra Costa, Riverside and Sacramento counties approved their half-cent sales tax measures on Nov. 8.

But sales tax measures have been rejected in other counties, including Placer and Tulare on Nov. 8, San Bernardino in November, 1987, and Tuolumne in November, 1986.

The Baldassare poll, which has a 4% margin of error, was conducted Aug. 25-27.

The poll conducted by Smith for the Orange County Transportation Commission showed high measures of voter skepticism on several issues.

For instance, 79% agreed that “local government has done an inadequate job of meeting traffic needs,” 84% agreed that “there has been too much growth in too short a period of time,” and 72% said “local governments have not been able to say no to new developments.”

The bottom line: Only 34% of the respondents in the OCTC’s poll said that money raised from a half-cent sales tax would be spent wisely; 49% said it would be spent “inefficiently.” The rest were undecided.

Another lesson public officials have learned from tax measures is that the actual wording may be critical to the outcome. According to Smith’s poll for the OCTC, support increases dramatically when people are told in the ballot measure’s title and accompanying explanation that a half-cent tax will cost them only $50 to $75 a year for 20 years, and that only projects “designated as important by the local communities” would be funded.

Also, support rises to more than 70% when a sales tax is coupled with strict rules requiring that land-use decisions be coordinated with the availability of streets and highways.

“The Contra Costa and Riverside County measures (passed on Nov. 8) both had elements of that,” Smith said.

The fact that surveys show that voters place part of the blame on the Board of Supervisors for failing to say no to developers often enough comes as no surprise to either board members or developers.

“I think it’s an honest reflection of the people’s frustration in not seeing things happen--they’re not seeing improvements occur fast enough,” Irvine Co. vice chairman Thomas H. Nielsen said.

On one hand, Nielsen said, allegations that county supervisors cater to developers are inaccurate. On the other hand, he says that there are valid reasons for voters to have a deep distrust of government. “We don’t have the kind of integrated transportation and land-use capacities that we should,” he added.

Former Supervisor Bruce Nestande, now with Costa Mesa-based Arnel Development Co. and a member of the California Transportation Commission, is among several officials and activists who believe that any proposed sales tax for Orange County should be tied to an overall growth-management policy.

Indeed, a combined approach is the goal of Newport Beach real estate lawyer John Simon, who chaired Citizens for Traffic Solutions, the developer-funded group that raised more than $2.3 million to defeat the countywide Citizens’ Sensible Growth and Traffic Control Initiative (Measure A) last June.

Simon has kept Citizens for Traffic Solutions, supported mostly by developers, intact as a political action committee. He

Simon is considering a countywide ballot measure that would combine a sales tax with the growth-management plan written earlier this year by a citizens’ committee appointed by the Board of Supervisors and chaired by Nestande. Under that plan, new streets would have to be built before new residential and commercial development could be completed.

Tom Rogers, the San Juan Capistrano rancher who co-founded Citizens for Sensible Growth and Traffic Control, the group behind last June’s countywide slow-growth initiative, is against Simon’s plan already and promises to lead the effort to defeat it, if necessary.

“It will simply be the same deceitful campaign all over again,” Rogers predicts, referring to the sales tax defeated in 1984. “They (county officials) tried to convince the public that there would be honest gains in traffic flow, but it was really an attempt to build the new freeways that the developers want for their new projects.

“It would be nice if a true citizens committee--not just a bunch of old hacks who are friends of the supervisors and the developers--could prioritize the projects that would be funded with the proceeds from a sales tax,” Rogers said, “but I don’t for one minute believe that they (county officials) will allow that.”

Rogers would like to see tax proceeds go to projects that reduce current congestion in local communities rather than new freeways that he alleges would be built to serve new development. If his concern can be met, Rogers says, he might be willing to support a half-cent sales tax.

County officials have not tried to woo Rogers or other potential sales tax opponents because they are hoping a grass-roots citizens group will be formed to take such a leadership role. Several transportation-improvement groups already exist, but they are dominated by business leaders, not citizen activists.

Says Nestande:

“The traffic problem is not going to be solved with money from the state and federal governments because there simply isn’t enough. The residents of Orange County are going to get whatever traffic relief they vote to pay for themselves.”

ORANGE COUNTY TRANSPORTATION AT A GLANCE

FREEWAY PROJECTS

--I-405 widening from I-605 to State 73 under way.

--I-405 widening from State 73 to I-5 under way.

--State 55 widening from Dyer Road to 17th Street under way.

--I-5 widening from I-405 to I-605. Begins with reconstruction of the State 55 interchange and expanding the freeway segment from I-405 to State 55 in 1989.

--Extension of State 55 to 19th Street. Begins in February.

FREEWAY PROJECTS RECOMMENDED BY THE AUTO CLUB OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

--Development of State 39 into an 8-lane freeway between State 1 and I-210.

--Extension of State 55 to State 1.

--Extension of State 57 to I-405.

--Development of the San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor.

--Development of State 90 into an 8-lane freeway between I-405 and State 91.

--Development of the Eastern Transportation Corridor.

--Development of the Foothill Transportation Corridor.

FREEWAYS VS. VEHICLES

During the last 12 years, only 2 miles of freeway have been built in Orange County while 549,358 new vehicles were registered.

% Growth 1976-87

Freeway miles: 0.02%

Vehicle registrations: 41%

Source: California Department of Motor Vehicles

20-YEAR MASTER PLAN OF TRANSPORTATION IMPROVEMENTS

The Orange County Transportation Commission’s $19.5-billion, 20-year master plan of highway and transit improvements focuses on completion of three tollways in south Orange County, widening I-5 from six to 12 lanes with transitways for buses and car pools, extending State 57 to I-405, and more car-pool lanes.

The 20-year plan includes hundreds of repaving and signal synchronization projects on streets in the county’s 28 cities and the unincorporated area. It also lists 13 major thoroughfares as candidates to become so-called super-streets with streamlined, congestion-reducing designs, synchronized signals and other improvements.

But improvements are so costly that the list has an $8-billion shortfall in financing. There’s no rail transit proposed other than track upgrading and selected station modifications in preparation for (but not actual purchase of or operation of) additional Los Angeles-San Clemente trains.

The master plan contains suggestions from city and county traffic officials, and two consulting firms.

A transportation wish list including light rail, more commuter trains (heavy rail) and additional freeway construction could add another $5 billion to $10 billion to the current shortfall and probably would take 30 years to complete, say state and county officials.

In thousands of dollars

Next 5 Years Next 10 Years Next 15 Years FREEWAY PROGRAM Program Cost $2,843,330 $3,029,909 $2,489,457 Projected Revenue 1,736,510 1,631,212 596,820 Shortfall (Surplus) 1,106,820 1,398,697 1,892,637 SURFACE STREET PROGRAM Program Cost $2,097,632 $2,068,962 $2,502,897 Projected Revenue 1,018,900 929,260 1,975,260 Shortfall (Surplus) 1,078,732 1,139,702 527,637 URBAN TRANSIT (BUS) PROGRAM Program Cost $595,184 $935,567 $2,840,410 Projected Revenue 686,110 828,380 2,307,360 Shortfall (Surplus) (90,926) 107,187 533,050 COMMUTER RAIL PROGRAM Program Cost $124,925 $4,790 $6,303 Projected Revenue 16,680 11,530 31,100 Shortfall (Surplus) 108,245 (6,740) (24,797) TOTAL PROGRAM Program Cost $5,661,071 $6,039,228 $7,839,067 Projected Revenue 3,458,200 3,400,382 4,910,540 Shortfall (Surplus) 2,202,871 2,638,846 2,928,527

Next 20 Years FREEWAY PROGRAM Program Cost $8,362,696 Projected Revenue 3,964,542 Shortfall (Surplus) 4,398,154 SURFACE STREET PROGRAM Program Cost $6,669,491 Projected Revenue 3,923,420 Shortfall (Surplus) 2,746,071 URBAN TRANSIT (BUS) PROGRAM Program Cost $4,371,161 Projected Revenue 3,821,850 Shortfall (Surplus) 549,311 COMMUTER RAIL PROGRAM Program Cost $136,018 Projected Revenue 59,310 Shortfall (Surplus) 76,708 TOTAL PROGRAM Program Cost $19,539,366 Projected Revenue 11,769,122 Shortfall (Surplus) 7,770,244

Source: Orange County Transportation Commission