Countywide : Panel Restores Funds For Tollway Design

The Joint Legislative Budget Committee in Sacramento has agreed to restore $1.6 million in Caltrans design funding for Orange County’s planned San Joaquin Hills tollway, state Sen. John Seymour (R-Anaheim) said Thursday.

The funds had been blocked in the committee last week by Assemblywoman Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), who had cited assurances made two years ago by Orange County officials that state funding would not be needed for the county’s three planned tollways.

Seymour said Waters “backed off” after he secured a legal opinion from the legislative analyst’s office that stated it would be illegal for the state not to pay for Caltrans’ design supervision on the tollway project because of a law passed last year that also covered toll bridge design work in Northern California.

Seymour has argued against requests that the county tollway agency reimburse the state, stating that the tollways, financed mostly through developer fees and bond sales, are in effect a gift from the county to the state highway system.

Currently, several hundred engineers of the state Department of Transportation are supervising tollway design in the county. However, the designs are being drawn by a joint venture partnership of several engineering and consulting firms.