Countywide : Study Session Will Focus on Measure M

The Orange County Transportation Commission voted unanimously Monday to hold a Feb. 15 study session on whether to place another sales tax increase measure on the November ballot, a year after the last proposal failed.

The panel also repealed an ordinance that had called for last fall’s countywide vote on Measure M, the half-cent sales tax proposal that was rejected 52.6% to 47.4%.

Measure M would have raised $3.1 billion over 20 years for new freeway lanes (mostly limited to car pools), so-called regional “super streets,” road repairs, and transit and commuter rail projects.

Also on Monday, the panel asked the OCTC staff to study the possibility of denying existing funds to cities that fail to comply with growth-control requirements. Such restrictions were included in Measure M but but would have applied only to a city’s eligibility to receive new sales tax proceeds, not existing funds. OCTC controls about $16 million a year in state, federal and local transportation funds distributed among the county’s 29 cities.

The study is sure to tweak city officials, who are expected to argue that no new burden should be imposed on them. However, commission member Dana W. Reed said growth controls are needed in the cities to bring them into line with the growth-management policies adopted by the Board of Supervisors for the county’s unincorporated areas.

In interviews last week, most panel members said they favor repeating a vote on Measure M this November, possibly without any changes to the ballot measure.

Roger R. Stanton, a commission member and county supervisor, said Monday that he may ask that the long-proposed merger of OCTC and the Orange County Transit District be added to a revised Measure M, but just how many panel members agree with him remains to be seen.

Even before the Transportation Commission set the sales tax study session for Feb. 15, critics rose during the meeting at the county Hall of Administration to call for a ballot proposal that would be dramatically different from Measure M.

“Last year we supported placing Measure M on the ballot because we knew it was an unacceptable plan and that it would be defeated,” leading to discussion of better, alternate proposals, said Bill Ward of Drivers for Highway Safety, a group opposed to car-pool lanes.

“We were only half right,” Ward said. “We underestimated the bureaucracy’s tenacity.”

Referring to efforts to resurrect Measure M, Ward said:

“It lost because it is a bad plan. Give it a rest. . . . The public will pay but only for transportation that we want.”

Ward said people sink tens of thousands of dollars into their automobiles and want new roads for those cars to travel on, “not schemes to force us out of our cars.”

“In short,” Ward said, “show some respect for the taxpayers.”

Ward suggested that a user fee, specifically a local gasoline tax that would not be used for car-pool lanes or transit, is preferable to Measure M and “would almost assuredly pass.”

But Ward did not provide details, such as the amount of such a local gas tax, or what projects it would finance.

The OCTC staff has previously concluded that a local gasoline tax would take a two-thirds majority vote countywide and would have to be 19 cents per gallon to raise as much money as a half-cent sales tax. State and federal gasoline taxes already total 18 cents per gallon.