Panel Will Indeed Try Again on M

Rebuffed by voters last fall, the Orange County Transportation Commission directed its staff Thursday to prepare plans for resubmitting a half-cent sales tax measure on the November ballot.

The commission’s unanimous decision came during an informal public workshop held after the panel’s regular session. Also at the commission members’ request, the Transportation Commission staff was directed to study whether the same ballot measure should ask voters about a proposal to merge the county’s transportation agencies, of which the Transportation Commission and the Orange County Transit District are the chief two.

In addition, the staff will study the possibility of including ballot language offering voters a choice of ways for the sales tax to be spent.

Transportation Commission officials will, therefore, prepare several plans for consideration before commission members make a final decision. There may be a formal vote next month to schedule the election, but details of the tax proposal will be fine-tuned after transportation officials know the fate of the proposed statewide gasoline tax increase on the June ballot.

Although the commission asked the staff to study new ballot language, there was little sentiment among commission members Thursday for changing the spending formulas in Measure M, the half-cent sales tax increase defeated 52.6% to 47.4% last fall.

Measure M would have raised an estimated $3.1 billion over a fixed 20-year period. The measure proposed spending $1.3 billion for freeway improvements, $350 million for regional streets, $654 million for local streets, and $775 million for transit projects.

It also would have created a citizens advisory committee to oversee compliance with the spending plan and the growth controls contained in the measure.

“The transportation problems of Orange County have not gone away,” said Tustin Councilman Richard B. Edgar, a member of both the commission and the Orange County Transit District, the county’s bus and ride-sharing agency. “And the cost of correcting those problems is escalating faster than the inflation rate.”

Commission member Clarice A. Blamer, a Brea councilwoman who chairs the commission’s citizens advisory panel, said panel members would like to see another tax vote in November but that they also favor having minor changes made in the plan. She said the panel supports a change that would allow cities to use more of the sales tax proceeds for their own transit projects, among them the monorail systems now being discussed in five central Orange County cities.

Supervisor Roger R. Stanton, a member of the Transportation Commission and of the transit district, proposed the agency-merger provision and also giving voters a choice between two sales tax options.

Stanton said voters are confused about whom to hold responsible for transportation decisions. He said that presenting options on the ballot will increase the chances for approval of the sales tax increase.

Coincidentally, Drivers for Highway Safety, an Irvine-based group opposed to car-pool lanes, also argued for multiple ballot options Thursday, but it criticized the commission, saying that it was simply trying to go for a rerun of Measure M.

“I’m disappointed that you are even considering putting it on the ballot again,” said Bill Ward, a spokesman for the group. “The matter has already been decided; it was rejected by the voters . . . . Trying to ignore the result of that election is an insult to every citizen that went to the trouble of voting last November. Why bother to vote if the election isn’t going to count?”

Drivers for Highway Safety unveiled its own proposal, in which voters would be asked to decide between spending money on freeway construction or on mass transit; they could not choose both.

After the Transportation Commission workshop, however, commission members said such all-or-nothing approaches to highway and transit projects are not in the county’s best interests.

“If we go forward only with money for highways,” said Costa Mesa lawyer Dana W. Reed, the commission public-at-large member, “I think we are not being very forward-thinking and not taking into account the ecological ramifications. . . . Future generations would condemn us.”

Drivers for Highway Safety, Reed added, is being very shortsighted. “I choose to ignore their opinion,” he said. “Even if it would be very popular, it would be wrong.”