COUNTYWIDE : Tollway Boards Vote to Leave Merger

On the eve of a landmark agreement between Orange County’s Board of Supervisors and the League of Cities on merging the county’s transportation agencies, two members of the merger said Thursday they want out.

The boards of the Foothill-Eastern and San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor Agencies, which are planning three tollways in eastern and southern sections of the county, voted at meetings in Santa Ana on Thursday to try to remove themselves from merger legislation authored by state Sen. Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach).

Under the legislation, the tollway agencies would only be forced to join the new, combined transportation agency once the three tollways are built--sometime in the late 1990s.

But tollway officials have resisted becoming part of a merger because they view their agencies as unique and as having a single mission. Tollway staffers also are concerned that Bergeson’s legislation would weaken the agencies’ ability to get construction bond financing.

Bergeson’s bill, SB 838, is still in the Assembly Local Government Committee, which is expected to hold hearings within two or three weeks if the Orange County Board of Supervisors indicates its support.

The supervisors’ legislative planning committee is scheduled to take up the issue today, but Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez said late Thursday that the matter may be deferred to a meeting of the full Board of Supervisors in two weeks.

The county’s League of Cities was expected to back the measure at its meeting in Anaheim on Thursday night, and the supervisors are expected to follow suit, according to supervisors and mayors involved in the merger discussions.

Under a compromise suggested by Bergeson, the merger would combine the Orange County Transit District and the Orange County Transportation Commission and place them under a new board.