ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : Tax That Won’t Slow You Down

Will the passing of another year make a difference in the willingness of Orange County voters to tax themselves for important transportation projects? The new leadership of the Orange County Transportation Commission believes that it will and has made an important decision to try again for authorization to put a measure on the ballot in November that would provide a half-cent sales tax increase for transportation improvements.

This sentiment arises in part from polling that suggests the voters in tax-wary Orange County are ready at long last to pay to improve their own transportation system. There also are some signals in what happened to two recent propositions in Orange County, 108 for rail bond money and 111 for transportation improvements. The first passed here and the second was defeated here, but close enough to offer encouragement.

Orange County doesn’t need more taxes, but it must help itself. For example, the county won’t qualify for its share of Proposition 108 money unless it passes its own sales tax measure, the way other urban counties have. As for Proposition 111 money, Orange County shouldn’t expect miracles there, either. The state decided that it could not afford the entire Santa Ana Freeway improvement project and left it to local officials to do the rest.

Without taxing itself for road improvements, Orange county will get half a loaf and a long list of unfinished business. The defeat of Measure M last year left on hold, for example, the reconstruction of the Santa Ana-San Diego freeway interchange, the creation of a 220-mile network of super streets and the planned widening of the Riverside and Orange freeways to include new car-pool lanes. Most of those projects would get moving again with a new transportation measure.

So the estimated $3.1 billion that would come over 20 years from a sales tax measure would be money well spent.