CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS : PROPOSITION 157 : Effort to Forbid State to Operate Toll Roads

California does not have any publicly owned toll roads, and state Sen. Bill Lockyer wants to keep it that way.

Lockyer (D-Hayward) is putting before the voters a referendum, Proposition 157 on next Tuesday’s ballot, that would amend the state Constitution to forbid the state to collect tolls on any privately operated toll roads it may come to possess.

Opponents argue that the measure would needlessly clutter the Constitution and tie the hands of future state policy-makers.

“It is not fitting or prudent to put this kind of provision in the state Constitution,” said Katherine M. Thompson, executive director of the California Transit League in Sacramento. “It locks the hands of the state 35 years from now . . . and who knows what conditions will exist then?”

Ben Firschein, Lockyer’s legislative aide in Sacramento, said the senator packaged his idea as a constitutional amendment as a way to avoid a gubernatorial veto. “A constitutional amendment is a convenient way to go around the executive (branch),” Firschein said.

At the heart of the issue is a new state program authorizing construction of four toll road “demonstration projects.” Three of these roads are proposed for Orange County, and the fourth would cut across Alameda and Contra Costa counties in the San Francisco Bay Area.

None of the roads have won all of the necessary permits and clearances, and all are vigorously opposed on environmental grounds. Critics argue that they will encourage air pollution and sprawl.

The law authorizing these projects requires that private companies build the roads and give them to the state Department of Transportation. Caltrans, in turn, would lease them back to the builders, who could then charge tolls for up to 35 years to recoup their construction and maintenance costs and make a profit.

When the private companies have made back their money, Caltrans would take over operation and maintenance of the highways.

The arrangement is touted as one way for the state to acquire new highways when it doesn’t have the money to build new roads itself. Critics say it is a bad deal for taxpayers, who may be asked to pay as much as half the cost of the road but will not have control over it until it is worn out and in need of reconstruction.

Lockyer, himself an ardent opponent of toll roads, does not address whether the roads now being designed and environmentally reviewed are worthy. Instead, Proposition 157 would simply forbid Caltrans from continuing to collect tolls once the toll roads revert to state control.

The proposal is vigorously supported by the San Francisco-based California State Automobile Assn., the Northern California AAA affiliate that has used its monthly magazine, Motorland, to urge its members to support the measure.

The CSAA contends that highway users already pay to maintain public roads through the state gas tax, licensing costs and other user fees, and should not be nicked for tolls on top of it.

“In the absence of Proposition 157 or some other law, when these toll roads revert to state possession, taxpayers would be paying twice to maintain the same roads,” said CSAA spokesman Barry Schiller.

He said the state needs a clear policy against tolls, even on roads designed and built with tolls, because it may be difficult to stop collecting tolls 35 years from now.

“When the (San Francisco-Oakland) Bay Bridge was built, it was promised that tolls would end when the bonds were paid off, but it didn’t happen,” Schiller said. “Once you impose tolls, historically they are never removed.”

That is not always true. Earlier this year, for example, Virginia dismantled the toll booths on its section of Interstate 95.

Thompson and other Proposition 157 opponents contend that the fuss over tolls obscures the likelihood that toll roads built in part with state transportation funds “will subtract funds from rail projects in California.”