Fund Shift to Santa Ana Freeway Gets OK : Transportation: OCTA also agrees to loan money toward Santa Ana River Viaduct Expressway.

Transportation officials agreed Monday to divert Measure M funds to the ailing Santa Ana Freeway widening effort and loan one of billionaire Ross Perot’s firms $12.5 million for a proposed expressway-on-stilts project.

Because of a projected $3-billion shortfall in state transportation funding, the transfer of more than $200 million in Measure M funds from Riverside and Costa Mesa freeway improvements to the Santa Ana Freeway widening effort was the most pressing issue for members of the Orange County Transportation Authority Board of Directors.

Measure M is the half-cent sales tax for traffic improvements approved by Orange County voters in 1990. Expected to raise more than $3 billion over 20 years, the measure earmarked money for specific projects. While savings experienced on some freeway improvements have been redistributed, never before has OCTA taken money away from one pending Measure M project in order to save another.

The state’s budget woes, due in part to recession-related reductions in tax revenue, are expected to cut future state allocations to the $1.6-billion Santa Ana Freeway project.

In effect, OCTA is trying to swap use of Measure M dollars on the Santa Ana Freeway now for future state highway funding.

The result: a delay of two to four years, or until future state money shows up, in projects on the Riverside and Costa Mesa freeways.

Nobody opposed the swap during OCTA’s board meeting Monday. Now the OCTA staff will draw up an amendment to Measure M to accomplish the transfer. To take effect, the amendment must be approved by a two-thirds majority of the Measure M Citizens’ Oversight Committee and the OCTA board.

A provision of Measure M created the oversight panel to ensure that revenue is spent in accordance with the plan approved by the voters.

Besides freeway improvements, Measure M earmarked $340 million for an urban rail line that would have stations spaced more closely together than intercounty, Metrolink commuter trains.

In another high-profile action, the OCTA board tentatively agreed to loan $12.5 million to Perot’s National Transportation Authority firm. The money will be used for environmental and engineering work on Perot’s proposed Santa Ana River Viaduct Expressway, a private toll road.

The proposed expressway-on-stilts would follow the center of the Santa Ana River from the Orange Freeway near Anaheim Stadium to the San Diego Freeway, then continue on a deck above the San Diego Freeway to the Corona del Mar Freeway near John Wayne Airport. The project has been delayed for several years because of Perot’s inability to raise the necessary construction capital.

Some OCTA officials see the potential for using revenue from Perot’s proposed toll road to help pay future rail costs. But a financial link between the two projects is only conceptual, OCTA officials cautioned. It has never been pursued in discussions with Perot’s company.

What needs further negotiating immediately, warned County Supervisor Roger R. Stanton, a member of the OCTA board, is the proposed $12.5-million loan to the Perot firm. Stanton worried that a staff report was contradictory in stating the money would be repaid with interest while hinting it may never come back to OCTA at all.

Stanton also questioned the timing of the loan, citing failure of Perot’s NTA firm to reach agreements with the county so far on rights of way and other issues, even though the state awarded the company an exclusive franchise for the toll road more than three years ago.

Stanton joined in the board’s unanimous vote to move forward, but only after receiving assurances from staffers that a final loan contract will be submitted to the OCTA board for final approval in a few weeks.

The OCTA board also received an already publicized recommendation from the agency’s staff to include a 28-mile, Fullerton-Irvine rail route while soliciting public comments at a March 14 public hearing. A public opinion survey is also in the works. Survey results will be released prior to the OCTA board’s final route selection April 11.

OCTA board member Gary L. Hausdorfer, a San Juan Capistrano councilman, said he supports the proposed rail line but believes not all the evidence needed to make a final decision is in. He wants more evidence of both the public’s support for rail and of future revenue sources needed to pay the $2-billion construction bill as well as rail’s future operating costs.