Transit Panel Drops Drive for Tax Hike

Blaming a Republican-controlled state Assembly, Ventura County transit officials Friday abandoned plans for a sales-tax measure that would have helped pay for projects to unclog freeways and make driving safer.

The Ventura County Transportation Commission unanimously rejected the idea of asking voters in November to approve a local sales-tax increase to raise money for streets and roads. The quarter-cent increase would have raised $150 million over 10 years.

Executive Director Ginger Gherardi recommended that the proposal be dropped because a special law allowing the measure to appear on the November ballot was not likely to pass the Legislature because Republicans oppose higher taxes.

The decision came after transit officials met with local representatives in the Assembly and Senate.

There are 41 Republicans and 39 Democrats in the Assembly. The Senate has 21 Democrats, 17 Republicans and three independents.

Although commissioners blame Republicans for spiking the sales-tax measure, getting the required two-thirds of voters to agree to a higher sales tax is an uncertain proposition.

Voters rejected a similar measure in 1990, and two years ago Transportation Commission members abandoned another attempt because they suspected it would fail.

State Sens. Jack O’Connell and Cathie Wright and Assemblymen Nao Takasugi and Brooks Firestone “didn’t slam the door themselves,” Gherardi told transportation commissioners.

“What they basically said is that there’s no way it would get through the Republican caucus,” she said.

County Supervisor Susan K. Lacey, elected chairwoman of the Transportation Commission on Friday, praised local lawmakers for being realistic.

“It would have been easier for them to carry [the bill] and let someone else kill it,” Lacey said. “It’s frustrating . . . but I think they were right to tell us.”

Without a specific way to raise a local share, Ventura County is less likely to receive available federal transportation money, Gherardi said.

That means the delay of not passing a sales-tax increase will prolong improvements to the Ventura Freeway-Pacific Coast Highway junction, one of the most congested stretches of highway between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

State Department of Transportation engineers already have begun designing a new interchange for the junction, but funding for the project has been pushed back to at least 1999 because of more-pressing seismic retrofitting efforts.

Gherardi said that without a local sales-tax increase, any improvements at the interchange will probably not be made until the next century.

Also on indefinite hold are plans to improve California 118 between Somis and Moorpark, where four people have been killed in traffic accidents in the past two months.

Transportation officials want to install passing lanes and other safety devices to cut down the number of crashes. But without a sales-tax hike, there is little chance the improvements will happen any time soon, Gherardi said.

Consumers in Ventura County now pay a 7 1/4% sales tax.

A consultant hired by the commission concluded last month that a majority of voters would support a sales-tax hike to pay for road projects.

According to pollster Max Besler, 63% of Ventura County voters would pay an extra quarter-cent or half-cent sales taxes for better roads. That number was up from the 60% who said they would support higher sales taxes during a 1994 survey.

Besler said the next best chance to get two-thirds of Ventura County voters to approve a sales-tax measure would be in November 2000, because people voting in a presidential election are more likely to support sales-tax increases.