Toll Road Boards Should Yield in Studying Merger Prospects : Issue Deserves to Be Fully Aired and Decided Locally

The two toll road boards rose up in protest this month at talk of consolidating the Transportation Corridor Agencies with the Orange County Transportation Authority.

This debate is not likely to go away, and indeed, the search for greater efficiencies in authorities and special districts makes these two agencies likely candidates for such discussion. The issue should be aired and decided locally, rather than having a solution imposed by Sacramento, which likely will be looking at consolidation on its own.

For now, both the Foothill/Eastern board, which oversees construction of the Foothill and Eastern corridors, and the San Joaquin board, which manages the San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor, have voted decisively against a merger. They seemed to be saying that the idea of consolidation was little more than a power grab by a sprawling agency that already has seen the absorption of the transit district by the transportation commission in this decade.

OCTA now has a preliminary study in hand suggesting a merger could work, and argues that the consolidation should be examined for potential financial and efficiency benefits. The TCA prides itself in having gotten the toll road projects off the ground in the last decade despite enormous environmental hurdles, incredible bureaucratic obstacles and fierce legal challenges.

Meanwhile, few observers are indifferent to the toll roads: Some believe they are a salvation for some of the worst congestion in California; others are fed up with them as an example of unaccountable bureaucracies.

In the past year there has been much to recommend a closer look at the operations and expenditures of the toll roads. Whatever they have accomplished, they have managed to step on toes and anger a broad cross-section of the public. The agency remains unapologetic about lavish bonuses, perks and salaries that seem to have been waved through by largely inattentive boards. Costs for the projects have nearly doubled and construction has lagged.

Throughout, the tollway boards have been bold and even arrogant in dealing with critics and the public in general. For example, the controversy over a bypass for Newport Coast Drive is largely a misunderstanding that could have been avoided with more forthrightness from the agency early on. Also, the agency’s hostile attitude toward environmental groups in the Laguna Canyon area, which raised legitimate concerns about the destruction of land and wildlife, has left a legacy of ill will.

The OCTA, on the other hand, has made no secret of its own territorial ambitions, not only regarding the consolidation of districts but also in discussion over the future of airports in the county. It has even played its own brand of hardball. For example, it threatened Irvine with withholding Measure M funds if it did not get in line on the bypass question.

But OCTA also has been politically effective when it counted, staving off a fierce effort to divert Measure M transportation improvement funds for bankruptcy recovery. It also managed to tame an effort to divert such a substantial amount of sales tax money that county bus service might have been gutted. Finally, it settled for a less drastic but still painful diversion of bus funds.

There are a lot of philosophical questions lurking in this discussion over consolidation: whether it should be an end in itself; whether bigger can be better; whether bringing agencies under the control of one authority will mean an end to the lavish compensation of executives, and so forth.

All these questions deserve airing. In the meantime, the boards overseeing the toll roads have an opportunity to demonstrate that they are more than a rubber stamp. While emotions run high, the county should take the time necessary for a good look at the merits and drawbacks of consolidation.