Davis Vows to Expand On Transportation Budget

Responding to criticism that his budget for transportation is a hollow shell, Gov. Gray Davis on Tuesday promised to issue a full plan within three months for improving California’s roads.

A day after he unveiled his proposed 2000-01 budget, Davis said the plan will go well beyond his budget but not nearly as far as a potential November ballot measure that would ease passage of local transportation taxes.

He did not include all of his ideas in the budget proposal, Davis told the Sacramento Press Club, because he will need legislation and other authorization to execute some of them.

The governor’s $88.1-billion budget includes $7.5 billion for roads and public transit, of which he said $3 billion is new money. Republican and Democratic legislators said most of that $3 billion amounts to a shell game, with the shifting of money already earmarked for transportation.

They charged that none of the expected billions of dollars in state surplus was set aside to ease traffic congestion, and they said borrowing against future transportation budgets--as Davis has proposed--is robbing Peter to pay Paul.

“That is not accurate,” Davis said Tuesday.

Under the governor’s proposals, transportation spending from the state’s general fund alone would total at least $121 million this year, an amount Davis described as unprecedented. And over the next 10 years, he said, California will spend at least $75 billion on transportation. He characterized his plan for borrowing from future budgets as a creative way to speed up roadwork.

“We can begin today the design work, engineering work . . . all of which takes two to three years,” he said. “Otherwise we couldn’t start any of that work until 2002; that will push farther down the road the time when we could actually start pouring cement and building freeways.”

Davis declined to specify his quibbles with the transportation ballot initiative proposed for next fall, spearheaded by Senate President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco). It would reduce the vote needed to increase local sales taxes for transportation from two-thirds to a simple majority.

But Davis said the only exception that he could imagine making to the two-thirds majority rule would be for schools. Davis has endorsed Proposition 26, a March ballot measure sponsored by teachers and some business leaders, that would do just that.