Transit Tax Is Seen as Answer

Facing traffic jams of Los Angeles proportions, voters in San Bernardino and Ventura counties will be asked Nov. 2 to do something about it.

As part of the Inland Empire, the fastest growing region in the state, San Bernardino County residents must decide whether to extend for 30 years a half-cent sales tax to pay for about $8 billion in transportation projects. The tax would otherwise expire in 2010. Ventura County residents -- their freeway commutes twice as long as a decade ago -- are being asked to approve a half-cent levy that would bring in about $1.5 billion over 30 years. Ventura is the largest county in California without a transportation tax.

The measures would keep San Bernardino County’s sales tax at 7.75% and increase Ventura County’s to the same level.

Backers say they are confident of success, because special taxes to widen freeways, construct interchanges, fix local roads and improve public transportation are generally popular. Eighteen counties, with 81% of the state’s population, have them. Los Angeles County voters have approved two.

But since 1995, transportation taxes have faced a higher hurdle, requiring approval by two-thirds of voters, not a simple majority.

Since the two-thirds standard was imposed, only four counties have passed transportation taxes, while eight have rejected them, according to the California Planning & Development Report newsletter.

Next month, new transportation taxes are on the ballot in five counties, while extensions are before voters in five others, including San Diego.

Pete Aguilar, manager of the Measure I campaign in San Bernardino County, said the initiative has broad support, a $900,000 war chest and little opposition.

“Reaching the two-thirds mark is extremely difficult,” he said. “Sometimes I wonder if we could reach two-thirds on a question of whether the sky is blue.... [But] I think we are fine.”

Moorpark Councilman Keith Millhouse, chairman of the committee supporting Ventura County’s Measure B, said voter response has been positive to a $190,000 campaign of mailers and phone appeals despite the area’s strong growth-control sentiments.

“The cost of this is a burger and fries [per person] per month, compared with the time and money lost sitting in traffic,” he said. “It’s a no-brainer.”

Riverside County has already cleared the two-thirds hurdle, renewing its transportation tax two years ago with 69% support. And Orange County is planning to put its 20-year tax, originally passed in 1990, up for an extension as well.

Los Angeles County’s 1-cent transportation tax, approved on two occasions with simple majorities, is self-renewing with no expiration date.

Though loosely organized, opponents of the Ventura and San Bernardino measures make the same arguments: Local taxpayers already underwrite freeway construction through a gasoline sales tax that the state is siphoning away to plug a hole in its budget, and that expanded roadways encourage growth.

Patrick Aleman, a federal employee who heads the group Citizens Against Taxes, said San Bernardino County lawmakers should collect the gas funds they’re owed. “They should have pushed the politicians in Sacramento to give us what is rightfully ours,” he said.

In Ventura County, attorney Fred Rosenmund, chairman of Citizens Against Urban Sprawl, said expanding roadways is no real answer to traffic snarls.

“All you have to do is look at the San Fernando Valley,” said Rosenmund, who owns a farm near Oxnard. “They built new freeways, and those roads filled up. They expanded those freeways, and the population grew some more. So they were right back where they started.”

Supporters of Measure I say they plan to spend about half of San Bernardino County’s new transportation money on improving surface streets and major thoroughfares, and one-third on widening and maintaining crowded freeway interchanges. An additional 16% would go to mass transit programs such as new express bus lines and an extension of the Metrolink commuter rail line to Redlands.

Measure I was adopted in 1989 with about 60% of the vote. The measure’s extension has the support of the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors, the San Bernardino Associated Governments and the county’s transportation authority.

A population boom is on the horizon, Aguilar said, and the tax extension would help reduce gridlock and improve the quality of life for all motorists. Improved traffic flow would also help businesses by speeding cargo from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to the transfer centers throughout the county.

“I think the clear message is growth to San Bernardino is coming whether we like it or not,” he said.

But Aleman, a candidate for the Barstow City Council, said in his ballot statement that motorists already pay enough tax. “How much money do the politicians need for roads?” he asked.

In semirural Ventura County, which has 800,000 residents and where farmland vistas still exist, voters are being told that $13 million the county is due each year in state transportation money hasn’t arrived since 2000, and shouldn’t be counted on given California’s budget crisis.

“This measure empowers us to help ourselves,” said Millhouse, past chairman of the county transportation commission. “Otherwise it’s going to be a long wait for help from Sacramento and Washington.”

About 40% of the Ventura County transportation tax revenue would be spent on road and freeway improvements, with construction starting right away to widen California 23 through Thousand Oaks, the 118 Freeway from Moorpark to the San Fernando Valley and portions of the Ventura Freeway.

Money would also be used to widen two-lane Lewis Road from Camarillo to Cal State Channel Islands. At least six motorists have been killed on the narrow farm road since the campus opened in 2002, Millhouse said.

Another 40% of revenue would go to cities and the county for roadwork, and 20% to bus, rail and bike projects.

All 10 cities in Ventura County support the measure, and the county Board of Supervisors voted 4 to 1 to put it on the ballot.

Most of the largest contributions have come from companies that stand to profit from road construction: paving, rock and contracting firms.

But a number of environmentalists oppose the measure, including representatives of the Environmental Coalition of Ventura County and Sierra Club’s Los Padres chapter. They say the tax would take developers off the hook for providing roads and interchanges for new subdivisions.

Ventura County voters overwhelmingly defeated a half-cent sales tax for highway projects in 1990. But proponents believe that traffic congestion has gotten so bad that motorists will be ready to open their wallets.

Complicating matters, however, is a one-quarter-cent sales tax measure also on the Nov. 2 ballot. It would provide about $25 million a year for 10 years to open space advocates who want to buy land and development rights on choice properties around Ventura County.

Political strategists have said rival ballot measures, each seeking a sales tax increase, could undercut one each other.