Bay Bridge Should Unite California, Not Divide It

Your April 18 article, “North and South Miles Apart on Bay Bridge Project,” portrayed the efforts to use the Bay Bridge as a wedge issue to split California. These efforts are counterproductive, are putting lives in danger and need to stop. The Bay Bridge project has lurched through a well-documented crisis. It’s said that such a crisis can bring out the best or the worst in people. Unfortunately for the L.A. Chamber of Commerce, the temptation to take the low road proved too hard to resist.

The chamber has led a campaign demanding that the state “hold firm in not paying for Bay Bridge cost overruns.” How obscene would it have looked if, after the 1994 Northridge earthquake, Bay Area leaders had demanded that “Bay Area” money not be used to repair the damage? If it wanted to, the Bay Area could demand more state money. Although making up only one-fifth of the population, we pay nearly one-third of California’s income taxes. Yet because of the state’s population-based funding formulas, we are a “donor region.”

Of course, this talk serves only to pit south against north, and is a recipe for statewide gridlock, which returns us to the reduced stature of the chamber.

If the L.A. chamber were really concerned about transportation funding in L.A., it would spend more time helping on the transportation issue that can really move us forward: restoring Proposition 42 money. The chamber’s efforts are not serving the state, its region and its members.

Jim Wunderman

President and CEO

Bay Area Council

San Francisco