Rep. Harley Rouda’s first town hall gets commitments to fund state needs, tackle airport noise
On the same day the Trump administration said it planned to cancel $929 million in grant funds for California’s troubled bullet train project, Rep. Harley Rouda told constituents in Costa Mesa that he plans to “fight like hell every day” to help the state get back more of the taxes its residents pay into the federal government.
The Laguna Beach Democrat drew more than 200 people to the Estancia High School gym Tuesday for his first town hall in his 48th District, fielding questions on national topics from the Green New Deal and the 2020 presidential election to the minimum wage and congressional gridlock.
Closer to home, one question that drew a chuckle from the generally supportive crowd was if Rouda thinks it will be difficult to get federal dollars for the state “given that Trump does not like California.”
The illustration of the moment: the bullet train.
“You can argue that the high-speed train doesn’t make sense,” Rouda said. And many have, as the fraught $77 billion line from Los Angeles to San Francisco drags on $44 billion over budget and 13 years behind schedule, leading Gov. Gavin Newsom to say he was reassessing the project — which President Trump has seized upon, calling the train a waste as his administration bats around withholding remaining funds along with recouping $2.5 billion already dispersed.
“But when he talks about taking back ‘his’ federal dollars — they’re not his dollars, they’re our dollars,” Rouda said about Trump’s pronouncements. “We’re the taxpayers. We paid that money.”
In other local issues, he said noise from John Wayne Airport, homelessness and housing affordability, and sober living homes are among the top issues facing the 48th District, which includes Huntington Beach, Costa Mesa, Fountain Valley, Newport Beach and Laguna Beach.
“Some of these are tied together,” he said before poking at the number of sober living homes in Costa Mesa — about 100 licensed by the city or state, according to city figures — and how they “curb” patients at the end of their stays and “add to our homelessness issues.”
“What these fly-by-night organizations do, they literally recruit addicts from around the country to come here where they then receive six months of insurance benefits to provide less than adequate support for that addict,” he said.
Rouda also vowed to join the Quiet Skies Caucus to address the noise impacts on cities neighboring JWA. This is a longstanding issue in Newport Beach and especially along the Back Bay, where departure paths have tightened up since the 2017 introduction of the Federal Aviation Administration’s NextGen program. Newport leaders and residents regularly meet with congressional representatives and the FAA in Washington and with the carriers locally to ameliorate the impacts.
Like his fellow Laguna Democrat, Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris, Rouda said he was disappointed in the state’s lawsuit against the city of Huntington Beach that accuses the city of defying a state law that requires cities and counties to set aside sufficient land for housing development.
“While we have housing shortages across California, in our district and other places in our country as well, I don’t believe the best way to solve it is with a lawsuit,” Rouda said. “I would prefer to see a greater effort done sitting around the table. You can have a private conversation that says, ‘Look, we’ve got to get from here to there and if that doesn’t happen, [then] we’re going to be forced to file a lawsuit.’”
Rouda added that the state was “too quick to jump out” and sue.
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