Drop in the Bucket
The $42 billion in bonds that the voters passed last fall were merely a down payment on a long list of deferred transportation projects. The battle over the first $4.5 billion turned into an exercise of "robbing Peter to pay Paul" as eugene notes. That was inevitable. The fights between inland and costal, north and south will continue as the rest of the funds are doled out. The fund will be empty soon and there will still be projects that need to be completed. California has been underfunding its infrastructure for decades. Clearing that backlog will be expensive and take many years.
Here is Walters in the SacBee:
When California more or less stopped building infrastructure, especially highways and water facilities, three decades ago on the mistaken assumption that its growth was slowing (an "era of limits," then-Gov. Jerry Brown proclaimed), the state had about 22 million people. Now it has more than 37 million and is adding human beings at the rate of 5 million-plus a decade.
Both transportation and water officials are blunt about needing infinitely more money -- perhaps 10 times as much in the case of highways -- to do what's required. And in his State of the State address in January, Schwarzenegger called for doubling up on last year's bonds during the next couple of election cycles as part of a long-range infrastructure improvement program that could reach a staggering $500 billion.
Not all of the infrastructure are roads and mass transit, only about $140 billion. You know...chump change. From yesterday's LAT:
The commission staff estimates that California requires up to $140 billion in highway and mass transit improvements to keep the state moving.
According to Caltrans, the percentage of highways in the state deemed congested rose from 32 to 43 from 1992 to 2002. Caltrans defines congestion as rush-hour traffic that moves at 35 mph or less.
At about the same time, the state's population grew by 21% while the number of miles in the highway system rose by only 3%.
Our budget is already structurally imbalanced, so there is not exactly a bunch of money laying around to spend. There are three ways this could go. Arnold wants to borrow. Democrats generally prefer to raise taxes. Republicans want to privatize everything. Or I guess there could be a fourth, which is doing nothing. That is what we did to end up with this backlog in the first place. Somehow I dont think that is the best option.
Expect a lot of public debate on the issue. Despite what Arnold thinks, the public won't put up with putting everything on the state's credit card that he supposedly cut up years ago.
Great post
As transportation is the backbone of any economy, and something that provides millions of working Californians with good, steady, often union jobs (especially in construction and maintenance) this issue is very important to all of us.
Over at Calitics I've been decrying the splits between urban and rural areas over allocation of the funds, and as you say there's simply not enough money to go around, so we can expect more of this fighting. The sad thing is that this an inherently neoliberal situation - instead of finding ways to "grow the pie" people are trying to determine who gets screwed first, often falling back on unfair assumptions in the process.
Ultimately if we are to avoid borrowing or privatization - choices that would hurt working Californians deeply and directly - we need to solve the budget problems. And yet it becomes more difficult to do that if regions feel that the process is unfair. In Monterey last fall, as with many localities, tailor-made ads backing the bonds were shown, promising improvements that now have gone unfunded. In Mendocino, Santa Maria, and San Bernardino there are now people wondering if the process works fairly, and this might impact negatively a progressive attempt to fix the budget, especially if it includes new taxes.