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Senator Alan Lowenthal Laments Governor’s Veto of SB 974; Endorses L.A.’s Measure R
Spelling out the lost opportunity to improve infrastructure and air quality, Senator Lowenthal vows to maintain the broad coalition that engineered the port container fee legislation.
Among the casualties of the record-long delay in California’s budget approval process for the 2008-09 Fiscal Year was SB 974 (Lowenthal), which, if not vetoed, would have enacted a port container fee to fund infrastructure and clean air projects surrounding the state’s busiest ports. Among some of the most closely watched and highly anticipated pieces of legislation in Sacramento in recent years, the port container fee agenda may not be totally dead, which is why MIR recently spoke with the author of the bill, State Senator Alan Lowenthal.
Published Tuesday November 25, 2008
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 | | Alan Lowenthal |
This article was featured in the October 2008 issue of TPR/MIR.
On October 1, 2009, Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed SB 974, a measure that would have placed a fee on cargo containers entering the ports of Long Beach, Los Angeles, and Oakland, with the revenue divided between funding for rail-related cargo infrastructure projects and environmental mitigation measures. Would you, given how long and hard you worked on SB 974, share your reaction to the governor’s veto?
I was tremendously disappointed. I thought that the governor’s veto message was disingenuous. He raised issues that, while they are important, had nothing to do with the bill. I’ll explain that in just a minute. The bill was a vision for the future—a way in which we could grow trade in Southern and Northern California, protect our citizens, get trucks off the highways, and look to a future of renewed growth in international trade—doing it through rail and new technologies. It would also fix grade separation, investing in or supporting high-speed trains, whether mag-lev or whatever else the ports and the communities might support. The bill would have provided funding to reduce pollution from trains, trucks, and yard equipment in a time when we’re suffering 3,700 premature deaths a year due to pulmonary diseases. The worst asthma rates in the nation are in Southern California.
This bill had bi-partisan support. The five counties of Southern California—L.A., San Bernardino, Riverside, Orange, and Ventura—all of their boards of supervisors, Republicans and Democrats, planning commissions, and transportation authorities, all supported the bill. All the big mayors supported the bill, whether it was Curt Pringle or Antonio Villaraigosa. At both ends of the political spectrum, mayors sent messages to the governor saying, “This is a regional approach that leads us to the future.”
It was definitely needed. We can’t just build our way out of growth through highways. We’ve got to fix the grade separation. Trains are now getting so long that people can’t get across town. Mayor Loveridge talked about how in Riverside people wait 35 minutes, at times, at grade separations. That’s unacceptable.
The governor didn’t respond to any of that. He said, “Well why aren’t you giving a percentage of the money to the Central Valley? I need money for the Central Valley.” That’s what Proposition 1B was for, to help the Central Valley. And the Central Valley is covered in this bill, if in fact those trucks and trains come into our port areas. But, as the Legislative Council said, it moves from a fee to a tax if you just give money out on a percentage basis. The governor wanted help in the Central Valley. I understand that. They have problems, but it’s not due to the goods coming in and out of the ports. It has its own issues.
The governor also wanted me to move more money toward highways. This entire coalition wanted this to be “the rail bill” and “the air quality improvement bill,” not to be a Christmas tree to fix every problem. The future in goods movement will not be primarily through highway construction. The future will be getting trucks off highways, figuring out that we have these systems, and that we have to move as much as possible by rail. What we have now is an antiquated and broken-down rail system. We have a world-class port system dumping goods into a third world transportation system. That’s what this bill was going to fix.
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