The Honorable Jim Beall

[Date]

Co-chair, Transportation Infrastructure

Conference Committee

State Capitol, Room 5066

Sacramento, CA 95814

The Honorable Jimmy Gomez

Co-chair,Transportation Infrastructure

Conference Committee

State Capitol, Room 2114

Sacramento, CA 95814

URGENT: Take Action to Support Public Transit!

DearCo-Chairs Beall and Gomez:

On behalf of [Your Organization], I write to thank you for acknowledging the vital role that transportation infrastructure plays in facilitating the health, safety and economic vitality of our state, and to urge you to considermaking a significant and sustained investment in public transit that helps ensure our public transit systems, as component of the larger transportation network, are maintained in a state of good repair and are capable of achieving the various policy objectives in California´s landmark environmental legislation

As has been reported throughout this legislative year, California faces a transportation infrastructure funding crisis. According to recent estimates by the Brown Administration, our state highway system alone faces a funding shortfall of approximately $5.7 billion per year, or $59 billion over ten years, for maintenance of state highway facilities, including roadways and bridges. At the same time, municipal governments have estimated that the funding shortfall for maintenance on existing local streets and roads is $78 billion over the same time period. Left unaddressed, these funding shortfalls are expected to grow by billions of dollars a year, resulting in potentially catastrophic impacts to our population’s health, safety and economic competitiveness.

As you look to shore up these funding shortfalls during the special session, we wish to remind you that California’s infrastructure funding crisis is not limited to state highways and local streets & roads. Public transit which serves as an affordable and efficient alternative to automobile travel for millions of Californians, similarly faces a $39 billion in deferred maintenance costs. These deferred maintenance needs, like those of our state highways and local streets & roads, unnecessarily put the health and safety of Californians at risk, threaten our state’s economic competitiveness, and undermine the ambitious environmental and air quality objectives the state is striving to achieve.

Failing to include transit in the special session’s compromise transportation funding package would be a shortsighted decision with disastrous long-term implications. As is the case with state highways and local streets & roads, the cost of inaction is the further, and accelerated, deterioration of existing capital assets, leading inevitably to replacement over rehabilitation. Additionally – and unique to transit – the costs of deferred maintenance are compounded by the foregone environmental and air quality benefits that would otherwise result from well-maintained infrastructure.

For these reasons, we believe the newly created conference committee should advance a funding package, which addresses the state’s immediate infrastructure needs across alltransportation modes, and which lay the foundation for a more sustainable California. We support Governor Brown’s draft framework for a $3.6 billion transportation funding package, which would benefit state highways, local streets & roads, and transit. In this framework, supported by Assembly Speaker Atkins, an investment of $400 million annually was proposed for transit, with an additional $100 million for complete streets projects that promote transit and support bicycling & walking. We applaud the Governor for putting this framework on the table, and urge the conference committee to continue this momentum by keeping transit in the discussion as you work to craft a long-term funding solution.

Below, we offer a number of potential funding mechanisms the Legislature could consider to provide transit with additional revenues at a level called for by Governor Brown in his $3.6 billion proposal:

Increase the Transportation Development Act’s Contribution to Mass Transit AND to Local Streets & Roads in Rural and Suburban Areas: In 1971, then-Governor Ronald Reagan and the Legislature dedicated one-quarter per cent of the state’s sales tax to counties agreeing to spend those funds on public transportation, on a situs basis; rural and suburban areas were allowed to spend their share of these funds on improving local streets & roads. Increasing the sales tax by 0.25 percent and dedicating those funds to this existing, well-understood program instantly provides $1.7 to $1.9 billion annually in new transportation investments, including for streets & roads, and could be done with no net new impact on taxpayers.
Diesel Sales Tax: Transit operators receive direct state funding subventions via the State Transit Assistance (STA) program, which is generated solely by the sales tax on diesel fuel. In 2011, as a result of the gas tax swap, which mostly eliminated the sales tax on gas and therefore all other sources of STA funding, the STA was initially bolstered by an incremental increase in the diesel sales tax. However, this incremental rate, which peaked at 2.17% in 2012-13, has fallen to 1.75% -- and the STA program’s revenues have declined concurrently. With Proposition 1B now fully appropriated, the STA program is the sole source of state funding that can be used for transit capital maintenance and rehabilitation.

Increasing the sales tax would provide new flexible funding for transit operators statewide; trebling the current incremental sales tax rate on diesel fuel to 5.25% would generate about $300 million, which could bedirected to the STA program, on the existing formula.

Cap and Trade: The transportation sector is responsible for 38% of the greenhouse gas emissions in the state, yet only 15% of Cap and Trade revenues are guaranteed to local and regional public transitprograms on an ongoing basis to reduce these emissions. Additionally, an overwhelming majority of the revenue generated from the Cap and Trade allowance auctions is attributed to the fuel sector and these revenues should be reinvested in transportation programs that mitigate the impacts of transportation fuels on our environment.If California is to achieve the ambitious greenhouse gas emission reductions called for in Governor Brown’s recent executive order and the petroleum reduction target originally called for in Senate President pro Tem de León’s SB 350, it is time to acknowledge the role that public transit must play in curbing vehicle miles traveled. We suggest the legislatureincreasefrom 10% to 20% the Cap and Trade revenues continuously appropriated to the Transit and Intercity Rail Capital Program, and increase from 5% to 10% the Cap and Trade revenues continuously appropriated to the Low Carbon Transit Operations Program.

We look forward to working with you to ensure the passage of a comprehensive transportation funding package that acknowledges the current and growing needs of our public transit network. We hope that, with your support, the transportation funding package that is ultimately sent to the Governor will provide significant funding to address public transit’s deferred maintenance as well as the need to expand our public transit systems. We appreciate your consideration.

Sincerely,

[Your name and title]

CC:The Honorable Jerry Brown, Governor, State of California

The Honorable Ben Allen, Transportation Infrastructure Conference Committee

The Honorable Connie Leyva, Transportation Infrastructure Conference Committee

The Honorable Anthony Cannella, Transportation Infrastructure Conference Committee

The Honorable Ted Gaines, Transportation and Infrastructure Conference Committee

The Honorable Autumn R. Burke, Transportation Infrastructure Conference Committee

The Honorable Melissa Melendez, Transportation Infrastructure Conference Committee

The Honorable Kevin Mullin, Transportation Infrastructure Conference Committee

The Honorable Jay Obernolte, Transportation and Infrastructure Conference Committee

Brian Kelly, Secretary, California State Transportation Agency