In the wake of a tight first-round vote, Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla, D-Concord — the runner up to Orinda Mayor Steve Glazer — snagged the endorsement of the California Democratic Party in her bid to replace state Sen. Mark DeSaulnier, freshly elected to Congress.

Formalizing its support even further, the Party has now cut Bonilla a sizable check to help defeat Glazer, as the Sacramento Bee reported:

“The California Democratic Party has contributed more than $73,000 to Bonilla’s campaign, state filings through Thursday show. It is the first time the party has spent significant money in an open race featuring two Democrats.”

A rare battle

The state Republican Party did its best to bow out of the race in the 7th Senate District, which former state Sen. Mark DeSaulnier has vacated upon his election to Congress. Although she dropped out of the race, Republican Michaela Hertle’s name remained on the first-round ballot. As a result, Hertle earned just 17 percent of the initial vote.

The absence of a viable Republican candidate helped create near-perfect conditions for a divisive struggle that could pit Democrats’ left wing against its center. Glazer, a business-friendly Democrat who recently served as one of Gov. Jerry Brown’s key advisors, took the lion’s share of the vote, but not enough to prevent a runoff election. “Glazer topped two fellow Democrats with 32 percent of the vote. He was followed by Bonilla of Concord with 24 percent and former Assemblyman Joan Buchanan of Alamo with 22 percent,” the San Francisco Chronicle recounted.

Big consequences

Typically, close runoff races have provoked bitter campaigns between rivals. This time around, the battle between Bonilla and Glazer has taken on an extra edge because of its potential impact on Democrats’ policy agenda in Sacramento.

Voters have been hit with an avalanche of mailers castigating one candidate or the other, often with so little context that local papers, such as the Contra Costa Times, have had to provide fact-checking breakdowns of which allegations hold the most water.

As the San Jose Mercury News pointed out, no matter how much the contending interests behind the candidates amp up outrage around the big issues dominating statewide politics, voters may well choose between Bonilla and Glazer based on their opposing positions on a more local issue: labor strikes affecting the Bay Area Rapid Transit metro system. Glazer, according to the Mercury News, has come out in favor of banning the strikes, while Bonilla would head them off by doubling down on negotiations.

But the bare-knuckle conflict has left no doubt that major fissures within the California Democratic Party are in danger of widening. “Bonilla sees high-speed rail as a necessary alternative to congested highways; Glazer sees it as a high-minded concept with no feasible funding plan,” the Mercury News noted. “Bonilla thinks voters should decide whether to extend Proposition 30 sales and income tax hikes; Glazer thinks they should sunset as originally intended.”

While unions and activists have shelled out seven figures to praise Bonilla and sink Glazer, Bee columnist Dan Walters has noted, corporate groups and private supporters have done the reverse — both struggling to tip the balance of power within the Democrat-controlled state Senate.

“Only 19 or 20 Democratic senators, just short of a majority, are reliable votes for the most contentious business-related bills, such as those on the CalChamber’s target list. The May 19 election could tip the balance either way. A Bonilla win would enhance the bills’ chances in the Senate, while a Glazer victory would make their passage even more difficult.”

That’s what the winners are going to need in today’s St. Patrick’s Day election for California state Senate District 7.

Long-brewing tensions among Democrats have come to a head in a bitterly fought race. The candidates seek to replace Steve DeSaulnier, who resigned after his election last November to the U.S. House of Representatives.

Five candidates are running in this primary election. Unless one candidate gets 50 percent plus one votes — almost impossible in this race — the top two will face off in a May 19 runoff.

The Democratic Party has helped corral most unions behind Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla, D-Concord. Former Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan, D-Alamo, has secured the support of the California Teachers Association.

But with neither woman willing to drop out, Orinda Mayor Steve Glazer well could wind up with enough support to make it into the top two. Glazer’s extensive resume in Democratic politics has been eclipsed by his recent willingness to support reform in areas fiercely guarded by organized labor, including pension and education issues.

A fourth Democrat, Terry Kremin, is on the ballot but is expected to get few votes.

Adding to the strangeness, every Republican candidate who entered the race later dropped out, except one. Michaela Hertle, a business woman, remained on the ballot — then endorsed Glazer.

That created an opportunity for rival Democrats to attack him as a virtual DINO — a Democrat in Name Only — despite his rock-solid credentials as a career party strategist.

As a result, Republican fortunes in District 7 have been reduced to possibly becoming a kingmaker — or unmaker — for Glazer. And Democrats have been forced into an embarrassing conflict over wedge issues that won’t go away anytime soon.

High stakes

The contest has quickly been cast as part of a decisive battle between labor and business interests for influence over California Democrats. Glazer has become a lightning rod for that controversy in recent years.

In a boon to all Democrats, Glazer was the top political strategist for Gov. Jerry Brown’s 2010 gubernatorial bid and Proposition 30, Brown’s $7 billion tax-increase initiative in 2012.

But then, as Ben Adler at Capital Public Radio noted, Glazer “helped elect business-friendly Democrats on behalf of the California Chamber of Commerce and called for a ban on public transit worker strikes. So unions spent big to defeat him in an Assembly race last year.”

That race resulted in a Republican win, despite an 8-point lead in registrations among Democrats. Glazer came in third in the June primary. In the November runoff, Republican Catharine Baker became the first Bay Area Republican in the state Senate in two decades, defeating Democrat Tim Sbranti, 52 percent to 48 percent.

Stuffed with ambitious, rising Democrats, California labor interests haven’t always been able to consolidate their support for a single candidate. In District 7, that potential problem has come into sharp focus.

Dirty politics

With so much perceived to be on the line, some Democrats haven’t hesitated to push the envelope in defeating Glazer, who inevitably will attract the support of a significant number of Republican voters.

In one recent move, a Democrat-led political action committee appeared to campaign disingenuously for Hertle in order to draw votes away from Glazer. “The Asian American Small Business PAC has reported spending $46,380 on research, polling and mailing on behalf of Michaela Hertle,” according to Political blotter.

Glazer retorted on Monday, “It’s gutter politics. There’s no Asian American in the race, and the Republican has withdrawn and endorsed me. It’s clearly an attempt to confuse the voters and smear me.”

Then the PAC printed and distributed pro-Hertle flyers bearing the distinctive Republican elephant symbol — an unauthorized use of a trademarked image. That led to a trademark infringement lawsuit from the California GOP.

In a statement, the CAGOP noted its cease-and-desist warning flagrantly was ignored by the PAC, leaving Republicans little choice but to seek injunctive relief in court:

“Deceptive ads like these mislead voters and misinform them about the positions and endorsements of the California Republican Party,” said California Republican Party Chairman Senator Jim Brulte (Ret.). “It’s egregious on the part of a Democratic Political Action Committee to intentionally deceive Californians with its use of well-known Republican images.”

This is part of a general theme on which CalWatchdog.com has been reporting. With the California GOP in such a weak condition, and only starting to pick up a little steam, it was inevitable fractures would develop in the majority Democratic Party.

Throw in a close ally of Brown, a popular governor with a history of opposing too much spending and being unpredictable, and the 7th District’s three-way race might just portend the future of California electoral politics.

Between now and then, the California GOP may be able to use focus groups and internal polls to test certain themes, issues and talking points. Nevertheless, elections have a special value in helping parties refine their message and build momentum.

And until 2016, the most important election in the state for Republicans may well be the special election to replace Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, in the state Senate. Gov. Jerry Brown will set a date for the election soon after DeSaulnier officially resigns from his current office.

Musical chairs

On Election Day, Nov. 4, DeSaulnier prevailed in his effort to replace retiring Rep. George Miller in the 11th Congressional District. After his victory, DeSaulnier took pains to point out that “civic illiteracy and complacency” had nonetheless gotten him down — in other words, low turnout.

Although depressed voting numbers didn’t hurt DeSaulnier, he understood as well as any California Democrat that Republicans in the state often benefit from the phenomenon. Sure enough, in the race to replace him, Republicans may be competitive for that reason as well as others.

That’s why Mark Meuser — a Republican attorney from Walnut Creek and no stranger to DeSaulnier — has jumped into the race, announcing recently he hopes to prevail in the special election for the soon-to-be-vacant 7th state Senate District seat, which encompasses most of Contra Costa and Alameda counties.

As the Antioch Herald reported, Meuser’s campaign will likely focus around economic themes — not just jobs in the abstract, but the dynamism of small business and innovation. “The spirit of entrepreneurs in California is as strong today as it was during the gold rush,” Meuser announced on his campaign site. “It needs an advocate in Sacramento, and Meuser wants to be that advocate. Ensuring that our communities stay strong — and grow stronger — requires a long-term vision for future generations, and Meuser has that vision.”

Meuser is best known as the Republican who ran for that same seat in 2012, losing to DeSaulnier. Then, Meuser won 38.5 percent of the vote, with DeSaulnier getting 61.5 percent. This time around, expectations have changed — in part because more than one Democrat also is angling for the seat, and there will be no incumbent.

Healthy competition

As the Contra Costa Times reported, two well known and influential Bay Area Democrats are expected to throw their hats in the ring: re-elected Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla, D-Concord, and term-limited Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan, D-Alamo. With the state Capitol teeming with Democrats drawn from the well-to-do power corridor between Sacramento and San Francisco, there are more ambitious politicians than there are elective offices for them to fill.

Bonilla and Buchanan are both credible candidates sure to appeal to voting Democrats. It is less clear, however, whether either has the ability to turn out Democrats in large enough numbers to deal another loss to Meuser — particularly if they have to campaign against one another, and not just Meuser. According to California law, if no candidate gets 50 percent-plus-one of the vote, a runoff election then is held.

As the Antioch Herald also reported, both Democrats will be influenced in their decision-making by California’s particular rules restricting length of terms in office. Whether serving in the Assembly or state Senate, legislators are capped at a total of 12 years in both houses, according to Proposition 28, which voters approved in 2012. But it only applies to those elected to office after its passage.

Yet “because Bonilla was elected before June 5, 2012, she is restricted by the previous term limits, approved in 1990, which limited legislators to three terms in the State Assembly and two terms in the State Senate. Since the election will be past the half-way point in DeSaulnier’s term, if elected, she will serve less than two years, allowing her two more full terms for a total of close to 10 years. The same would apply to Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan.”

Looking forward

The 7th is not the only state Senate District soon to be up for grabs as a result of a special election. Similar circumstances have also created upcoming vacancies in the 21st District and the 37th District, where Republican state Sens. Steve Knight and Mimi Walters, respectively, were elected to the U.S. Congress. No date for an election has been set. But these are seats in heavily Republican districts, so the makeup of the Senate won’t change.

And on Dec. 9, an election will be held to replace Democratic state Sen. Rod Wright in Senate District 35. He resigned after being convicted in a corruption scandal. If necessary, a Feb. 10, 2015 runoff will be held. According to Ballotpedia, “Louis L. Dominguez (D), Isadore Hall, III (D), Hector Serrano (D) and James Spencer (R) will face off.” As Wright got 76.5 percent of the vote to 23.5 percent for Republican Charlotte A. Svolos in the 2012 election, one of the Democrats is almost assured of victory, meaning this race also won’t change the party makeup of the Senate.

Given the familiar faces and competing ambitions at work in the presumptive 7th District race, however, Republicans may likely be tempted to use Meuser’s and the other two campaigns to road-test strategies that could pay dividends in 2016. If races can be targeted where Democrats compete, turnout is low, and seasoned Republican candidates can deliver a well-tailored message, the California GOP could see a better return on its investments. However, with 2016 being a presidential election year, turnout likely will be high, which would benefit Democrats.

Ultimately, the success of such an approach could hinge on whether the Nov. 4 elections did not quite capture the full extent of voter frustration with Democrats; and on how President Obama’s recent amnesty plays out among all groups of voters.

Senate Bill 1077 wouldn’t impose a driving tax right away. Instead, the legislation, introduced by state Sen. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, would create a special group tasked to evaluate the tax. Through the California Transportation Commission, SB1077 would establish a Road Usage Charge Technical Advisory Committee. The committee would draft a driving-tax pilot program for the state Transportation Agency.

Taking the committee draft into account, the agency then would implement a final pilot program by Jan. 1, 2017. Finally, by June 30, 2018, the agency would formally report on the results of the program to the assorted committees involved.

The driving tax next door

With that four-year timetable, California legislators have opted to proceed at a measured pace. But in the Golden State and elsewhere, political interest in taxing drivers per mile has accelerated quickly. In Oregon, for instance, a pilot program has already been launched. Last year, Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., floated a miles-driven tax; now, the scheme has begun to draw signups from citizen volunteers.

Oregon legislators decided to aim for 5,000 participants in the pilot program, the better to determine which method of mileage calculation to adopt. Initially, civil liberties groups bridled at potential calculation methods that relied on GPS readings, which could be accessed by law enforcement without a warrant. But Oregon moved away from those options, and the ACLU and others got on board with the program.

An infrastructure problem

Oregonians, especially along the Pacific Coast, have earned a reputation for small-footprint environmentalism. Their turn toward a driving tax, however, has been motivated by other factors. Like other states around the country, Oregon was recently forced to grapple with an unforeseen problem.

Despite a stopgap infusion of $11 billion, the federal government announced it will soon run out of money for its Highway Trust Fund. The federal gas tax has lost 40 percent of its value thanks to inflation; meanwhile, many state gas taxes have wound up in a situation nearly as bad, according to USA Today.

The weakening of gas tax revenues has teed up an unusual problem. Americans have long expected the quality of their highways to be maintained — free of tolls in most places — but they haven’t wanted to pay more. Although inflation has hurt the gas tax, the cost of gas has gone up, and basic foodstuffs have become more expensive over the same time period.

The problem could be solved by simply indexing state and federal gas taxes to inflation. But because the price of a gallon of gas is not indexed that way, Americans would be disincentivized to drive as much as they did before the tax increases.

Adding to policymakers’ woes, the rise of hybrid and electric vehicles — especially on the West Coast — has already chipped away significantly at gas-tax proceeds, with further erosion in sight. For example, because it’s entirely electric, a Tesla S pays no gas taxes.

That’s why Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., put forth a proposal to kill the federal tax at the pump and replace it with a per-barrel tax on oil, also indexed to inflation. With that approach, DeFazio argued, consumers would be sheltered from the direct impact of new taxes, as oil companies wouldn’t be able (or perhaps willing) to pass all the costs onto their customers.

Whatever the relative merits of the idea, DeFazio’s proposal hasn’t caught on in Congress. What’s more, it hasn’t captivated policy experts, who have enthused about the behavior-shaping potential of mileage taxes.

A system based on electronically calculated mileage would allow policymakers the theoretical power to calibrate driving taxes based not just on raw miles driven, but on routes, congestion and other factors. From that standpoint, the real potential of a driving tax would be as the first mile in a new expansion of government control over drivers’ activities.

California drivers could be just a few years away from having “black boxes” in their cars tracking their travel and taxing them for every mile driven. Senate Bill 1077 is by Assemblyman Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, and would require a mileage tax pilot program to start up by 2016. It recently passed the Assembly Transportation Committee.

Proponents argue that a mileage tax is needed because California motorists are using less gas than in the past because cars are more fuel efficient, reducing much-needed revenue from the 36-cents-per-gallon fuel excise tax. Opponents are concerned about the potential loss of privacy when governmental agencies track Californians’ travel.

Aware of that concern, SB1077 requires a 15-person task force to implement a mileage tax pilot program that takes into consideration “the necessity of protecting all personally identifiable information used in reporting highway use,” according to the committee’s legislative analysis.

California’s $295 billion road shortfall

Bill author DeSaulnier cited a California Transportation Committee study in explaining the need for his bill to the committee on June 23.

California is “$295 billion short on the operations and maintenance of our existing transportation infrastructure,” he said. “And that’s just for the remainder of this decade. So as the gas tax continues to go down, largely because of the efficiency of our fleet and more efficient cars get out, we know that we are approaching pretty quickly a fiscal cliff when it comes to transportation.”

DeSaulnier said a mileage tax needs to be studied.

“The study specifically needs to deal with individual privacy issues, equity, technology, costs and consequences of various potential options available,” he said. “So when we look at different options, this would just be one.”

Will Kempton, a former Caltrans director who is now executive director of Transportation California, an advocacy group, agreed that an alternative to the gas tax must be found.

“We’re vitally concerned about gaining more revenues for the transportation program given the needs that have been identified in some of the recent studies,” he said. “The gas tax has been the major funding source for transportation for several decades, but it’s no longer carrying the weight of that charge.

“It looks like the mileage-based fee is an approach or mechanism that has some promise. It’s certainly being talked about across the country at the national level. And we know that several states on the West Coast are taking steps to move more rapidly toward implementation of a user fee of this nature. The Oregon model, I think, is one of the best that we can look at in terms of how we might approach this issue in California.”

The Oregon plan

Oregon, which has conducted three pilot mileage tax programs over the past decade, plans to launch an actual mileage collection system next July. Five thousand volunteers will be paying 1.5 cents per mile, then receiving a refund of the gas tax they also paid during the year.

The Oregon program pledges to protect privacy by prohibiting disclosure of personally identifiable information, and destroying information on vehicle locations and daily use within 30 days, according to the Oregon Department of Transportation. The one exception is that personally identifiable information will be provided to a police officer based on probable cause in an authorized criminal investigation.

The introduction to the Oregon plan “envisions a time when all new cars will come equipped with mileage reporting capability. New car buyers will decide during the registration process whether to activate the mileage reporting capability already installed into the car or add an external reporting device.

“Motorists will then drive and periodically receive a bill by mail or email – their choice – that may be bundled with other value added services. A motorist’s bill will contain a charge for distance driven, an automatic fuel tax credit and a net amount to pay. Motorists may check the bill details and pay online or by mail or authorize automatic payment from their smartphone, tablet device or the connected vehicle console in the dashboard of their car.”

To prevent charging Oregon motorists for travel outside of Oregon, the mileage meter would likely contain GPS tracking capability.

Many don’t trust government’s privacy promise

Despite government assurances of privacy protection, Oregonians remain skeptical.

“The greatest concern of both the public and the commissions was protection of privacy,” the plan states. “It did not matter that ODOT built protections into the GPS-based mileage reporting devices used in the pilot to prevent them from tracking vehicles. The public simply did not believe that the protections could ever be guaranteed to work.

“They did not want to be tracked, and they did not want their travel information searched. Most importantly, many people were not willing to trust assurances of a government agency that tracking of their whereabouts would not occur and that their travel information would be secure.”

Motorists also don’t want the government “choosing a box” that would be placed in their car, according to the plan. “The public did not want a government agency forcing any particular technology upon them.”

They are more open to the mileage tax, however, if they are provided choices on “the method of reporting, from whom they acquire the mileage reporting device and to whom they report the information.” Details are still being worked out, but Oregon plans to provide those options.

Republicans raise concerns

No witnesses spoke in opposition to SB1077 at the Assembly transportation committee hearing. But concerns were raised by several Republican committee members and one Democrat.

Marie Waldron, R-Escondido, provided one of the four committee votes against the bill (it passed 10-4).

“There’s a lot to get something like this set up,” she said. “A couple of the concerns are creating a new revenue stream on the backs of vehicles again, and the issue of privacy of people’s data. It’s one thing to look at how many miles a vehicle is going. But it’s another thing when you’re getting into where people are going, what roads they are using, things like that, is a concern to me.”

Also voting against it was Eric Linder, R-Corona.

“I think it’s very invasive,” he said. “But I think that something good is coming out of this in that the discussion is being moved forward as to how we plan to deal with the $300 billion transportation fiscal cliff or just flat out financial crisis that we are dealing with as far as transportation maintenance is concerned.”

Katcho Achadjian, R-San Luis Obispo, raised several concerns about the mileage tax, but then voted for SB1077.

“If you’re traveling in a Ford Focus or Chevy Suburban – same mileage but one is much lighter than the other, putting less maintenance [requirement] on the roads than the other – how are you going to address that?” he asked. “What happens to those who make a living by traveling, like taxi cab drivers? What does it do for rental cars and tourists coming to California to rent and travel and pay?”

Jim Frazier, D-Oakley, who represents a district on the eastern edge of the Bay Area where many of his constituents have long commutes, declined to vote on the bill.

“I know we have measures already in place like the truck weight fee that we tried to recapture this year,” he said. “And we do have gas tax that is actually helping balance the budget. I would think that our efforts would be something that’s already originated that we could actually capture and create our mini-stimulus going forward at this point.

“Everybody wants to have more money for these projects. [But] if we are going to go out and spend $10 million on a study and the public won’t accept [a mileage tax], then I think we are just kind of putting the cart before the horse.”

Lowenthal: California’s roads in ‘abysmal condition’

But Committee Chairwoman Bonnie Lowenthal, D-Long Beach, is on board with a mileage tax, having sponsored a resolution in 2011 to urge Congress to adopt one at the federal level.

“I think this is a really important bill,” she said. “In my five years as chair of transportation we have been talking about this [funding deficit]. Everyone in this room has to understand the abysmal condition of some of our roads and that we don’t have the money to pay for it. I know we need to do something about the declining gas tax revenue.

“We need to look at this now. I understand very well the privacy issue. But we don’t have any more time. We are going to lose billions of dollars in lost excise tax revenue as fuel efficiency continues to improve – which is a good thing. Finding an alternative to the gas tax is no small matter. It won’t be cheap if we do it right. And we have to do it right.”

While California’s population grew 6 percent from 2005 to 2013, California motorists’ annual gasoline usage declined by 9 percent to 14.4 billion gallons, according to Board of Equalization statistics.

That’s due not only to more fuel-efficient vehicles, but also to the Great Recession reducing the number of cars on the road and a doubling of gas prices in the past decade leading to people taking shorter trips, according to a BOE report.

A 1-cent-per-mile tax would raise about $3.3 billion in California and create 59,000 construction-related jobs, according to a Transportation California study in July 2012.

SB1077 will next be considered by the Assembly Appropriations Committee.

A bill sponsored by Sen. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, and Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, would set a sliding scale for corporate taxes, cutting them for publicly traded companies whose CEOs earn less than 100 times the median compensation of their workers, and raising them when CEOs make more.

California currently has a corporate flat tax rate of 8.84 percent, except for financial institutions, which pay 2 percentage points more.

California is the first state to consider tying taxes to CEO pay, according to Damon Silvers, policy director of the AFL-CIO labor federation, which tracks the issue for its Executive Paywatch initiative.

The California bill, SB1372, surprised some observers by passing the Senate Appropriations Committee by a 5-2 vote Friday, with Democrats supporting it and Republicans opposing.

The money, of course, would flow to the government, of which the five state senators are leaders. And which the AFL-CIO helps control through its public-employee members; and through financing political campaigns.

If these politicians really wanted to help the middle class and the poor, for starters they would slash the top 9.3 percent income tax rate that starts at about $55,000 of income. (The Prop. 30 tax increase will expire in five years.) That’s right, in California, you’re considered “rich” at $55K of income — even though the state’s so expensive that’s really lower-middle-class!

Next, they would repeal AB 32, which destroys jobs to fight “global warming” that isn’t happening.

Then they would repeal the California Coastal Commission, a Soviet-style agency that severely limits developing land, which drives home and apartment prices sky-high, so only the 1 percent can live here.

None of that will happen, of course.

Editor’s Note: This is Part 2 of a series looking in depth at the latest hearing in the state Senate on California’s high-speed rail blueprint. Part 1 is here.

Skepticism took center stage as the Senate Transportation and Housing Committee held hearings on Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposal to use cap-and-trade revenues to fund the project. The committee reviewed the California High-Speed Rail Authority’s 2014 Draft Business Plan and evaluated the project’s potential for success.

Committee Chairman Mark DeSaulnier, D-Walnut Creek, grilled CHSRA CEO Jeff Morales about getting votes in the Legislature for the cap-and-trade proposal. DeSaulnier was the only senator at the hearings, a video of which is here.

Cap-and-trade revenues come from quarterly auctions of greenhouse gas emission credits by the California Air Resources Board. The program operates under the authority of AB32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006.

Morales said high-speed rail meets the requirements of the cap-and-trade program, but referred the senator to the California Air Resources Board. He added that high-speed rail was part of CARB’s scoping plan before the 2008 vote on Proposition 1A, by which voters authorized the high-speed rail project.

DeSaulnier asked what would happen if the Legislature didn’t approve the cap-and-trade dollars for the train. Morales replied he wanted first to talk about what approval would look like.

He said cap-and-trade dollars would keep the program moving. But that if they don’t get the funding, they would have to look elsewhere for more money. “We would not have the same kind of certainty that we would have with the governor’s proposal” on using the cap-and-trade funds, he said.

DeSaulnier told Morales there will be cap-and-trade fund discussions as the budget debate heats up. But DeSaulnier said the Brown administration faces a huge challenge to get cap-and-trade fund votes. DeSaulnier even said he most likely would be voting No.

DeSaulnier warned Morales that they need to have an honest discussion about the risk about authorizing $250 million of cap-and-trade money that DeSaulnier believes would be better spent in a more targeted way, as proposed by the Legislative Analyst.

Financing

Morales confirmed there aren’t any additional grants on the immediate horizon, as the government moved away from grants toward bond financing.

As to private investment, he said there’s strong interest, but nothing certain. “They’re not there yet,” he said of private investors.

Essentially that means no private investor has jumped in and said, “Let us buy the rights to run this train system for you.” No private investment is predicted to be in the picture until the train is built and carries proven ridership.

Business plan

Morales testified that the 2014 Draft Business Plan builds on the 2012 Business Plan.

He said the CHSRA is doing better with the engagement of stakeholders, meaning anyone or any entity affected by the project, such as cities, counties, railroads and residents.

He admitted the CHSRA hasn’t solved all the problems. But he believes most stakeholders would acknowledge the CHSRA is working with them fairly and openly.

In particular, he testified that the CHSRA’s governance has shown a vast improvement. In 2012, they had two-dozen people. Now they have 120 people on board and will fill all remaining slots by June. “We have government people making government decisions,” Morales said.

He said he appreciated many of the comments that were in the Background Paper prepared by the Senate Transportation and Housing Committee. But he took issue with one statement that judged the project a failure. Speaking for the folks working at the CHSRA, he said he didn’t think it was fair to judge the project because they hadn’t laid any track yet and these projects take time.

Other projects 

DeSaulnier revealed that he spoke to the staff of famed mega-project expert Bent Flyvbjerg during the Bay Bridge hearings. Flyvbjerg’s staff reported two types of projects were particularly vulnerable to very high cost overruns: tunnels and rail projects, which run as much as 4-1/2 times estimates. High-Speed Rail is by definition a rail project and has tunnels including the treacherous Tehachapi Mountain range.

But, DeSaulnier quickly added, Caldecott Tunnel was done on time and on budget, so those statistics didn’t always hold true.

DeSaulnier said the 2014 Draft Business plan is more robust than previous business plans, but still leaves a lot of assumptions. He pointed out the plan wouldn’t be adequate even to get a small-business loan.

DeSaulnier also brought up the ongoing lawsuits against the high-speed rail project, and asked if Morales had confidence that the project will move forward past the lawsuits. The case now is before the Third Circuit Court of Appeal.

“We’re moving forward in good faith in the law and in compliance with it,” Morales said.

Jobs 

With California’s unemployment rate stuck at 8 percent – and even higher in the area where the first rail construction could begin – DeSaulnier asked about jobs creation.

Morales said almost 6,700 people now are working on the project. “The greatest percentage of jobs will come during heavy construction,” he added.

Tutor Perini Corp., the main construction firm, has contracts with 27 small businesses, most in the Central Valley, with others throughout California. Morales said the jobs are providing economic benefits in those troubled areas and will bring “unprecedented investment in the Central Valley,” as well as help diversify the area’s economy.

“SACRAMENTO — The head of the Senate Transportation Committee praised Gov. Jerry Brown for preventing Bay Area transit workers from walking off the job Monday and said he is still considering legislation that would permanently take away their right to strike.

“Sen. Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord) said in an interview that workers in the Bay Area have rights that few of their colleagues around the state share.

“’Of the 10 largest metropolitan areas, Los Angeles and the Bay Area are the exception,’ he said. ‘All of the other large systems do not allow transit workers to strike.’

“DeSaulnier, who called himself ‘pro-labor and pro-transit,’ said neither labor nor management seems to want to change the current law, but the frequency of labor strife in the Bay Area Rapid Transit district has led him to look at the issue. The former Contra Costa County supervisor says that in the 22 years he’s been in elected office, workers have walked off the job or come close four times.”

Now when will minority lawmakers wake up?

The fact that affluent white Democratic lawmakers are beginning to internalize that union power isn’t always benign raises hope that California will finally have the much bigger political catharsis that it deserves: the eruption over the fact that the teachers unions which run Sacramento don’t care about struggling Latino and African-American students who make up a majority of kids at public schools.

I wrote about this last year for City Journal:

“[The California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers] enforce a Sacramento status quo that holds minorities in contempt and elevates teachers’ and unions’ interests above all others.

“Consider the modus operandi of nearly every California school district. Where are the best teachers most needed? In struggling schools with impoverished, mostly black and Latino students. But thanks to union power, where are those teachers concentrated? In affluent, safe schools. The struggling schools wind up with newly hired teachers and, often, bad or troubled teachers who couldn’t make the grade at better schools but who, thanks to union rules, can’t be fired. The problem is even worse than it appears, because revenue-deprived school districts often lay off the most junior teachers to ease budget woes. Some schools lose most of their teaching corps, destroying any continuity or momentum a school in a poor neighborhood may have managed to build. In the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the practice led to a successful ACLU lawsuit to end the ‘last hired, first fired’ policy in poor neighborhoods.”

Speaker Perez: Is this really ‘social justice’?

Attention, John Perez: When are you going to stop siding with the CTA and the CFT over the kids in your district?

Gloria Romero — like Perez, a Los Angeles Democrat — is right: The California public schools system’s practice of giving more weight to the interests of adult employees than of students deserves to be seen as a civil-rights issue, not a political scrap. If the BART dust-up makes even a few more elected Democrats think about this bigger picture, it will be for the good of nearly all Californians. The K-12 status quo has got to go.

By Chris Reed

Mankind has been building bridges for more than 3,000 years. A bridge built in the 13th century BC in Greece is still in use.

Building durable bridges over water is not a modern accomplishment. The Roman Empire liked to build simple arch bridges over rivers and put up hundreds and hundreds all over Europe. Quite a few are still in use.

But building more complex bridges over water, such as the suspension Brooklyn Bridge completed in 1883, is also old hat. It’s not rocket engineering, as Sergio Garcia would say. It’s daunting to outsiders but no big deal to those in the biz.

Except if you’re the genius engineers working for the state of California, who somehow managed to botch the $6.4 billion east span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge by neglecting basic practices meant to reduce water corrosion on giant steel beams and by tolerating flawed welds and an abnormally high number of broken bolts.

Let’s probe and probe and probe some more

State lawmakers increasingly sound like they’re in a let-the-heads-roll mood over the fiasco, the Sacramento Bee reports:

“Sen. Anthony Cannella, R-Ceres, a member of the transportation committee and an engineer, said the opening date must be delayed if safety remained in doubt. … Cannella and state Sen. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, chair of the Senate Transportation and Housing Committee, called for a comprehensive investigation . …

“He said that the state attorney general, federal officials, or his own committee should conduct the probe. It should require California Department of Transportation executives to testify under oath and compel them to produce internal documents that show who made decisions that led to the current problems, who dissented in those decisions and why, DeSaulnier said.

“‘With the level of personal exposure right now (for Caltrans officials) … there is always the concern that there is documentation that gets lost or destroyed,’ he said.”

State can’t do simple project — but it can pull off an unprecedented one?

So the state government botches an engineering project as rudimentary as a bridge, and now we’re supposed to believe it is up to the challenge of building a bullet train system that costs $68 billion, more than 10 times as costly and a thousand times more difficult?

Sheesh. Why don’t we wait until the winter and just the burn the money in alleys where homeless people sleep? At least it will keep them warm and achieve something constructive.

If you think the state can rise to the occasion, perhaps it’s time you changed or increased your medication. Or maybe you just missed the story about the incredible complexity of the bullet train project.

Or the story about how the geniuses running the California High-Speed Rail Authority quietly rewrote the bidding rules to favor the least competent bidder for construction of the initial 29-mile segment in the Central Valley.

Yeah, that makes sense: Give the toughest project to the bidders with the least expertise. Sheesh again.

Look on the bright side: Watching debacle unfold will be fun

I’m beginning to reach the tipping point on the bullet train. Rationally, of course, I don’t want it to go forward. It’s going to be such a waste of money that could be spent much better elsewhere (or returned to taxpayers). But both ideologically and on schadenfreude grounds, I now am very open to the idea that it will be great fun for critics to watch the bullet train proceed and be the mega-debacle it’s very likely to be.

It will once again remind voters how inefficient and incompetent government is, especially on ambitious projects. But even more satisifying will be how the fiasco will hang like a permanent shadow over the reputations of Jerry Brown, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Karen Bass, John Perez, Darrell Steinberg, Dan Richard and the editorial boards of the Los Angeles Times, the Sacramento Bee, the San Jose Mercury-News and the San Francisco Chronicle. On the bullet train, they’re chumps one and all.

By Dave Roberts

It’s alive. Similar to a bill narrowly defeated last year, SCA 6 is by Sen. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord. Taxpayer advocates fear the bill could make it difficult, perhaps impossible, to cut or limit taxes through the initiative process.

But SCA 6’s wording specifies it “would prohibit an initiative measure that would result in a net increase in state or local government costs,” except for bonds, from being put before voters as an initiative. Unless “the Legislative Analyst and the Director of Finance jointly determine” the initiative provides enough revenue to pay for higher costs.

The intent of the constitutional amendment, which would need two-thirds approval in the Legislature and majority support on a statewide ballot, is to eliminate so-called “ballot-box budgeting.” That’s the practice of using initiatives to determine how General Fund revenues are spent, rather than leaving those decisions to the Legislature. The most notorious example is Proposition 98, which mandates that about 40 percent of the discretionary budget go to K-12 schools.

SCA 6 would eliminate “the things we’ve had to deal with for the last four or five years, where we’ve gotten stretched,” DeSaulnier told the Senate Elections and Constitutional Amendments Committee on March 19. “Where so much of our budget is by formula as a result of the electorate not fully understanding sometimes the implications of some of the initiatives that they approve.”

Asked Committee Chairman Lou Correa, D-Santa Ana, “Mr. DeSaulnier, can you give me an example of an initiative recently proposed or passed that this would apply to?”

That question stumped DeSaulnier, who said, “I can’t just sitting here right now.”

SCA 6 support

Paul Smith, representing the Regional Council of Rural Counties, came to DeSaulnier’s rescue. Smith cited Proposition 36 in 2000. It moved many persons convicted of drug possession “out of the criminal justice system into other programs,” Smith said. “It had a six-year funding window in the initiative. Once that six years expired, now we’re left to honor the mandate of Prop. 36 without any funding. That’s been reduced in recent years by the Legislature because of our tight fiscal measure.”

Rural counties support DeSaulnier’s bill, Smith said, because “a lot of times ballot measures appear before the voters, they are approved, [and there’s] no funding source. Entities like the state and counties may have to make up the revenue and find a way to pay for the things the voters want. Other programs get squeezed. It puts counties, others in a very difficult position.”

State Sen. Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, cited two other initiatives that would have been reined in by SCA 6.

“The poster child for this is Proposition 49, where you took millions and millions of dollars from the General Fund for a good cause, after-school programs,” she said. That was the 2002 initiative sponsored by Arnold Schwarzenegger to gain himself statewide political exposure a year before he ran for governor.

“Who could be opposed?” continued Hancock. “Another one would be $3 billion for stem cell research,” Proposition 71 in 2004; with interest, the payback amount is $6 billion. “It could be that the people of California would have said, ‘We don’t care if we have to close schools or if college tuition goes up, we think that stem cell research is the most important thing for us to be doing.’ But I think what tends to happen is that it’s a good cause, why not, we like it, and people vote for it. But they don’t realize that in a zero sum game where it takes a two-thirds vote to get any new sources of revenue, it means that something else that they may care more deeply about is going to have to be cut.”

SCA 6 opposition

But taxpayer advocates are more concerned about SCA 6’s impact on those who seek to use initiatives to cut or limit taxes.

“In theory this is a good idea,” David Wolfe, representing the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, acknowledged to the committee. “As a fiscal Republican, these measures should be able to pay for themselves. I think we all want that. In practice the way it works out, though, I think is entirely different. Let me run through the litany of concerns that we have with this bill.

“SCA 6 states that any measure that results in a ‘net increase in costs’ needs approval by DOF and the legislative analyst. My question would be, first of all, define ‘cost.’ Would tax measures like Proposition 13 be a cost to the state due to the back-filling of ‘lost revenue’? When Prop. 13 was passed in 1978, that resulted in about $6-7 billion of revenue that the state needed to backfill out of the surplus that they had to local government. So would that be a cost? We believe that it would. So … we believe that important measures to us, including Prop. 13, [Proposition] 218 and [Proposition] 26 — all measures which we supported in the past — would no longer be able to qualify for the ballot.”

Wolfe also is concerned that DeSaulnier’s bill doesn’t allow increased costs from an initiative to be offset by spending cuts elsewhere.

“If this is accurate, we would be forced into a position where we would have to oppose important public safety measures such as Three Strikes and Marsy’s Law and Jessica’s Law,” he said. “Things that we would ordinarily not take a position on, but would now have to oppose because they would include a tax increase.”

Wolfe pointed out that SCA 6 would weaken the Legislature’s power of the purse by having special interest groups, rather than legislators, determine which taxes to raise to offset the costs of their initiatives. And he cited a 2010 study by USC professor John Matsusaka that asserts that concerns about ballot box budgeting are overblown.

“Contrary to the claims of many pundits, voter initiatives have not constrained the California budget to the extent that fiscal crises are inevitable,” said Matsusaka’s study. “I reach this conclusion by examining each of the 111 successful initiatives in the state’s history. For the 2009-2010 budget cycle, voter initiatives locked in about 33 percent of spending, most of which probably would have been appropriated even if not required, and placed no significant prohibitions on the two primary sources of state revenue – income and sales taxes.”

Wolfe added, “If you remove Proposition 98, that number drops to 4 percent. I know that it’s not really feasible and practical to suspend Prop. 98, and there’s probably opposition on both sides of the aisle to that decision. But the point is, the Legislature has the ability to untie their hands from this ballot box spending. So there’s plenty of flexibility that legislators have without this measure to control spending.”

Prop. 98 also can be suspended with a two-thirds vote of the Legislature.

The California Taxpayers Association also was concerned about SCA 6. “The measure’s definition of costs would apply to tax reductions, credits, exemptions, exclusions, federal conformity and other tax changes,” the organization wrote on its website. CalTax wrote to the committee, arguing, “Although requiring a mechanism to pay for new programs is appealing, giving power to either a legislative appointee (the legislative analyst) and/or gubernatorial appointee (the director of finance) to remove an initiative from the ballot sets a dangerous precedent. It has the potential to disregard important policy measures for manipulative political purposes.”

It failed last session

SCA 6 is identical to DeSaulnier’s SCA 4, which fell three votes short of the necessary two-thirds support in the Senate on Aug. 21, 2012 after Republicans balked.

Sen. Ted Gaines, R-Rocklin, said before the vote, “I’ve got challenges to the accuracy of the information provided by LAO and the director of finance. We are looking for a non-biased opinion on these initiatives, and I’m not clear that you’re going to get that. For instance, whenever a proposal comes forward on a tax cut and how that can accelerate growth within the economy, there’s no consideration for dynamic analysis by the LAO. So I think you’re going to get a jaded perspective as to what the fiscal impacts are on initiatives.”

DeSaulnier responded, “I do hear the concerns that the analysis won’t be robust enough. But I think that’s as good as we can get. And having the LAO, a well respected group, work with the Department of Finance will put more pressure on the people who submit these initiatives to make sure that there’s a more robust financial consideration.”

In last week’s committee hearing, DeSaulnier was more conciliatory, saying that Wolfe “makes some very good arguments, so I think there’s some room for tweaking.” That tweaking may include changes to the bill’s exemption for an initiative’s costs from the issuance, sale or repayment of bonds.

With the Democrats having gained a supermajority in the Legislature, chances for passage of DeSaulnier’s bill in this legislative session have improved dramatically. It received strong support from the committee last week, passing 3-1. It’s scheduled to be considered by the Senate Appropriations Committee on April 8.