Responding to years of mismanagement and voter frustration with state roads, coupled with successful transportation programs administered in his home county, Sen. John Moorlach is pushing a measure that would create a five-year pilot program empowering two counties to assume the responsibility of Caltrans in their jurisdictions.

That responsibility would include the operation, maintenance and improvements of all state highways in their counties, with Caltrans relinquishing all responsibility and funding. The two counties would volunteer, with one chosen from the north and one from the south.

Moorlach said eliminating Caltrans could be an eventual byproduct of the bill, but the purpose of the bill is to empower counties to handle work in their areas at a lower cost with less overhead, compared to Caltrans which has a history of cost overruns.

“How can you go to people and say you want to spend more money on roads when you’ve got a Department of Transportation that’s a mess,” the Costa Mesa Republican told CalWatchdog in an interview.

The bill will be heard on April 12 in the Senate Transportation and Housing Committee.

Voters want better roads

Almost seven of 10 voters say more money should be spent on the maintenance of roads, highways and bridges, according to a Public Policy Institute of California poll released this month.

Moorlach said more funding could help roads, pointing to counties’ ability to tax themselves. In conservative Orange County, where he served as supervisor, voters twice passed a temporary increase in sales tax to widen highways.

“If you want to tax yourself, do it in your county,” Moorlach said. “But don’t give it to Caltrans for crying out loud. What a mistake.”

Audit 

The bill was introduced last month, but has resurfaced after a scathing report on the maintenance division from state Auditor Elaine M. Howle earlier this month alleging Caltrans mismanaged funds.

The audit highlighted Caltrans spending $250,000 on a budget model that it didn’t use and then telling the Legislature it was implementing the budget model. Apparently, the budget model was scrapped after it made a recommendation Caltrans didn’t like, such as the reduction of staff by 100 people in its Los Angeles district.

“Instead of trying to determine why the model produced such allocations, the maintenance division decided to abandon it,” Howle wrote in a summary.

The audit also called out Caltrans for not allocating funds by need and not using funds to hold counties accountable for poorly maintained districts and for not promptly performing certain maintenance work.

In a response addressed to Asm. Freddie Rodriguez, the chair of the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, Malcolm Dougherty, Caltrans director, said the auditor’s office took too narrow of a look at Caltrans’ practices, but acknowledged that the language to the Legislature “mischaracterized” the way funds were allocated. Dougherty apologized.

(Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

A strong majority of Californians say they support tougher limits on greenhouse gas emissions and more ambitious renewable energy goals to combat climate change, according to a statewide poll released late Wednesday.

Meanwhile, nearly two-thirds of those surveyed said global warming is contributing to California’s ongoing drought. About half said global warming is a “very serious” threat to the state’s future, according to the poll, conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California, a San Francisco-based nonpartisan research center.

“At a time when many Californians are making a connection between the current drought and climate change, there is strong support for expanding the state’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” said Mark Baldassare, the institute’s president, in a news release.

Results of the survey — titled Californians & the environment — are based on phone interviews with 1,702 California adult residents from in July.

Of those who took part, 44 percent said they were registered Democrats; 28 percent were Republicans; and 24 percent independents or decline-to-state voters, according to the institute.

Sixty-four percent of respondents said they believe there’s a connection between the drought and global warming, while 28 percent said they saw no link.

Spray irrigation on a field in the Imperial Valley in southern California. This type of irrigation is more efficient than flood irrigation that is popular in this region. Still, in the high temperatures of this desert region a lot of the water evaporates, leaving the salts, that are dissolved in the Colorado River water that is used, on the soil.

The institute has not asked that question in the past, said PPIC spokeswoman Linda Strean.

California is mired in its fourth straight year of severe drought. While not going so far as to say climate change has caused the drought, recent scientific studies have said global warming exacerbates the extreme high pressure systems that block rainfall in the Western United States.

PPIC’s past surveys have found strong support for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, including majorities across party lines a decade ago who favored California’s landmark emissions reduction law, AB32. That law requires the state to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

It was signed into law in 2006 by Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“A strong partisan divide has opened up since then,” the institute observed in its release.

Now, 79 percent of Democrats and 74 percent of independents favor the law compared with 46 percent of Republicans, the institute said.

The poll also found that large majorities of Californians favor new, more aggressive goals for combating climate change.

Eighty-two percent of those polled said they support a proposal to require half of California’s electricity come from renewable sources by 2030. And 73 percent favor cutting petroleum use in vehicles by 50 percent.

Those are key pieces of Senate Bill 350, a bill introduced earlier this year by Senate leader Kevin de Léon.

Other findings from the PPIC survey include:

• 88 percent of adults favor building more solar power stations in California.
• 78 percent want to boost tax credits and other incentives for rooftop solar panels.
• 49 percent favor building the Keystone XL pipeline, while 38 percent are opposed.
• 56 percent oppose increased use of fracking to extract oil and natural gas. It’s the highest level of opposition since PPIC started asking about it in 2013.
• 53 percent approve of Gov. Jerry Brown’s job performance, while 47 percent approve of the way he handles environmental issues.
• 39 percent approve of the California Legislature’s job performance.
• 57 percent approve of President Barack Obama’s job performance.
• 29 percent approve of Congress’ performance.

Contact reporter Chris Nichols at chris@calwatchdog.com or on Twitter @ChrisTheJourno

By Wayne Lusvardi

“Ignorance is strength.” –- George Orwell

California’s opinion polling has deteriorated to “measuring the public’s satisfaction with its ignorance” fed to them by pollsters.

That is the only conclusion that can be made from the recent opinion poll released by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC). The poll incredibly indicates that the public now approves many of the so-called “reforms” it just overwhelming rejected at the ballot box only 30 days ago.

PPIC unbelievably reports that voters now approve many of the parts of Proposition 31 that was rejected on Nov. 6 by 2,435,430 votes reflecting a 61 percent to 39 percent margin, such as:

— A two-year budget cycle (56 percent now reportedly approve);

— Increasing the budget rainy day fund (72 percent now reportedly approve); and

— Requiring new programs and tax reductions to identify a funding source (79 percent now reportedly approve).

The PPIC poll is so biased that it failed to inform the 2,001 respondents to its poll that two rainy-day funds are already in the law books in California. The “Budget Stabilization Account” provides for setting aside from 3 percent to 5 percent of estimated general fund revenues not to exceed a cap of $8 billion. Five percent of the current $92 billion state general fund budget would be $4.6 billion. Also, California’s“Special Fund for Economic Uncertainties” provides for the state controller to transfer a year-end budget surplus from a prior year to cover a revenue shortfall in the current year. The approved 2012 general fund budget includes $948 million in the “Special Fund for Economic Uncertainties” and $0 in the “Budget Stabilization Account.” The apparent purpose of such unneeded but popular reforms is to get voters to approve other items included in ballot initiatives that would be controversial such as the adoption of unelected regional councils that could make funding decisions without voter accountability.

PPIC also failed to inform those polled that there is nothing forbidding the Legislature from approving a two-year budget cycle now without voter approval. Only tax proposals require voter approval.

And as for requiring new programs or tax reductions to identify a funding source, again the PPIC poll question is deceptive.  The poll fails to tell those polled that this proposed reform would forbid cutting any programs or state pensions –- unless of course taxes were raised.

Split-roll property tax deception

The PPIC poll asked California residents:

“Under Proposition 13, residential and commercial property taxes are both strictly limited. What do you think about having commercial properties taxed according to their current market value? Do you favor or oppose this proposal?”

— 57 percent favor

— 36 percent oppose

— 7 percent don’t know

What the PPIC poll omitted was that commercial properties are already taxed according to their current market value UPON RESALE.

The proposal to approve a split-roll property tax is about taxing commercial properties differently than residential properties. Commercial properties would be reassessed every year or three years no matter if they sell or not. Residential properties would remain reassessed only when they are resold. In other words, commercial properties with older tax assessments would have their taxes increased even if the owners did not realize any monies from a sale. For example, stocks are taxed only when they sell, not when their price goes up or down at the end of each year.

What if the PPIC poll had accurately asked: “Would you vote for removing Proposition 13 for commercial properties if you knew”:

— Ninety-seven percent of all commercial properties in the state are owned by small businesses?

— It would result in losing 396,345 jobs over the first five years?

— It would increase the current unemployment rate of 10.9 percent to 13.1 percent?

— The lost economic output would be $71.8 billion over five years?

In other words, ending Proposition 13 protections on commercial properties would result in losing about $14.4 billion in economic productivity per year to get about $3 billion to $8 billion annually in new property taxes. Stated differently, the private economy would shrink and government would grow.

Government property tax revenues would be susceptible to greater instability — the ups and downs of tax revenues — as commercial and industrial property values are affected by the swings and cycles of the larger economy.  Proposition 13 now protects local governments and school district from large drops in taxes due to rapid declines in market values from economic cycles.

Opinion polling in California has deteriorated to sheer propaganda paid for by large corporate foundations in return for laws and regulations that ensure them of monopolies from outside competition.

British writer George Orwell in his novel “1984” wrote about a slogan used by “Big Brother” government: “ignorance is strength.” Public opinion polls in California don’t measure public opinion as much as they manufacture and strengthen the public’s satisfaction with its ignorance.