Key Official Dismisses Transit Funds Bill as Token

A bill approved by the state Legislature guaranteeing the San Fernando Valley a share of mass transit rail funds was dismissed by a key regional transit official Thursday as a token that will not provide enough money to build a rail line.

The bill, approved late Wednesday in the tumultuous closing hours of the 1988 Legislature, now goes to Gov. George Deukmejian. It would require the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission to set aside 15% of its light-rail budget each year for a Valley rail project--either a light-rail line or a cross-Valley extension of Metro Rail.

Sen. Alan Robbins (D-Van Nuys), author of the bill, estimates that the Valley fund would accumulate $200 million over the next decade. The money will “prevent the commission from threatening to build elsewhere if they don’t like what the Valley asks for,” he said.

Commission member Jacki Bacharach, of Rancho Palos Verdes, noting that cost estimates for proposed cross-Valley rail projects vary from $750 million to $1.3 billion, said the fund in Robbins’ bill is “nothing but a token. There will not be enough money in this fund to build a Valley rail line.”

Bacharach, who chairs the commission’s Rail Construction Committee, said that the fund “is not going to make me say that because we have $200 million or so for the Valley, then let’s go spend a billion in the Valley.”

While the $200 million is not enough to build a line across the Valley, Robbins thinks the transportation commission would approve additional spending for the line rather than allow the Valley fund to lie unused.

The transportation commission and opponents in the Legislature saw its effects differently. They argued that it encouraged other regions to circumvent the commission and try for similar guarantees.

“It’s an unwarranted and perhaps illegal intrusion by the state in local affairs,” said Paul C. Taylor, acting executive director of the transportation commission, which is building a countywide network of rail lines using the extra half-cent sales tax that county voters approved in 1980.

Taylor acknowledged that he did not have a county counsel opinion suggesting the bill was illegal. But he said he believed the state cannot dictate how funds raised with county voter approval are spent.

The bill, which passed the Senate 29 to 4 and the Assembly 44 to 21, also would permit the commission to use interest from the fund to subsidize commuter rail service in the Valley.

In addition, the bill would remove a $100-million limit on the amount of money that can be borrowed to build the downtown-to-North Hollywood Metro Rail.

Although the bond provision had been requested by the commission, Taylor and Bacharach said they will lobby for a veto of the bill.

Robbins said he has begun urging homeowners and business groups to write letters to Deukmejian in support of the legislation.