Aerial View
By Frank Gruber
I wrote most of this column ten days
before you are reading it, and at 37,000
feet. I was flying off for vacation --
what better to time to knock off a column
about California, than when the state
is the metaphorical rear-view mirror?
The California news of the preceding
week when I wrote my first draft was that
the budget talks in Sacramento were in
crisis. To be honest, I haven't had enough
internet time available to me since then
to find out if the Democrats and the Republicans
in the legislature, and the whatever you
want to call him who is governor, reached
a compromise.
If they have, no doubt it's a bad one,
especially bad for L.A. and the other
urban regions of the state.
Meanwhile, not long before I left, the
State's Department of Finance released
their projection for California's population
growth. The Department predicts a population
of 60 million by 2050 -- roughly another
23 million.
The population of L.A. County would increase
by about three and a half of that, to
13 million, but most of the increase would
occur in counties that are relatively
uncrowded now -- in the Inland Empire
and the Central Valley. The population
of Riverside County would triple to 4.7
million.
Just because the Department says so,
doesn't mean that an increase of this
magnitude will happen, but it's not inconceivable.
It is possible that it we don't build
for them, they won't come (or, more likely,
our children will move elsewhere), but
California's population has increased
proportionately faster in the past.
Italy, my destination as I write this,
has about 60 million people, a similar
climate, and only about two-thirds the
area of California. If Californians don't
want to grow like this, we will have to
make decisions just as difficult as those
we will have to make to accommodate growth.
We are surfing a wave of global development,
as the economic axis changes from across
the Atlantic to across the Pacific. Our
ports handle the largest part of this
trade, as L.A. is the great entrepôt
of this side of the new New World.
Theoretically, we could turn our collective
back on this. Consider the ports. If we
don't want to handle the increase in trade,
which means vastly expanding our roads,
rail and other goods-moving infrastructure,
some say the shippers could build a new
port in Mexico, with a new railroad to
bring the goods to the rest of the U.S.
This would be in fact, a good thing --
Mexico needs the jobs and the money that
comes with them.
It's such a good idea, that it might
make sense for Californians to invest
in the port and the railroad. After all,
it's probably cheaper to build hundreds
of miles of railroad across Mexico than
then tens of miles from the ports to the
Antelope Valley, an idea under consideration
currently. But does anyone expect us to
do that?
On the Friday before I left for my trip
-- two Fridays ago as you read this --
I attended a Westside Urban Forum breakfast.
The topic was funding transportation projects,
and the panelists were Pam O'Connor --
a Santa Monica City Council Member but
more relevant to the day's topic, the
new Chair of the board of the Metropolitan
Transportation Authority (Metro) -- and
Larry Zarian former mayor of Glendale
but now the sole representative on the
nine-member California Transportation
Commission (CTC) from Los Angeles County.
That's right -- of the nine members of
the commission that divvies up statewide
bond money for transportation, currently
only one represents the county with almost
one-third of the state's population. (At
this point I'd merely like to remind readers
that I once ventured that it's time to
break California up into four states --
one of which would be L. A. County. (see
column)
The lead story in the L.A. Times the
morning of the breakfast had been about
how the budget negotiations in Sacramento
were threatening the funding for crucial
transit projects in urban areas -- including
the Expo Rail to Santa Monica -- as Republicans
in dug in their heels against more spending.
Money from the sales tax on gasoline,
that was supposed to fund transportation
projects, was going to be diverted to
other purposes.
It was inconceivable that taxes could
be raised for those purposes, even though
the public has lately been showing overwhelming
support for infrastructure projects of
all types.
So at the breakfast it wasn't surprising
that the first words that came from the
normally ebullient Ms. O'Connor were that
she was depressed.
Mr. Zarian described how hard it was
to persuade fellow CTC members that projects
in already developed and dense Los Angeles
County, that might cost hundreds of millions
of dollars of state transportation bond
money, were more cost-efficient when it
came to getting people moving than, for
example, twelve million dollar projects
in their far-flung parts of the state.
Not to mention that it's those of us
in the already developed parts of the
state who pay most of the taxes that pay
off these bonds.
It's often said, and Mr. Zarian said
it at the Westside Urban Forum breakfast,
that the need for infrastructure investment
is not a Democratic or Republican issue,
but rather one that should unite the political
parties. There is some truth to that,
but the important fact is that when it
comes to politics in California, politicians
come from one of two different states
within the state.
One state is already developed, and the
other state is yet to be developed.
The politicians in already-developed
-- urban -- California, mostly Democrats,
but not all, in general reflect the interests
of their constituents who want to invest
more to make their lives better. These
are the voters in L.A., for example, who
approved more than $14 billion in school
bonds, and who over the years have regularly
voted to tax themselves to build transit.
They aren't spendthrifts, but they don't
have their heads in the sand, either.
The politicians in not yet developed
(or just recently developed) California
don't see the same problems. Their constituents
don't want to pay more taxes to build
better cities and provide better services
in them -- especially if they just moved
from those cities to new developments.
Instead, their constituents want to be
left alone. At least that's what they
say, but oddly enough they believe in
growth, or at least they believe in the
right to make money from real estate,
and they want the state to continue to
subsidize that growth by paying for more
highways, more water projects, and new
schools -- for themselves.
Urban Californians are in the majority,
but because of how government is set up
in California -- not only the two-thirds
requirement to pass a budget, but also
the powerful and undemocratic commissions
that balance regions more than population,
and the many encrustations on the State
Constitution that enfeeble the legislature
-- non-urban Californians have a veto,
and they use it to get what they want.
This situation is untenable. Urban California
is going to have to figure a way out of
this. As I listened to Mr. Zarian explain
how hard it was to get needed transportation
projects approved by the CTC, it occurred
to me that it's useless for urban Californians
to vote for more statewide bond issues.
I suspect I'm done with that.
It would be better if we voted to tax
ourselves countywide or regionally, or
even in smaller geographic pieces, for
what we need -- not only for the here
and now, but also for the future -- and
let the undeveloped part of the state
pay for its own growth.
I'd rather build the subway to the sea,
than pay for more freeways in Riverside.
I'd even rather invest in Mexico. |
