COMMENTS FROM BOARD MEMBER LICCARDO

Transcription

1 AGENDA ITEM 7.11 JANUARY 31, 2013 VTA BOARD MEETING COMMENTS FROM BOARD MEMBER LICCARDO While all of us support the objectives and implementation of the Light Rail Efficiency Program, considerable controversy has arisen over the implementation of a bypass track in St. James Park. As the oldest park in California s oldest civilian settlement, St. James Park has considerable symbolic, historic, and civic significance to the San José community. Designed by famed landscape architect Frederick Ohmstead, the Park has served the site of historic events from the glorious including Presidential speeches by President McKinley and Robert Kennedy to the grotesque, such as the notorious lynching of the kidnappers of Brooke Hart. St. James Park was placed National Register of Historic Places in Concern has arisen broadly in the community and the media about the prospect of parking light rail trains for any substantial duration in the Park. After extensive conversations and meetings with senior VTA staff, senior officials convinced me that (a) staff would seriously study alternatives to the siting of a bypass adjacent to the Park, and (b) staff would not make a decision about its recommended alignment until several more months of analysis and discussion with the community. In an effort to calm nerves, and to allow space for a reasoned discussion and assessment of this project, I repeatedly conveyed to community leaders, media, and residents that I was certain of both (a) and (b), above. As the Board Member with the most direct involvement in this issue as I represent the community surrounding the Park on the City Council people reasonably relied upon my representations as accurately reflecting the thinking of senior VTA staff. Unfortunately, a letter to the editor from our General Manager in today s Mercury News implicitly defends the St. James Park alignment, suggesting that a decision has already been made internally. To add fuel to the fire, the staff memorandum on this item indicates that a recommendation on the alignment would be made to the full Board by the time of the March meeting requiring that staff will have made a decision by now. (See p. 4, stating that the process is anticipated to conclude in March 2013 with selection of a preferred B-Pass Track option. All of this clouds the credibility of the VTA at a time when we re constructing on multiple projects, such as BRT, BART, and Light Rail enhancements, with varying noise, parking, and other quality-of-life impacts on communities that need accurate, reliable information. Based on my conversations with our General Manager, I expect that he will clarify staff s position on this. The question remains, however, about how to un-ring the bell in a way that will not color whatever decision staff ultimately comes to in this matter. As Justice Brandeis famously observed, sunlight is the best disinfectant, and for many in the community, the sparse written descriptions of the complex issues presented in this decision have left many in the dark.

2 AGENDA ITEM 7.11 JANUARY 31, 2013 VTA BOARD MEETING For that reason, I would move to accept the informational report in 11.7, but recommend that the Board direct staff to post a written explanation of all of the following, by no later than the date of the February VTA Board of Directors meeting: Whether staff has identified a preferred alternative. If not, which alternatives VTA staff is subjecting to further analysis, and for each alternative, the scope of the additional analysis (e.g., construction cost, ridership, feasibility of operations, etc.) When staff will decide on a preferred alternative When the VTA Board will decide the matter An explanation for the moving target of bypass delay durations, originally quoted by VTA staff as 5-7 minutes, and declining to a current estimate of 3.5 minutes. How VTA staff arrived at an increase in operational cost of $2 million for options 13 or 14, when the entire annual LRT operating cost is estimated to be less than $57.6 million for the entire system (based on Staff s March 25, 2010 memorandum, p.6). An explanation for the changing estimates of the capital cost for a bypass track Downtown, ranging from $4 million in 2010 to a figure over twice that size today. An explanation of the components of the estimated construction cost of $20.6 million for the platform at 4 th and San Carlos, as described in Staff s March 25, 2010 memorandum. The underlying studies and analyses providing the ridership estimates for the various options described on p. 7 of Staff s March 25, 2010 memorandum, including the 2,800 new boarding s for the Downtown Loop, and the 1,400 new boarding s for the 4 th Street /San Carlos alternative. The extent in clear, quantitative terms-- to which independent system improvements, such as traffic control signal systems upgrades, or fencing along North First Street, provide adequate system efficiency improvements to meet the Board s objectives for the Light Rail Efficiency Project.

3 MEMORANDUM TO: FROM: Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority Board of Directors Kurt Evans, Government Affairs Manager Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority DATE: February 1, 2013 SUBJECT: Weekly Legislative Summary: Week of January 28, 2013 FEDERAL Key Dates: With the Senate expected to follow the House s lead and pass legislation to extend the federal government s debt limit, it appears that we may be heading into a several-week period of relative calm in Washington, DC. But nothing is that simple, given the number of upcoming deadlines and the changing dynamics of how Congress may handle them. Looming on the horizon are the following: President Barack Obama is scheduled to deliver his State of the Union Address on February 12. At some point, the President will formally submit his FY 2014 budget to Congress. While this typically occurs in mid-february, rumors are that this year, it may not happen until March. By March 1, Congress must act to reduce the federal debt by $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years, or the federal government will face $85 billion in automatic, across-the-board spending cuts in FY 2013 to be implemented through a process known as sequestration. Slightly more than half of those cuts would come from the Pentagon s budget and the reminder from domestic spending. If sequestration happens, the Office of Management & Budget said federal agencies will face significant and harmful impacts on a wide variety of government services and operations. By March 27, Congress must pass either a continuing resolution or an omnibus appropriations bill to cover the last six months of the current fiscal year; otherwise, the federal government will have to shut down. By April 15, Congress is required under law to pass a final FY 2014 budget resolution, outlining the federal government s spending and tax priorities for the new fiscal year that starts on October 1. In the past, lawmakers have rarely met this deadline. By May 18, Congress must act again to increase the debt limit; otherwise, the federal government will face a first-ever default on its financial obligations.

4 Presidential Second Terms: Presidents who win re-election can claim what would seem to be an invaluable asset four years of on-the-job training for one of the most demanding posts in the world. Yet the second terms of modern presidents typically are remembered for assorted stumbles. Richard Nixon resigned. Ronald Reagan became enmeshed in the Iran-Contra scandal. Bill Clinton was impeached. George W. Bush was buffeted first by Hurricane Katrina and then by a cascading financial crisis. As he began his second term, President Obama acknowledged the cautionary history. I m more than familiar with all the literature about presidential overreach in second terms, he told reporters at a White House news conference. He also discussed the prospects and pitfalls of second terms at a private White House dinner with nine presidential historians. To be sure, some presidents scored significant achievements in their second term, from the tax code overhaul signed by Reagan to the balanced budget during Clinton s watch. But White House veterans said the rhythms and political dynamics of the second term are different from the first. Ken Duberstein, White House chief of staff for Reagan, observed: In the first term, you re running for reelection. In the second term, you re running for legacy. That impulse, whether it s hubris or overreach or over-interpreting a mandate, sometimes contributes to stumbles. Robert Dallek, one of those invited to the dinner with President Obama, and author of biographies of Presidents Lyndon Johnson and John Kennedy, commented: By the time a second term rolls around, the illusions about a president have largely evaporated. In second terms, the big problems that confront the country, and they re always there, more or less catch up with the incumbent. According to the U.S Constitution, there are four years to a second presidential term. However, political reality suggests that a president s ability to command public attention and compel congressional action begins to ebb well before that. This means President Obama s window of opportunity for moving the major legislative initiatives that were spotlighted in his inaugural address is likely to shrink as time passes and rather quickly. The mid-term congressional elections are another potential hurdle. Typically, a president s political party suffers losses in the sixth year of a presidency, although Democrats already may have taken much of that hit in the 2010 elections, when they lost control of the House. Still, Democrats probably will have more muscle in Congress for the next two years than in the final two of President Obama s term. Based on their experience, White House veterans noted that presidents can do something in their second term, but not everything. Thus, they cautioned against fighting too many battles because it could mean winning none. In his inaugural address, President Obama said he plans to vigorously pursue a progressive agenda that includes gun control, immigration, women and minority rights, energy, education, and climate change. Over the next few months, he also faces the need to raise the debt ceiling, enact an appropriations bill to cover the remaining six months of the current federal fiscal year, and deal with sequestration spending cuts that are poised to take effect on March 1. In the minds of some White House veterans, that list may be unrealistically long. Others believe the hard line that the President has drawn with congressional Republicans on budgetary issues risks sapping his political capital, making it more difficult for him to prevail on other issues such as gun control and immigration. One good thing about second terms is that they provide presidents with the chance to reverse some errors that were made the first time around. For instance, Bush made changes in his fractious national- 2

5 security team during his second term, eventually appointing new secretaries at the State Department and the Pentagon that resulted in a more cohesive approach to military and foreign affairs. Clinton was criticized during his first term for inaction in the Balkans; in his second term, he engineered a NATO campaign that halted ethnic cleansing by Serbs in Kosovo. Clinton also revisited the first-term failure of his proposed health care overhaul, and pushed through several smaller pieces of legislation during his second term that expanded coverage for children and provided more insurance portability. In the case of President Obama, White House veterans observed that his second term could be used to show that his Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act can deliver on its promise to expand health care coverage and control costs. Nearly three years after the President signed the legislation into law, the public remains unconvinced. Recent polling data suggest that only 30 percent of those surveyed believe the law was going to make things better for their families, while 40 percent predict that it would make things worse. Contradicting the conventional wisdom of the so-called second-term curse, a concept that has become so accepted that it has its own Wikipedia page, John Podesta, Clinton s chief of staff, said he believes second terms actually pose an opportunity for a president to deploy a more seasoned staff and exploit more executive powers to achieve significant results. Transportation Secretary: On January 29, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced that he intends to leave his post after a successor is chosen and confirmed by the Senate. LaHood is the sixth member of President Obama s Cabinet to announce his or her departure. During his four years as transportation secretary, LaHood worked aggressively to strengthen protections for airline passengers. He put in place regulations that prohibit airlines from leaving passengers stranded on planes during long tarmac delays; require airlines to post their full airfares, including all government taxes, in every advertised price; allow passengers to cancel reservations within 24 hours without penalties; and require airlines to reimburse passengers for luggage fees if their bags are lost. In response to a Colgan Air crash near Buffalo that killed 50 people, LaHood proposed rules requiring longer rest periods for commercial airline pilots and more training for co-pilots. Those regulations represented the most significant changes to federal rules governing commercial airline pilots since the 1960s. In addition, LaHood used his Cabinet position to campaign against distracted driving, delivering numerous speeches on the subject and participating in two summits with safety advocates. He also issued new regulations to improve the safety of private bus operators after a series of well-publicized fatal highway accidents. Other notable achievements during LaHood s tenure at the U.S. Department of Transportation include: (1) providing $48 billion in transportation funding through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009; (2) awarding more than $2.7 billion in so-called TIGER grants to 130 transportation projects across the country; (3) working with Congress to ensure two years of funding for highways and public transit through the enactment of the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century (MAP- 21) surface transportation authorization bill; (4) putting in place new emissions and fuel-efficiency standards for automobiles; (5) moving forward with the implementation of the NextGen air traffic control system; and (6) making investments in high-speed rail. 3

6 In a statement praising LaHood, President Obama said: As Secretary of Transportation, he has fought to create jobs and grow our economy by rebuilding our roads, bridges and transit systems. Under his leadership, we have made significant investments in our passenger rail system and laid the groundwork for the high-speed rail network of the future. And every American who travels by air, rail or highway can thank Ray for his commitment to making our entire transportation system safer and stronger. Names most frequently mentioned as possible successors to LaHood include Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, former Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, former Minnesota Rep. James Oberstar, National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Deborah Hersman, and former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland. Superstorm Sandy: By a vote of 62-36, the Senate passed the second part of an emergency aid package for New York, New Jersey and other Northeastern states that were hit hard by Superstorm Sandy. The legislation provides $51 billion, including $11 billion to repair and rebuild mass transit facilities and other transportation infrastructure damaged by the storm, $16 billion in Community Development Block Grant money, $5.4 billion for U.S Army Corps of Engineers projects, and $11.5 billion for the Federal Emergency Management Agency s disaster relief fund. In a statement, President Obama indicated that he would sign this bill into law as soon as it hits my desk. On January 4, the House and Senate approved the first part of the emergency aid package, which provided $9 billion to help pay flood insurance claims from the storm. Historically, congressional votes on federal disaster aid have not been partisan or even controversial. But this time around, conservative Republicans in both chambers balked at the size of the aid package and held up it up for three months. In the end, however, they were unsuccessful in gaining approval of amendments to offset the cost of the package by cutting spending elsewhere, something that Congress has never done before with disaster relief legislation. Immigration: This past week, it was immigration s turn to jump into the national spotlight. Over the course of two consecutive days, a bipartisan group of eight senators and President Obama laid out the basic points of their respective plans for comprehensive reform of U.S. immigration policy. While the details need to be expanded, both plans seek to tighten up border security, establish a national employment verification system to ensure that businesses do not hire illegal immigrants, overhaul the various processes for legal immigration, and create a path toward earned citizenship for the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the country. The next few months will feature heated discussions in a divided Congress over the specifics of each proposal. The major sticking point looks to be the pathway to earned citizenship for illegal immigrants. Obtaining citizenship would be a longer, more arduous process under the framework laid out by the bipartisan group of senators. Moreover, their plan would provide probationary legal status for illegal immigrants, and begin the naturalization process only when the U.S.-Mexico border is secure and a better system is in place to track people in the country on visas. President Obama, on the other hand, wants a clear pathway from the start, with no conditions. Even if those differences can be ironed out, the idea of citizenship for illegal immigrants generally draws opposition from conservative Republicans, who view it as amnesty for lawbreakers. 4

7 Immigration has been an elusive issue; it has not been significantly addressed since the Reagan Administration. While the plans that surfaced this week mirror legislation that failed in 2007, many believe the issue has renewed momentum on Capitol Hill because the political landscape has shifted, particularly for Republicans. Hispanics voted for President Obama over GOP nominee Mitt Romney 71 percent to 27 percent in the 2012 presidential election, and the Democratic margin of victory has increased in each of the past two elections. Hispanics accounted for 10 percent of the national electorate in 2012, and this number is expected to grow in the future. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, the Hispanic share of the national electorate will double by A renewed bipartisan push to rewrite U.S. immigration policy presents Republicans with their clearest opportunity to make up lost ground with one of the fastest growing forces in American politics. However, the long-term incentive for Republicans to reshape their party s reputation among Hispanics is likely to meet resistance in the short-term by lawmakers wary of tackling an issue that has historically divided the GOP and raises the threat of intraparty primary challenges for incumbents. This dynamic most certainly will play out in the Republican-led House, which is considered to be the biggest hurdle to success. STATE Gov. Brown s State of the State Address: In a wide-ranging and at times lyrical State of the State Address, Gov. Jerry Brown declared that California has once again confounded our critics, arriving at a balanced budget after years of large General Fund deficits. We ve wrought in just two years a solid and enduring budget, he told a joint session of the Assembly and Senate. And by God, we re going to preserve and keep it that way for years to come. Gov. Brown credited the Legislature for casting difficult votes to cut billions from the state budget and praised the voters for passing Proposition 30, which temporarily raises sales and income taxes to generate new revenues for the General Fund. However, he cautioned lawmakers to guard jealously the money that the voters have made available. This means living within our means and not spending what we don t have, the Governor said. Fiscal discipline is not the enemy of good intentions, but the basis for realizing them. It is cruel to lead people on by expanding good programs, only to cut them back when the funding disappears. That is not progress. It is not even progressive. It is illusion. That stop and go, boom and bust, serves no one. We are not going back there. Gov. Brown also reminded lawmakers of the uncertainties that lie ahead, and that could significantly impact the state s fiscal condition. The Governor specifically mentioned actions on the part of the federal government to address its own fiscal challenges, changes in the economy and the costs involved in implementing the federal Affordable Care Act. Ignoring such known unknowns would be folly, he commented. That is how we plunged into a decade of deficits. Gov. Brown also used his 25-minute speech to offer an ambitious agenda for the year, referencing the Old Testament, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, California s colonial history, Oliver Wendell Holmes, William Butler Yeats, Renaissance essayist Michel de Montaigne, and the children s book The Little Engine That Could to drive home his points. Here are some of the highlights from his speech: Transportation: Following up on a recommendation contained in his FY 2014 budget, Gov. Brown 5

8 said he has directed Transportation Secretary Brian Kelly to convene a working group consisting of state and local transportation stakeholders to review thoroughly the California s current transportation priorities and explore long-term, funding options. High-Speed Rail: The Governor used his State of the State Address to restate his commitment to building high-speed rail in California. It has taken great perseverance to get us this far, he told lawmakers. In 2013, we will finally break ground and start construction. Climate Change: Gov. Brown said the state needs to remain committed to combating climate change. When we think about California s future, no long-term liability presents as great a danger to our wellbeing as the build-up of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the Governor pointed out. He added: Tipping points can be reached before we even know we have passed them. This is a different kind of challenge than we ever faced. It requires acting now even though the worst consequences are perhaps decades in the future. Health Care: The Governor called for a special session of the Legislature to prepare for implementation of the Affordable Care Act. The broader expansion of Medi-Cal that the Act calls for is incredibly complex and will take more time, he noted. Working out the right relationships with the counties will test our ingenuity and will not be achieved overnight. Given the costs involved, great prudence should guide every step of the way. Environmental Laws: Gov. Brown reiterated his desire to modify the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). We need to rethink and streamline our regulatory procedures, he remarked. Our approach needs to be based more on consistent standards that provide greater certainty and cut needless delays. Water: Gov. Brown used his State of the State Address as an opportunity to push his $24 billion plan to build a pair of tunnels to move water more easily from the north to the south. His proposal also calls for restoring the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, a vast network of marshes and sloughs that has experienced ecological decline as the state s farms and cities have increasingly tapped it for trillions of gallons of water each year. The plan is controversial, drawing heavy criticism from environmental and fishing groups. Education: Gov. Brown urged lawmakers to pass legislation to rework the way the state funds public education by eliminating categorical programs, and putting maximum authority and discretion back at the local level. He said California has a funding system that is overly complex, bureaucratically driven and deeply inequitable. In addition, the Governor called for thoughtful change to the University of California, the California State University system and community colleges to ensure that the state s public higher education system is efficient, less costly and producing acceptable outcomes. However, Gov. Brown made clear that tuition increases are not the answer. He vowed not to let students become the default financiers of our colleges and universities. NOTE: Also contributing to this report were Steve Palmer with Van Scoyoc Associates; Delaney Hunter with Gonzalez, Quintana & Hunter LLC; Scott Haywood, VTA Policy and Community Relations Manager; and Colleen Valles, VTA Senior Policy Analyst. 6