At Sen. Denham’s Town Hall Meeting on Dec. 9, we should ask him
the same questions that we posed to Assemblyman Salinas at his. Mr.
Salinas answered with more public sector transit (AB381), and
higher deficit spending, despite the irresponsibility and blatant
government waste of tax dollars for empty buses. Will Sen. Denham
give the same answer to us?
Top four questions for Sen. Denham:
At Sen. Denham’s Town Hall Meeting on Dec. 9, we should ask him the same questions that we posed to Assemblyman Salinas at his. Mr. Salinas answered with more public sector transit (AB381), and higher deficit spending, despite the irresponsibility and blatant government waste of tax dollars for empty buses. Will Sen. Denham give the same answer to us?
Top four questions for Sen. Denham:
1. SBC gets back only 11 cents for each dollar of taxes that we send to Sacramento, so like all the other rural counties in California, our Legislature diverts rural taxpayers’ money to urban areas. For example, SF transit riders each receive more than $422,000/rider annually – much more if you include capital and construction costs, according to their transit agency’s most recent data. Multiply that by L.A., San Jose and our other urban transit boondoggles (L.A. Metro, BART, Lite Rail – HEAVY SOCIALISM), and you can see rural counties’ taxpayers are being raped by our Legislature by discriminatory treatment that grossly subsidizes bankrupt, insolvent urban mass transit systems. What can SBC and other rural counties do to stop subsidizing urban transit?
2. The radical Socialists in the Legislature have declared war on automobile users and have violated the State Constitution to treat motorists like cigarette smokers. For example, the unconstitutional vehicle license fees (VLF), aka “Car Tax,” which our Legislature imposed on car owners in violation of the prohibitions in Prop. 13 and 218, which were passed overwhelmingly by the people to protect us from Taxaholics and Small Business Killers in our government, is just one example of the attitude and philosophy of our elected representatives that we must reverse.
VLF, an obvious tax notwithstanding the California Supreme Court’s decision in Sinclair Paint Co. v. State Board of Equalization, 15 Cal.4th 866, 64 Cal.Rptr.2d 447, 937 P.2d 1350 (1997), holding a government imposed fee is not a tax, made illogical to even the hard-core socialists in California government when the U.S. Supreme Court later ruled that a government imposed fee is a tax, is contrary to the best interests of motorists and of local governments, too.
Since local government must collect taxes to pay 99 percent of the fully-amortized costs of public transit, to the extent that VLF (and any disgraceful substitute that the Socialist Small Business Killers in our Legislature concoct) deters motorists and diverts them to public-sector transit, VLF undermines the solvency of local government finances. What will you do in the next session to reverse this anti-motorist philosophy in the Legislature that undermines local governments’ budgets by fostering boondoggles like public-sector transit?
3. Congress is getting ready to enact reauthorization legislation for Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21). HR 3550 was introduced Nov. 20, 2003 by many in Congress, and sent to the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and according to T&I’s Web site and press releases, proposes $375 billion for the nation’s surface transportation for the next six years.
Among the wasteful boondoggles in HR 3550 a few rational transportation solutions can be found. Most importantly for the Central California Coast Region and local highways like 25, 101, 152 and 156, and the motorists who suffer on those increasingly congested roads, is Section 1303, entitled “Freight Intermodal Connectors.”
Caltrans’ Chief of Highway Programs, Mr. Jim Nicholas, and Caltrans’ Chief of Freight Planning, Mr. Tom Messer, have stressed the importance of increasing California’s reliance on intermodal facilities. The ones we have in Lathrop and Stockton are perfect examples of these private-public partnerships for rational transport. However, there are none on the Central California Coast. Santa Clara Valley is the largest urban area in North America without one. The Salinas Valley shippers and receivers are also denied this rail alternative to highways.
As a result, our region’s highway congestion, and road maintenance and construction expenses, are much greater than they would otherwise be if we restored intermodal facilities here.
At present, 87 percent of the nation’s annual freight tab is earned by the trucking industry, while the other four modes (rail, air, water and pipeline) share the remaining 13 percent.
The Supreme Court will shortly nullify the Ninth Circuit’s stay on the entry of Mexican trucks into the U.S., and gross vehicle weights among the three NAFTA countries will probably be “harmonized” at either the Canadian (101,000 lbs.) or Mexican (108,000 lbs.) limits. Long Combination Vehicles (triple short or double long tractor-trailer combinations) will be extended to all 48 contiguous States. (They are legal now in only14 States).
So, the urgency of affording this region a rail alternative is rapidly rising.
Since UP’s CEO, Mr. Dick Davidson, has been quoted in “Traffic World” to the effect that UP wants a “bigger piece of the I-5 Corridor freight pie,” and has instituted premium TOFC/COFC service options, why are we not jumping at this private-sector transport solution?
What will you do to see that intermodal facilities are restored for the Central California Coast Region to give us RELIEF on local highways without more taxes or new bonds? Please prove to the voters that you are not a socialist-communist transit member of the Boondoggles Empty Seat Transporters Association by opposing wasteful transport solutions that consume taxes, and by supporting private-sector transport solutions.
4. SBC pays its transit operator about $1 million/year so that about 175 people get transport. It costs SBC’s taxpayers about $9 million/year in taxes that we send to Sacramento so that we get back the money to pay County Transit’s operator.
I believe that small, rural counties cannot reasonably justify nationalized, public-sector, socialist transit. The transit policy from the Legislature undermines local government finances and wastes tax dollars because most of the time County Transit’s buses are completely empty except for an overpaid public-sector union driver. Private bus companies and other passenger carriers (e.g., taxis and shuttles) are discriminated against by this policy because it fosters monopoly operations subsidized by tax money. To benefit a very few with nearly free rides (i.e., low fares, but very high costs), we divert large portions of our revenue away from the things that need it more, e.g., highway safety.
In other words, the Legislature’s policy is intentionally diverting money from highway safety projects to socialized public transit. COG’s recent statistics show that SBC spends this money on 152 people, while they take it away from the thousands of our residents who lack basic safety improvements on our highways.
San Benito County is a microcosim of this dysfunctional transportation policy, which cheats the majority of people so that a very small number of people can have rides and make politicians look good. People who want safety as our highest priority should oppose the Legislature’s policy. Our COG’s Directors wisely recognized that taxpayers should not pay more taxes as long as government is wasting taxes like the massive waste in our California transit agencies, and unanimously voted to privatize public-sector transit in SBC. What will you do to privatize public-sector transit in your district to stop the waste in local governments and end the dominance of public-sector unions?
Caveat Viator!
Joe Thompson,
Tres Pinos
