The Other Big Tax Expectations in SANDAG’S New Plan — Voice of San Diego
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Two years before the San Diego Association of Governments released a long-term transportation plan that aimed to raise $ 60 billion from local drivers by charging them four cents for every mile traveled over the next 25 years, the former wrote District chief Kristin Gaspar made a comment attacking the idea.
“SANDAG’s ‘Track and Tax’ plan is not what voters chose,” she says wrote for the Encinitas Current.
From then until last week, conservatives led against the idea – from Gaspar, County Supervisor Jim Desmond and San Marcos Mayor Rebecca Jones to media outlets like KUSI and talk show host Carl DeMaio.
However, at the last minute they were joined by the progressive executives at SANDAG who are in charge to be in charge of the agency. Mayor Todd Gloria announced a week before the final vote that he had heard voters’ concerns and agreed that it was a bad idea for San Diego. Jones was upset.
“Wow, I’m shocked by these comments,” she said. “We’ve been talking about this for two years and it’s always been, ‘Oh yeah, we love the funding. The financing is perfect. We’ll help with the financing. ‘ Although many board members, including myself, have repeatedly said that road tolls are out of order. They are not acceptable. “
This conservative opposition acted as a shield for SANDAG as they pushed the proposal forward. Instead of defending the controversial idea in its values, the agency and its supporters could instead marginalize the opponents of the idea.
Colin Parent, a Democratic councilor in La Mesa who also heads the housing and transport-focused think tank Circulate San Diego, had instead criticized the road toll for technocratic reasons.
The agency adopts a draft for the next 30 years of transport in the region. It’s a biennial process that counts the region’s expected revenue – from local taxes or state or federal revenue – and lists any highways and transit lines that it is likely to need.
The road toll, Parent argued in a report by Circulate San Diego, was a misguided endeavor as the agency did not have the legal authority to impose it. The state is looking for ways to pass such a policy, but has not done so yet and would need to pass laws to make it possible. And with the amount of money the agency would expect from it, many of the other elements of the plan would be at risk if for one reason or another the state did not take these steps.
In an interview, he said the fee was always different from the other sources of income, such as local sales tax increases, which the agency assumed would come at some point.
“The idea that there will be a new type of fee that is not currently allowed seems like a reasonable option,” he said. “There’s also a parking fee in the plan that never came true, but they put it there anyway because the agency believes it will eventually happen. It is not entirely implausible to have the fee on schedule – but it is also true that, unlike a sales tax vote, there is no legal authority to do so and, unlike a vote, there is no historical precedent for it – either locally or elsewhere. “
The problem with this, he said, is that it undermines the purpose of the exercise in the first place. State and federal governments urge regions to create these plans within reasonable financial constraints, especially so that they can weigh their priorities and make difficult decisions, Parent said.
“That can allow the agency to plan projects it can never pay for, which is bad,” he said.
However, there are many other revenue expectations in the controversy surrounding the plan that otherwise would have led to some scrutiny.
On the eve of the vote, we thought we were isolating a few:
- Sales tax increases: SANDAG now expects local voters to approve three sales tax increases within the next decade: 2022, 2024, and 2028. The agency expects to raise $ 21.6 billion through voters in 2022 and 2028 The Metropolitan Transit System will introduce a US $ 6.1 billion voting measure in 2026 and voters will approve it.
In 1987, the district voters approved TransNet, the region’s existing traffic tax. When it expired, they extended it in 2004. Since then, voters have been asked once in 2016 to approve a new tax measure, but they rejected it. MTS pursued a voting measure in 2020, but gave it up again. According to SANDAG, the district will approve more sales tax measures in the next nine years than in the previous 34 years.
- Ride-hailing Fees: SANDAG expects companies like Uber and Lyft to charge per-ride fees ($ 1.25 for single riders, 65 cents for carpooling), bringing in another $ 1.3 billion in and out of holds off emission-intensive journeys.
- Managed Lanes: One of the elements of the SANDAG plan is a comprehensive expansion of the region’s “Managed Lanes” system on motorways. This is now the system on Interstate 15 that tries to handle traffic jams all day by collecting tolls for specific lanes that are also available to buses.
The new plan provides 819 new miles of managed lanes by 2050, both by converting existing general traffic lanes into the system and by upgrading highways to accommodate them (rather than expanding highways for general travel, a practice that SANDAG- CEO Hasan Ikhrata announced since I came to town).
“If that were accomplished, it would be an unprecedented change in highway use in California,” said Circulate San Diego’s report on the regional plan.
SANDAG expects to withdraw $ 19.2 billion from the managed lane network – about as much money as it expected from the road toll.
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