Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has just over a week left in office, but the newly elected 2011-12 legislature has already been sworn in. And that legislature is strongly supportive of high speed rail – and that support is bipartisan, as the Capitol Weekly explains, interviewing Senate Republican leader Bob Huff on the project. Huff had been critical of the choice of the Borden-Corcoran alignment, ignoring its inclusion of stations at Fresno and Hanford/Visalia, but he is much happier with the extension to Bakersfield – and still supports HSR:

Huff, a supporter of high speed rail, says in a perfect world, the project would have started in either the Bay Area or the Los Angeles-Anaheim corridor. “Sometimes you have to take the money you can get,” said Huff.

Regarding some of the concerns raised by auditors about Authority operations, Huff did not see these as a reason to withdraw project support:

Huff chalks it up to growing pains. “It’s like watching a toddler take his first step and you hope he doesn’t plow into the coffee table,” he said. Huff believes the authority, with a  new chief executive in place, is moving in the right direction. “It’s all happening as it should, maybe not necessarily in the order I’d like.”

Huff represents Diamond Bar, a suburb in eastern Los Angeles County, so something built in the Central Valley doesn’t really help him much. But he is showing a mature understanding of the process of the HSR project and why it should still be supported. He is right that CHSRA’s issues are indeed “growing pains” – a small agency, systematically underfunded and lacking sufficient staff, is going to have these kinds of problems, but they are being addressed.

Huff also gave a very good statement about the overall benefits of HSR and why it is needed:

Huff says California is running out of time to plan for the future. “When it comes to transportation … you don’t have the luxury of saying we’ll deal with it later,” he said, adding that voters who approved Prop 1A want to see progress. “It’s time for the rest of us to roll up our sleeves and implement their vision in the most cost effective manner as possible.”

Huff has it exactly right, and is talking like a true HSR supporter. He shows that in California, unlike in states such as Wisconsin or Ohio, Republicans can be just as strong HSR supporters as Democrats and independents. Huff is not alone in that support among Republican legislators – I’ve had conversations with several leading Sacramento Republicans who share Huff’s strong support for the project.

Of course, there are a small number of HSR opponents in both parties in Sacramento. Two Republicans, Jim Neilsen and Doug LaMalfa, are proposing a bill to put Prop 1A up for a revote:

Nielsen feels during these extremely difficult budget times, while a nice luxury to have, the rail project is not worth the effort just so Californians can say to our neighbors we are “greener” than them. 

The assemblyman made an announcement earlier this month that he and newly seated Sen. Doug LaMalfa, R-Richvale, have co-authored Senate Bill 22, to send the issue back to the voters and ask them to repeal the funding for the high-speed rail system.

“Whatever its advantages, we cannot afford high speed rail when we are faced with addressing a $6 billion deficit in the current budget year, and a projected $26 billion dollar deficit in the next budget year,” Nielsen said.

As we know, this is bullshit. California HSR bond repayments would be at most $600 million a year, a very small percentage of the overall $27 billion deficit. The matching federal funds we earn act as stimulus and job creation in the Central Valley, creating new revenue for the state. Even if we stopped all work on the HSR project, it would do virtually nothing to solve the state’s structural revenue shortfall, which the Legislative Analyst’s Office has put at about $20 billion each year through at least 2016.

Neilsen and LaMalfa are clearly trying to repeat the anti-HSR claims of fellow Republicans Scott Walker and John Kasich, the new governors in Wisconsin and Ohio who rejected federal HSR funds. And as Bob Huff’s statements make clear, along with support for HSR from incoming Governor Jerry Brown and from a vast majority of Democrats, this proposal for a re-vote on Prop 1A is going absolutely nowhere. It represents a minority view among Republicans in Sacramento, and while some Republicans in the California Congressional delegation share those views, it seems that incoming House Transportation Committee chair John Mica of Florida still supports California HSR. So these Republican HSR critics can threaten a re-vote all they want, but it won’t happen. Californians have twice shown their support for HSR – both in the passage of Prop 1A and the election of Jerry Brown. So this project is going to happen.

There is one lone Democrat who is not in support of this project, and that is Senator Alan Lowenthal. The Capitol Weekly article gave perhaps the clearest indication we’ve seen that Lowenthal is indeed an opponent – not just a critic, but an outright opponent – of our high speed rail project, as the following quotes will reveal:

Those charged with overseeing the project are not satisfied. “I don’t like the idea of making these decisions with a gun to our head,” said Senator Alan Lowenthal, D-Long Beach, who added that he found it strange that the authority didn’t ask the federal government for an extension. “There are potentially lots of unintended consequences.”

This was in response to the FRA’s mandate that the stimulus and other federal HSR funds go to the Central Valley. Lowenthal surely knows why the money went to the Valley – it has the worst unemployment of any segment along the proposed route. Why would the Authority ask for an “extension” when the Obama Administration had made it clear where they wanted it to go? And why would the Authority risk losing those funds by delaying them past the end of this year? It’s a nonsensical suggestion that makes no sense if one actually backs the project.

Lowenthal went on:

Lowenthal, who chairs the Senate transportation committee, says he is concerned about the transparency and governance of the authority, and he has unanswered questions about the project’s long-term feasibility.

“They want a lot of money,” said Lowenthal in a phone interview. “Well, they’ve got to answer these questions, first.”
 
Lowenthal says the authority has resisted legislators’ requests for a revised business plan and failed to conduct any public outreach or discussion before the initial line was chosen. He adds that the entity’s top-down attitude in dealing with municipalities along the planned corridor have led to fierce opposition in areas like the peninsula south of San Francisco, where a consortium of cities is currently suing to halt the project.

Those issues exist, but contrast Lowenthal’s “omg this project is doooooomed” attitude with Bob Huff’s “well, these are issues, but they’re a sign of growing pains, and will be addressed.” Huff is showing how a true supporter acts – makes criticisms, expects them to be addressed, but doesn’t try to undermine the project in the process. And those issues are being addressed – when CHSRA CEO Roelof van Ark went to meet with Gilroy officials, who had made their own criticisms of the Authority’s outreach, Gilroy city council members responded that they felt much better about the project after that meeting and had greater confidence that their needs would be met.

Lowenthal and others are not convinced the risk is worth it.

“They are now making decisions on billions of dollars, and they haven’t demonstrated competence,” said Lowenthal, who notes that attempts by Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, to tie some state money to benchmarks was vetoed by the governor.

With changes to the CHSRA board coming, a new governor who support of HSR goes back three decades and who will ensure that the project is done right, strong bipartisan support for the project, and a new CEO who is improving the Authority’s outreach and operations, there is every reason to believe that the Authority will become more competent. And in any case, this project is one that California cannot afford to build. If Lowenthal doesn’t have his own proposals for fixing the Authority, then he’s just trying to undermine the project with these criticisms.

In any case, Lowenthal is termed out in 2012. He may be an opponent of HSR, using these criticisms to undermine the project, but he is outnumbered in the Legislature, has a governor who won’t enable him to attack HSR, and stands in opposition to the rest of California in support of HSR.

As many Californians have discovered this week as they’ve traveled around this state, our current methods of intrastate travel don’t work. Driving takes WAY too long, and flying has become very inconvenient. There is a whole state full of people just waiting for this high speed train to provide them with the kind of 21st century transportation this state needs. It’s not a luxury – it’s a necessity.