First, the good news.
It seems the third time is the charm for Metro's sales tax proposal with the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. Supervisor Don Knabe, who had been lampooned on this website for his apparently confused views on the sales tax proposal announced via press release that he would introduce a motion to reconsider at the next Board of Supervisors meeting and would join Supervisors Burke and Yaroslavsky to pass the measure placing the half cent sales tax on the same ballot as the rest of the election.
From the Supervisor's press release:
Los Angeles County Supervisor Don Knabe has announced that at thenext meeting of the Board of Supervisors, he will enter a motion toreconsider the Board’s previous vote on the Metropolitan TransitAuthority’s (MTA) sales tax measure. Supervisor Knabe has also decidedthat at the time of the reconsideration he will change his vote from‘no’ to ‘yes.’
Supervisor Knabe’s planned reconsideration and intention to changehis vote effectively means that the MTA sales tax measure now has thethree votes it needs to pass the Board of Supervisors and go before thevoters as part of the consolidated November 2008 Presidential Electionballot, and not as a totally separate election.
Now, the bad news.
Assemblyman Mike Feuer has just appeared in front of the Senate Appropriations Committee as scheduled, but it was not to discuss A.B. 2321. The Bottleneck Blog reports that Senators Gil Cedillo and Jenny Oropeza are holding up the legislation because they want to make certain that the Green Line Extension to LAX and the 710 Highway Expansion Tunneling project are fully funded by the proposal. This hold up shouldn't endanger the proposal's addition to the November ballot. Assemblyman Feuer's office assures me that if the bill's language doesn't differ from what was passed by the Metro Board that A.B. 2321 can be passed at a later date.
