Governor Greenhouse

Despite continued cash flow crunches facing nearly every transit operator in the state, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said absolutely nothing about transportation or fixing transit's woes in his State of the State address today. Transit operators are still bracing for the expected budget proposal this Friday that would thwart the state Supreme Court's ruling declaring the governor's raids on transit funds to fill general fund coffers illegal.

In October of last year, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a rather innocuous piece of legislation with a hidden message telling the bill's author, by way of reading the first letter of each line, to f-u-c-k y-o-u.  Childish? Yes.  However, millions of transit riders must have been wondering what the big deal was. The alleged environmentalist has been giving them the same message for years in much more explicit terms.

Last weekend, in the wake of Governor Schwarzenegger's signing of a law exempting the largest development project in Southern California since the L.A. Colliseum, the drumbeat began for more exemptions for projects that are going to be a lot less destructive to the environment.  The OC Register opines in a Saturday editorial:

Opponents of expanding the I-710 near Pasadena to connect the road to the I-210 received a double dose of bad news in recent weeks from both the courts and our environmental governor.  First, Governor Scwarzenegger, between lecturing his wife about safe driving, found time to veto Senator Gil Cedillo's legislation that would have required any highway expansion in this area to take the form of a tunnel.  Second, a state court ruled against the lawsuits brought by South Pasadena and La Canada Flintridge against the inclusion of funding for the I-710 expansion in Measure R.

Supporters of cash-out-parking, the state law that requires employers of more than fifty people that offer free parking to employees to provide an equal benefit to those that don't commute via automobile, were closely watching two pieces of legislation this session. The legislation was to fill two major holes in the state mandate, and while both passed both houses of the legislature, the Governor only signed one of them into law.

California administrative rulemakers recently moved a step closer to reforming the section of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) that has compelled cities to focus undue attention on the age-old Automobile Level of Service (LOS) threshold for impacts of new projects and has led to the construction of excess off-street parking.

A new survey released yesterday by the Public Policy Institute of California has been getting a lot of play in the press because of the strong support Californians are showing for Greenhouse Gas reduction programs, even in the midst of the current recession and budget crisis.

Now that the Governor and legislature have finally reached an agreement on the state budget, city transportation staff can breate a sigh of relief. The deal announced by Mayor Villaraigosa and Council President Garcetti that ended Schwarzenegger's plan to "borrow" against local gas taxes that were, of course, dedicated towards transportation.

Anyone that has been reading LA Streetsblog for any period of time knows that we haven't been shy about criticizing Governor Schwarzenegger for talking a good game about the environment but never asking Californians, including himself, to make any changes in their lives when it comes to transportation.