June 8, 2017

The California Transportation Commission (CTC) is kicking off its SB 1 – the Road Repair and Accountability Act of 2017 – implementation efforts today and tomorrow with the three-pronged goal of providing a high-level overview of SB 1 programs, getting input from the state, regions, cities, counties and other transportation stakeholders on SB 1 implementation issues, and specific implementation feedback and recommendations on SB 1 programs. The workshops will be webcast and the agendas are available here.

Chris Lee, CSAC’ Housing, Land Use, and Transportation Legislative Analyst, is representing counties on the local streets and roads panel and will focus his remarks on the CTC’s new reporting role SB 1’s local streets and roads funding. Recall that SB 1 requires counties to report on their planned expenditures of funding pursuant to the county budget. Counties should be prepared to submit a list of proposed projects to the CTC by October 2017 following the adoption of formal reporting guidelines. Further, given the timing of the CTC’s guideline development and adoption, counties should be aware that they may need to take Board of Supervisors action to amend their 2017-18 budgets or clarify which projects will receive SB 1 funding this fiscal year to ensure that reporting can be completed consistent with the forthcoming CTC guidelines.

CSAC staff has already met with CTC staff on three occasions to discuss the reporting guidelines on a conceptual level. We have also solicited volunteers to help review draft reporting guidelines and expect to have a rough draft to react to in mid-June. Please email clee@counties.org if you are interested in participating in reviewing draft guidelines.

CSAC has posted the new/updated SB 1 background information on the CSAC website, including:

· Funding Estimates. CSAC created a county-by-county chart of new revenues expected under SB 1 based on multi-year estimates from the Department of Finance. The chart includes two spreadsheets—the first includes only the Road Maintenance and Rehabilitation Account (RMRA) funding while the second includes all new revenue allocated pursuant to SB 1. This distinction is important, as the new eligibility and reporting requirements apply only to RMRA funding.

The charts do not include revenue from the existing tax rates that fund county allocations from Streets and Highways Code Sections 2103, 2104, 2105 and 2106, but they do include revenues from the anticipated increases to those rates (i.e. inflationary increases to base gas and diesel excise tax and the “reset” of the price-based excise tax to 17.3-cents and future inflationary increases).

The charts are available online here.

Presentation on Key SB 1 Provisions. CSAC has updated our PowerPoint slides that were used as the outline for the April webinar to include additional charts and information about RMRA reporting and eligibility requirements.

The slides are available online here.