SACRAMENTO -- — A proposal by the Schwarzenegger administration to use $170 million in voter-approved bond money for projects benefiting two private railroads is drawing ire from Southern California officials who want the funds for road improvements and other projects.
The officials have complained that the administration plans to take money that should ease gridlock for motorists and use it instead on less important projects to help private interests -- the Union Pacific Railroad and Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway.
"I don't understand it," said Yvonne B. Burke, chairwoman of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. "The railroads should pay for it. The people of Southern California were the ones who approved those bonds, and they should get the benefit."
Public interest advocates point to the millions of dollars that railroads have pumped into the campaign coffers of the governor and others.
Since 2003, the two railroads have contributed $2.2 million to California political campaigns, including $142,000 to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger committees and $200,000 to the campaign to pass the transportation bond measure.
"Voters don't know if decisions about who gets the money are based on who contributed or on merit," said Tracy Westen, chief executive for the Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles. At issue are funds from Proposition 1B, a $20-billion transportation bond measure approved by voters in 2006 after a campaign by the governor and legislative leaders.
The proposition earmarked about $3 billion for projects to improve the flow of goods through ports and transportation corridors, including highways and rail lines.
The railroads and the administration have argued that the rail projects, proposed by Caltrans Director Will Kempton in a Jan. 17 letter to the California Transportation Commission, are exactly the kind of expenditures envisioned by the initiative's backers. The Times obtained the letter through the Public Records Act.
The proposed projects would benefit the state's economy and the environment by removing bottlenecks in the rail system that slow the movement of freight from the busy ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach and Oakland, Kempton said.
They would also fulfill one of Schwarzenegger's top goals, backers say: to encourage more public-private partnerships.
The biggest project in the package calls for the construction of a 1.4-mile railroad bridge that would eliminate a bottleneck in Colton by allowing one train to pass above another.
