Governor Gavin Newsom on Monday released his proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year. The highlight, as you may have heard in the news: the state has a projected $31-billion budget surplus. The budget focuses on five key areas of investment: the pandemic, the climate crisis, homelessness, mitigating increases in [continue reading]
Metro Board Chairman Don Knabe and Metro CEO Art Leahy are in Sacramento today, lobbying state lawmakers to not drastically cut funding in the ongoing state budget negotiations. Above, that’s Knabe meeting this morning with Assemblymember Bonnie Lowenthal, who chairs the Assembly’s transportation committee. Of course, Lowenthal is also a [continue reading]
The group Breath California of Los Angeles County held a panel discussion last week that focused on transportation’s role in reducing air pollution. I thought a few points were made worth sharing: •The moderator, Neal Richman, the director of programs and advocacy for Breathe LA, said right off the top [continue reading]
A measure that backers say would prevent future raids on transit funds by the State Legislature has qualified for the November ballot, according to the California Secretary of State. After the Legislature diverted more than $4 billion in transit funding to other uses as part of its annual budgets, the [continue reading]
Metro CEO Art Leahy just finished an appearance on Airtalk on KPCC. The program focused on the budget revision that will be released later today by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Leahy made three key points: *If the state withdraws operating funds for transit agencies, Metro could be looking at 10% to [continue reading]
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last week threatened to veto a complicated budget proposal involving the gas tax. The veto threat jeopardized mass transit funding in the state. After negotations with the Legislature over proposals he sought, Schwarzenegger ended up signing the gas tax swap on Monday night. The gist of it: [continue reading]
The turmoil known as the California state budget process is moving through the Legislature and below is the latest update from Metro’s government relations team. The essence of the problem in one sentence: transit agencies are worried that the state is trying to back away from transit funding in both [continue reading]
We finally have some hard numbers, although I caution to take this with a grain of salt since it’s never over until it’s over when it comes to the state budget in California. That said, here are the numbers that Metro government relations staff presented to the Board of Directors’ [continue reading]
The budget proposed last month by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is slowly working its way through the Legislature and is being closely watched by Metro. Schwarzenegger’s budget has been criticized by agencies and transit advocates for steering too much money away from transit. The State Senate has fixed that, to some [continue reading]
State officials are still announcing details of the proposed state budget to close a $19.9-billion deficit in the current and next year’s budget. Here’s what the L.A. Times is reporting about the budget’s impact on public transportation: One of the proposed budget’s biggest losers is public transit — and its [continue reading]
