Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has long-term multi-billion-dollar
plans to reconstruct the Golden State, extending outside of his
proposed fiscal budget announced Tuesday.
Last week, at his State of the State address, Schwarzenegger
announced plans to rebuild and reinforce California’s
infrastructure by building and rebuilding highways, schools,
courthouses, jails and levees, amounting to more than $222 billion
in projects for the state.
Specifically, Schwarzenegger discussed such projects as adding
1,300 miles to California highways, including 550 miles of carpool
lanes; seismically retrofitting state buildings for earthquake
safety; and strengthening levees to avoid disastrous flooding.
But many have expressed concern and doubt about
California’s ability to make such repairs without raising
taxes to pay for them.
Michael Dukakis, former presidential candidate and professor at
the UCLA School of Public Affairs, said California cannot provide
the kinds of services it needs with its current revenue base.
Dukakis added that past governors had the courage to raise taxes
in order to fund state projects.
“If he was prepared to put together the kind of budget
package that Reagan and Wilson did, with Democratic legislatures, I
don’t think there would be any question of this going
through, but he’s not willing to do that,” Dukakis
said.
Some experts believe transportation improvements must be
properly funded in order to be effective.
Daniel Mitchell, professor at the UCLA Anderson School of
Management and the School of Public Affairs, said transportation
infrastructure in California has been linked to the gasoline tax,
going as far back as World War II.
He said the process of raising the tax, earmarking it for
funding transportation, and using it to build roads was so
successful that the federal government adopted a similar model to
fund the construction of the interstate highway system.
But Mitchell said that as far as he could tell, there is no
effort to raise the gas tax in order to fund the transportation
improvements proposed, and though many favor improvements, people
do not want to pay higher taxes.
“If you take the tax off the table, you really take a
major source of revenue off,” Mitchell said. Without an
increase in the gasoline tax, “it’s going to be hard to
put a really large-scale program together and fund it
properly.”
With reports from Bruin wire services; Nancy Su, Bruin reporter;
and Jennifer Mishory, Bruin contributor