SB 1141 Proposal: Allow 2 California Counties to Handle State Road Maintenance?

[andy3175]

A state audit found issues with Caltrans project practices:

http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article66711507.html

The California state auditor has criticized the Department of Transportation's approach to highway maintenance, saying Caltrans has "weak cost controls"  that "create opportunities for fraud, waste and abuse."

In a report issued Thursday, the auditor noted the highway department spent $250,000 six years ago to develop a modeling system for where and when to invest in field maintenance, but has not used the model, even though it told the Legislature it was.

Instead of distributing money based on need, field maintenance officials have been doing it based on each area's previous spending patterns, the report authors' said they found during a review of Caltrans local districts in Los Angeles, Oakland and Fresno.

"Without adequate plans for completing field maintenance work, (local area) staff have little accountability for how well they meet maintenance needs,"  the report states.

None of the districts has a "central repository for tracking, reviewing, and approving service requests."  Possibly as a result, 80 percent of service requests in two of those districts "appeared to remain unresolved after more than 90 days,"  analysts wrote.

So this news naturally got politicians interested in changing things, and that begat a proposal from State Senator John Moorlach to transfer responsibilities for state road maintenance to local counties. This bill was just introduced, so we don't know if it actually has a future or not. It is interesting that the SB 1141 proposal is coming from an Orange County politician, where the local Caltrans district happens to match up with the Orange County boundary:

http://www.oc-breeze.com/2016/03/21/83893_sen-moorlach-introduces-sb-1141-shift-road-fundingduties-counties/

Last week, yet another high-profile scandal involving mismanagement rocked the California Department of Transportation — Caltrans, and today Senator John Moorlach (R-Costa Mesa) announced that he's introduced Senate Bill 1141, which would launch a pilot program shifting road funds and maintenance duties from Caltrans to county governments.

"Caltrans is one of the worst managed, most inefficient government agencies in the nation,"  declared Senator Moorlach.  "Just look at the metrics. Californians pay among the highest gas taxes and the highest per-mile road maintenance, yet we also have the nation's fifth worst roads.  Those are clear signs that Caltrans is dysfunctional and wasting taxpayer money.  If Caltrans was a private company, it would have been out of business long ago."

SB 1141 would launch a pilot program that allows two California counties to handle their own road maintenance needs, and to receive the road funding that typically would have been administered by Caltrans for those maintenance needs.

More on SB 1141:
http://district37.cssrc.us/content/senate-bill-1141-counties-caltrans-pilot-program

California has a rich history of devising innovative solutions to better address complex problems. SB 1141 follows in that same spirit by creating a 5-year pilot project where two counties would be allowed the authority to self-manage the operation, maintenance, and implementation of improvements and all operations for all state highways in their respective counties for which for Department of Transportation (Caltrans) would otherwise be responsible. One county from both northern and southern California will apply to the pilot program. Caltrans would convey all of its authority and responsibility over state highways, along with appropriate funding, to a local entity with jurisdiction in the chosen county. ​

[andy3175]

I meant to add in the previous post, I've never heard of legislation that would transfer responsibility for state road funding and presumably state roads themselves (including freeways) from the state department of transportation to a county road agency. Has this been done in other states? I know that some cities maintain freeways and US routes within their borders in certain cases, but I'm not aware of any countywide road transfers such as what is being contemplated with SB 1141.

[vdeane]

The closest I can think of off the top of my head is how NYCDOT is responsible for all day to day maintenance on Region 11's freeways, with Region 11 only doing large capital projects and administrative functions.