Legislature Passes Bills for Toll Road Upkeep by State

SACRAMENTO —  Despite complaints from one legislator that he had been tricked into supporting the measures, two bills allowing state tax dollars to be used for the upkeep of two proposed Orange County toll roads passed the Legislature on Tuesday and went to Gov. George Deukmejian for final approval.

The bills, which angered several senators, were silent on the question of whether taxpayers’ dollars can be used for the planning and construction of future toll roads.

The author, Sen. John Seymour, an Anaheim Republican, said he expected the governor to sign the measures because they are similar to an earlier bill approved by Deukmejian.

About midway through the Senate floor debate, an angry Sen. Dan Boatwright (D-Concord) said he had had Seymour’s commitment that the measure would prohibit the use of state money for the planning and construction of the toll roads.

When the bill left the Senate during the first vote, Boatwright said, it contained language barring the use of tax dollars for toll road planning but allowed the state to pick up the tab for the maintenance.

That, he said, all changed in the Assembly, where the bills were amended and sent back to the Senate.

“Now the bill is no good as far as I’m concerned,” said Boatwright, who voted against both bills Tuesday.

“I learned early that all you have when you come to the Legislature is your word,” he said, adding that in his 16 years in Sacramento, this is the first time that someone made a commitment in order to get a vote then turned around and changed it.

Seymour countered, saying he had kept Boatwright and others in the Senate fully informed on what had happened to the bill in the Assembly. He said his records showed that he had talked to Boatwright 15 days before the bill was amended in the Assembly.

“I have been honest and up-front,” he said. “This was no fast shuffle.”

Appearing somewhat frustrated, Seymour sighed, “I don’t know why people keep looking at Orange County as a foreign country.”

The Senate on Tuesday approved the bills (SB 2048 and SB 2049), 21 to 9 and 24 to 9, respectively.

They would declare the planned Foothill and Eastern toll roads state highways, ensuring that state taxpayers would pay for their maintenance after they are built with toll revenues. Earlier legislation approving the toll roads included provisions that tolls be lifted once construction is paid for.

The bills were the last of a series that, if signed by the governor, would make a proposed toll road network in Orange County a reality. The pay-as-you-go highways, a familiar sight in such states as New Jersey and Pennsylvania, would be the first in California when completed in the 1990s.

One of the bills would designate the Eastern route, from Riverside Freeway in Yorba Linda to the Santa Ana Freeway in Irvine, as California 231. The other would designate the Foothill Route, from 231 east of Irvine to Interstate 5 near San Clemente as California 241.

Sen. Herschel Rosenthal of Los Angeles told fellow senators that the Seymour bills and the Orange County toll roads were taking the state in the wrong direction.

California has prided itself on freeways, the Democrat said, but now “it looks like we have toll roads only for the wealthy people.”

Seymour said there would be a competitive, “stiff process” that the toll roads would have to undergo before any tax dollars could be used for anything other than maintenance.

But he pointed out that if the three roads in Orange County were not toll roads, taxpayers might have been forced to pay billions of dollars for construction.