Senate Bill Seeks Remedy for Rush Hours

Sick of rush hour traffic? State Controller Kathleen Connell and Sen. Richard Polanco want to pay you to stay out of it.

The two Democrats are pushing legislation to bust up rush-hour traffic jams by giving California employers and employees tax credits of $500 for implementing alternate schedules or telecommuting.

“Traffic is suffocating the city of Los Angeles and it’s time that we take action,” Connell said at a news conference Tuesday on the roof of a Los Angeles Convention Center parking garage, overlooking morning traffic congestion on two freeways.

Employer and union representatives expressed muted enthusiasm for the measure, which would create a pilot program in Los Angeles, Ventura and Orange counties, as well as a seven-county region in the Bay Area.

Employer groups raised concerns about how to implement alternate schedules--a process governed by the state’s new daily overtime law--and unions said they want to ensure that workers’ participation is voluntary and that the process is well-monitored.

As attempts to unsnarl traffic go, Polanco’s bill, SB 2021, is a mere speed bump compared with a $5-billion state transportation funding package that Gov. Gray Davis is expected to unveil Thursday. Davis hopes to leverage a $2.2-billion November bond issue and $2.8 billion in cash from the state’s budget surplus into a $15-billion package, when combined with federal and local funding for a long list of regional highway, rail and bus projects.

Californians lose more than 400,000 hours each workday to traffic problems, Polanco and Connell said, citing Caltrans data for 1998, the most recent available.

In Los Angeles and Ventura counties, commuters spend nearly 143,000 “vehicle hours” in traffic jams at a cost of nearly $1.5 million a day, Caltrans figures show. For Orange County, the daily delay amounts to nearly 79,999 hours at a total cost of nearly $696,000 a day.

SB 2021, which is set for a hearing by the Senate Revenue and Taxation Committee on April 12, would offer a $500 annual tax credit to every full-time employee who begins a work schedule after Jan. 1, 2001, that keeps the worker out of rush hour traffic. A tax credit would also go to the company that employs that person. Employers could aggregate the hours of part-time employees to obtain the credit.

To be eligible, an employee would have to travel at least nine miles to work and commute outside the hours of heaviest congestion: 6:30 to 8:30 a.m. and 4 to 6 p.m. The credit would be available to those who telecommute at least three days a week, work flexible shifts that begin at times other than those targeted, work nontraditional weeks that include a weekend day or work alternative schedules, such as four 10-hour days. Government employees would not be eligible, nor would people who already work those hours.

“This is a very, very simple, common-sense approach,” Polanco (D-Los Angeles) said. Polanco placed no price tag on the program, which would vary with participation, but said the state could afford it, thanks to the large budget surplus. The program would expire in five years.

The California Chamber of Commerce wants the bill to be clearer about how to implement alternative schedules, which are strictly governed by the state’s new daily overtime law, said spokeswoman Kathy Fairbanks. Under that law, employers must pay overtime after eight hours of work in a day unless two-thirds of workers in a unit approve an alternative schedule through a secret ballot. Employers have complained that the new scheduling requirements are confusing and that financial penalties for failing to implement them correctly are steep.

The California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, the umbrella group for the state’s major unions, wants to make sure that any schedule changes are voluntary and that nonunion employees have someplace to complain if they are not, said spokeswoman Sharon Cornu.

“Many of us have strung together complex child care and transportation plans” that cannot be easily undone, she said.

The unions also want to see tax money spent on transportation and job-creation issues in a coordinated way rather than piecemeal, she said.

Shirley Knight, of the California chapter of the National Federation of Independent Business, said the group has not taken a position on the legislation but believes that “anything that would assist in reducing taxes on small business is always a good move, as opposed to mandating employers to do something.”