Remarks of Robert A. Johnston (UC Davis) to Staff of the Commission on Building for the 21st Century and Governor’s Cabinet Sacramento, Aug. 8, 2000

Strategic Analysis for Infrastructure Planning in California

Outline:

A. Criticisms of Infrastructure Planning

B. Demographic Trends

C. Legal Trends

D. Problems and Policy Needs

A. Criticisms of Infrastructure Planning (PPIC):

1. No statewide goals. Lots of project categories.

2. No long-range or statewide planning. Annual budgets. Crisis             mgmt. Can’t compare across St. and agencies.

3. Methods of analysis vary by agency. Self-justifying.

4. No demand-side policies, such as pricing.

B. Demographic Trends:

1. High growth rates in So. Calif., outer Bay Area, and Central Valley. Causes local political stress. Patchwork growth controls. Spillover effects. More controls.

2. High absolute growth in So. Calif. AQ poor. Water supply falling. Urban runoff poor. Habitats not protected.

3. Hourly wages for lower-income Calif. males fell 40%, 1967-94 (25th income percentile). Median wages fell 20%. National figures are 20% and 2%!

4. Hourly wages at the 75% wage percentile fell 5%, but rose 12% nationally. Widespread problem. Resistant to upturns in the economy.

5. Education support ($/student) and achievement down the drain.

6. Hispanic growth. Lots of other minorities too. Low educational levels for many groups, especially recently.

7. Globalization will continue to drive wages down at the bottom. Education becomes more important.

8. Income inequality increases crime and reduces life expectancy for all income groups.

C. Legal Trends

1. NEPA and CEQA growth-inducing impacts and cumulative impacts cases. Freeways. Dams. Local land use plans.

2. Fed. End. Spp. Act cases. Multi-Species Habitat  Cons. Plans. Natural Community Cons. Plans. All of So. Calif. doing now. S. Joaquin Valley next.

3. Clean Water Act, sec. 208 (nonpoint). Lawsuits forced EPA and St. WRCB to enforce. So, St. Bd. setting Total Max. Daily Load quantities for all pollutants for all watersheds. Will require regional cooperative planning of land uses and mgmt. practices. Long history of failure on 208.

4. Clean Air Act. Achieving Fed. ambient stds. in So. Calif. and Central Valley will probably require more than clean fuels and engines. Will need compact growth with transit. Need regional land use and transport planning. 

5. Env. Justice Exec. Order. Also, Fed. Civil Rts. Act. Equity in transit. Suits all over U.S. Equity in all Fed. expenditures. Requires demographic datasets in GIS. Need regional planning.

D. Problems and Policy Needs:

1. Education. Recent Rand rept. showed the need for more support. We also need free English classes.  Also, regular adult education. Unequal spending (Serrano cases).

2. High housing costs. Caused by growth shock and ballot box planning, which limit land availability. Need regional land planning. Need fair share housing law with teeth.    Need lower front-end fees for housing. This requires stronger local fiscal role and guaranteed tax revenues.

3. Local govt. fiscal starvation. Need to rebate sales taxes on a per capita basis. Need to rebate all prop. taxes for multifamily residential uses, manufactured housing/ and mobile homes.

4. Subsidies to travel, water use, water pollution, and air pollution. Need marginal cost pricing. Most supply problems would go away. Deregulation working in air travel and trucking.

C. Problems and Solutions (cont’d):

5. Habitats not protected well. Loss of Central Valley riparian woodland is 89%, Coastal wetlands 80%, Interior wetlands 94%, Central Valley vernal pools 66%, etc. %%  Slide  %%

6. Percent of Annual Grasslands preserved is 1%. Perennial Grasslands 2%. Valley Foothill Hardwood 4%. Valley Riparian 2%.  29% of vertebrates in serious risk of extinction. Over 40% of listed animals still declining.

7. Need better land cover data. This is happening. Need State designation of important habitats. NGOs are ahead of the St.

D. Final Thoughts

1. Need marginal cost pricing. Freeway tolls working in             Orange Co. Water meters coming in some areas. Pollution beginning to be priced. Calif. does have limited workplace parking cashout. ARB did study of travel pricing and buried it.

2. Need regional cooperative planning. St. Leg. should:

            a. Adopt St. policies re. growth, env. protection, habitats;

            b. Require self-formed regional planning bodies, which

            c. do regional plans that the St. approves, and

            d. the locals implement, in order to get St. funds.

 3. Need Statewide GIS database, that everyone uses to judge the need for infrastructure. Simple measures of need (percent capacity). Easy for point facilities. Trickier for roads and water ystems.

4. We are about to develop a Demographic Projection GIS for Caltrans for census tracts to 2030. Pop., income, age, ethnicity, etc. We can get layers for facilities and networks and so can do eough calculations of demand in the future.

5. We have all habitat data and other GIS layers to perform environmental constraints analyses. Also, we have census data and so can do Jobs/Housing Balance studies.