Sen. Torlakson: State Housing Bonds Can Promote Smart Growth

As the new chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, how will you continue to link housing, transportation, and education investment and promote smart growth in the state?

I am honored to have a key committee to analyze the merits of bills to promote good education, good housing, and good transit projects just as I have in the past. I'm in a good position to help legislation along that will be beneficial for these areas that I care so much about.

You have a subcommittee on bond indebtedness. How do you assure the voters and the interest groups that are so dependent on bond funds-especially the $40 billion passed in November-that they we will be well used?

In the Appropriations Committee we have created a subcommittee called Fiscal Accountability and Bonded Indebtedness, which just completed its first hearing. We are going to exercise strong accountability and oversight to the expenditure of bond monies. We had Treasurer Lockyer and Controller Chiang in on our hearing today along with the Legislative Analyst Office and the Governor's Department of Finance. We are looking to have a large measure of transparency. We want to deliver the bonds with efficiency, innovation, and speed, and live up to the trust of the voters who made an historic vote to invest in our future.

Whenever bond funds are approved, issues arise about fair share between urban, suburban, rural, and about the kinds of allocations for the types of housing that will be built. Have your conversations moved onto those kinds of issues?

The largest part of the bond is dedicated to existing programs where the formulas have already been worked out and are fairly balanced. There are 67 programs that will be funded by the bonds. About 21 of those are new pots of money-new programs subject to implementing language in bills that will be forthcoming over the next couple of months.

What sort of matching funds does Prop 1C require, and when can cities and developers expect that money to begin flowing?

Many of the programs already exist, and many are full grants to local jurisdictions and many like the multi-family housing program are long-term 55 year loans. Many existing programs are basically subsidy programs to help cities pencil out their affordable housing, support battered women shelters, homeless shelters, and farm-worker housing.

The formulas for the existing programs are already pretty well worked out, but one-third of the roughly $3 billion is going to be subject to further legislation. I'll give you the broad categories, but know that matching formulas will be determined in the forthcoming legislation: For urban infill incentives there is $850 million available, $200 million of which is available for urban parks. Think of the $100 million in the last housing bonds that we set aside for incentives-now we're talking about $850 million just as reward incentives for cities to spend that money for community benefit if they move forward with innovative urban infill projects.

The second pot of money is for housing-related parks in urban, suburban, and rural areas. There will be another $200 million in that category. The third is a $300-million incentive fund for transit-oriented development to help cities overcome brownfield development problems, replace old sewer and water lines, fix streets, and build other infrastructure needed to accomplish transit-oriented development.

Will any of the money link housing and transportation-as former BTH Secretary BTH Sunne McPeak often advocated?

Absolutely. One of the most innovative features of this bond package was the fact that Senator Perata insisted on providing large incentives for a logical pattern of growth-for more urban infill and transit-oriented development. I worked closely with him on those incentives.

If you remember, the housing bond that Senator Burton authored several years ago had $2.1 billion, including a $100 million incentive fund that I asked Burton to add to the bond. That worked fabulously well with cities, incentivizing them to agree to housing projects. The state, recognizing their good actions, distributed that $100 million for projects that the cities wished to spend it on in order to improve their communities. This bond measure has almost $1.35 billion in incentives to reward cities for helping to meet the state's housing and transportation needs.

What might a great project look like? What examples can cities and developers replicate?

The Pleasant Hill BART Station in Contra Costa County that Sunne McPeak and I worked on when we were on the Board of Supervisors is a good example of locating high-rise apartments, high-rise office buildings, retail shops, and restaurants right next to the BART Station. Renovation is also occurring around the Rockridge BART Station in Oakland. We've seen the same thing in the Pasadena area around the Gold Line.

There are wonderful mixed-use projects with walk-able design close to transit hubs where people can easily move without their cars to work, to restaurants, to entertainment, and to their home.

What are the existing impediments to integrating housing and transit in California's urban communities? What impedes good urban planning and public investment?

One impediment is not having enough money to do the planning. Sometimes a community has resistance to change. Without a charette or community-involvement process, opposition develops without looking at a broader, more positive vision.

The other thing is that there is a lot of momentum to keep the status quo. I guess momentum is the wrong term-it's inertia. Individual property owners and developers will come to a city and want to get their fix. In my view, it's the city's duty to think bigger.

Most cities, in their general plan revisions, are now trying to look for smarter growth and mixed use that reduces the need to use a car and reduces the demand for housing in a sprawled, leapfrog way into suburban areas. I am encouraged by the efforts of cities up and down the state to focus on innovative planning -to bring back downtown areas and create new communities along transit corridors with hubs where residents can have a living environment with jobs, recreation, and entertainment.

Along with the housing bond, a fourth state education bond passed last fall. You've long played a significant role in education funding and reform. What might we expect with this bond in the way of joint use, leverage, etc?

We're very pleased that there is money for joint use. We are going to pursue legislation to make the joint use category more flexible, so that it doesn't have to be school-site-based. It could be the Tolerance Museum, the Chabot Science Center in Oakland, or the science center in Orange County. We want to see the fund display a flexibility of joint use toward those kinds of things.

I am excited that the bond has $500 million for career technical education facilities. We have another $1 billion for the hyper-dense, overcrowded schools. We desperately needed money for modernization and there is a good balance in this bond. $7 billion of the bond will go to K–12 facilities, and $3 billion will go to the great needs at UC, CSU, and community colleges.

One thing that comes to mind that I need to speak out early on is that we should reject the governor's proposal to switch the matching ration of future bonds. The new construction is now a 50-50 match. The modernization is 60 percent by the state and 40 percent by the locals. He's proposing to make 60 percent by the locals and only 40 percent by the state. This is for the next set of bonds that he is proposing, and I am saying early on that we should reject that.

I was involved with both Antonio Villaraigosa and Bob Hertzberg to come up with a plan to get Senate Bill 50 adopted and the first bond in education going-that $9-billion bond, Prop 1A, led to what is now $30 billion of voter-approved bonds. Just today in the Senate Education Committee, I urged us to reject the governor's proposal because it would force billions of dollars in cost onto the local school districts that have been strong partners in passing local bonds and raise large numbers of investment dollars locally. This would undo that partnership that we created when we got the original bonds on the ballot. It was a carefully negotiated partnership that has yielded big, positive results.

There has always more friction than collaboration in Sacramento between cities and school districts with respect to the investment of bond funds, whether for housing, parks, or schools. Shouldn't take a more collaborative approach towards leveraging these funds?

Absolutely. It is not going far enough fast enough, but it is going in the right direction. My old motto as a coach for 30 years is "We're a team-T-E-A-M-and ‘together everyone accomplishes more.'" In collaborative joint use-where a school site like a library can be used after hours for literacy programs, access to computers, and access to great books-the taxpayer doesn't care which agency delivers the product, they just like the fact that the facility is there, and they very much like it when they see collaborative efforts. We are going to explore this further.

I have a Senate Select Committee on Schools and Community and we are going to promote more of this joint-use collaboration on everything from play fields to school-based clinics that show collaboration between county health and the students and their families, to the idea of sharing computer labs and libraries.

2007 is already being hailed as the year of bipartisanship. How genuine is that claim, and what pitfalls loom that might detract from more collaboration?

It has started out with the right tone, and we're going to do everything possible to make it an action-packed year where we get things done and put partisan differences aside to find win-win situations for all Californians.