Senate and Assembly Reach Budget Agreement to Save Transit

Senator Scott Wiener’s (D-SF) office announced Monday that the state legislature reached a budget agreement that walks California back from a transit fiscal cliff.

When Governor Gavin Newsom released his revised budget last month, it had a double-dose of bad news for state transit agencies. It cut $1.1 billion expected to support transit operations and rejected a request for over $750 million in emergency funds for Bay Area transit systems to avoid catastrophic service cuts until a new ballot measure can be approved.

Agencies that rely on transit fares instead of sales taxes or other sources for a large portion of their operations have been warning that with the expiration of federal funds, massive cuts would be happening as soon as July.

Wiener, who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, Senator Jesse Arreguín (D-Berkeley), and Assemblymember Mark Gonzalez (D-LA) led a coalition of legislators and advocates to secure and protect transit funding in the state budget.

“This budget agreement extends a critical lifeline that will help transit agencies maintain service while making critical improvements to cleanliness and safety. We are grateful that legislative leaders prioritized support for transit,” reads a joint statement from Wiener and Arreguín.

“Even with this one-time relief package, systems across the state continue to face large budget shortfalls that threaten devastating service cuts,” they added.

Should the legislature pass the budget with transit funding restored and the one-time subsidy intact, Newsom could still exercise a “line-item veto” where he strikes one or both from the budget. In recent years, the legislature has put more funds into active transportation and transit than the governor has proposed and he has not used that power.