Streetsblog San Francisco

On the heals of yesterday's vote by Transit Workers Union (TWU) Local 250 rank-and-file to reject the contract concessions negotiated by their President, Irwin Lum, and Mayor Gavin Newsom and senior management at the San Francisco MTA, Mayor Newsom expressed dismay and said he would support a November ballot initiative to force the issue with the union.

"We're hopeful that they can reconcile and they can go back to their membership and they can reconsider their vote," said Newsom after a press conference with U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act held at UCSF's Alumni House.

Newsom said if TWU membership balked, his office would coordinate with Supervisor Sean Elsbernd on his ballot initiative and put the matter before San Francisco voters this fall. Elsbernd's initiative, which he pulled several weeks ago, sought to amend the City Charter so that operator salary and benefits would not be guaranteed, but would be negotiated through the collective bargaining process. Elsbernd told Streetsblog this morning he was "emphatic" about bringing his amendment back for the November ballot.

"We'll go to the people of San Francisco, we'll get signatures collected immediately. Expect that to be done in the next week or two," said Newsom.

Mayor Newsom painted the issue as one between reducing TWU salaries or raising the fares for seniors, youth, and disabled riders, and he was confident the public would send a stern message to the union. "I don't think the riding public is going to accept a wage increase for the drivers at a time when their [own] wages are down and the fares are going to go up, particularly seniors, youth, and disabled."

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After touring the Detroit Auto Show yesterday with fellow lawmakers,
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) took one question yesterday: Why are
Democrats not pursuing a federal gas tax hike, given its potential to cut carbon emissions and its support from auto industry players aiming to stoke demand for efficient cars?

Pelosi’s answer was a lengthy one, but here’s how she began:

Well, there certainly has been advocacy for such a position. It does not,
certainly, have a majority in the Congress of the United States at this
time. So we want to approach this in a way that is comprehensive, that
certainly keeps in mind of concerns of the consumer, the concerns of the
industry, and of the environment.  This is not to say one idea is better
than another — it’s just to say that at the present time, there are other
initiatives that we have.

Pelosi added that she had met earlier in the day with Debbie Stabenow,
one of Michigan’s two Democratic senators, to discuss the climate bill
pending in the upper chamber of Congress. Stabenow is a vigilant
protector of her state’s auto industry and last year signaled that she ultimately would have voted no on cap-and-trade legislation.

"[W]e’re hopeful that some of the
initiatives that are in that [climate] legislation — when it passes and is signed into
law — will address some of the same concerns that a gas tax would," Pelosi said.

But
for now, her answer should be considered equally relevant to the
stalemate over the next long-term transportation bill. Without
congressional willingness to pay for the legislation, through a gas tax
increase or similar new charge, it’s unlikely to come up until next
year.

Any proposal to fund new U.S. infrastructure investment by taxing
financial transactions — such as Rep. Pete DeFazio’s (D-OR) bill taxing
Wall Street oil speculators — would require international
participation to prevent the trades in question from migrating
overseas, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said today.

As House Democrats weigh their options for a new job-creation plan, slated for a vote before year’s end, infrastructure spending is attracting
new support from party leaders. But the question of how much to spend,
and whether a new six-year transportation measure could be presented as
a jobs bill, is tied up in ongoing uncertainty over where the necessary
funding would come from.

DeFazio’s recommendation to impose a
small per-trade tax on the Wall Street oil futures market has picked up
endorsements from progressive economists and writers
as well as 29 of his fellow Democrats. Pelosi, however, was cautious in
addressing its prospects today during her weekly press briefing.

"One
of the concerns that some of us have about it," the Speaker said, "is
what it [might do] to us in terms of transactions going offshore."

Emphasizing
that the idea "is just something that is on the table," Pelosi added
that passing a tax proposal such as DeFazio’s would require
consultation with and buy-in from other nations: "It would have to be
an international rule, not just a U.S. rule."

Barney Frank
(D-MA), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, is among
those who have expressed concerns that a Wall Street transaction tax,
unless properly structured, would drive financial activity onto foreign
commodity exchanges, thus generating lower-than-expected revenues.

Imposing a transaction tax "country by country … would be a problem," Frank told the Wall Street Journal last month.

Pelosi’s
response today does not signal a decline in House-side momentum for
DeFazio’s proposal; she noted that financial regulators in the United
Kingdom and elsewhere have spoken favorably of transaction taxes (also known as "Tobin" taxes).

But
even if House Democrats ultimately embrace the idea as a revenue-raiser
for their jobs bill, the proposed tax is guaranteed to face an uphill
battle in the Senate — where Wall Street has no shortage of powerful allies.

That’s the implication of a Roll Call story today that states: "Momentum Builds for Transportation Bill."

Here’s
how the exchange in question played out at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s
(D-CA) weekly briefing. Pelosi was asked for her position on a possible
second stimulus bill, and she replied:

I am committed to the first stimulus. I don’t think it has been given all
the time to work. … The
question is always open as to what the Administration may recommend to us,
but right now, I believe that we have much more to gain from seeing through
the first stimulus. 

I
am a proponent for bringing up a full transportation bill, which is a great
jobs bill.  At some point, we may have to do something on the extension
of unemployment benefits. But in terms of the investments that were
made in the first package, I want to play that out.

We

have to be very careful about the spending on this. … [R]ight now I
think that we have big issues with health care and how we fund that,
and if we do go someplace, I’d like to see us do the transportation
bill.

So is Pelosi backing her
transportation committee chairman, Jim Oberstar (D-MN), whose push to
pass a transportation bill this year has faced opposition from the Senate and the Obama administration

A
House Democratic leadership aide told Streetsblog Capitol Hill that no
decisions on a timeframe for the transportation bill have been made,
but discussions are ongoing and all parties agree that a short-term problem exists.

File the following in the "Can't Believe My President Gets It" category. 

In an interview with columnists last week on Air Force One, President Obama drew a clear link between regional planning, land use, transportation, and energy policy, implying that bad planning has led to an increase in vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and commute times, which negatively impacts the environment.  He also suggested that USDOT Secretary Ray LaHood should consider changing the highway and transit spending ratios in the Transportation Equity Act (TEA).

In response to a question about infrastructure spending in the stimulus and anticipation of addition infrastructure spending in the future, the president said the following:

Well, number one, we’ve got the transportation reauthorization bill that’s going to be coming up. So one thing to keep some perspective about on the recovery package is this is supposed to provide a jolt to the economy above and beyond what we’re doing already in the federal budget. And so I expect that Secretary LaHood, working with the various transportation committees, is going to be moving forward on a transportation bill. I would like to see some long-term reforms in how transportation dollars flow, and I’ll give you just a couple of examples. I think right now we don’t do a lot of effective planning at the regional level when it comes to transportation. That’s hugely inefficient. Not only does it probably consume more money in terms of getting projects done, but it also ends up creating traffic patterns, for example, that are really hugely wasteful when it comes to energy use.

If we can start building in more incentives for more effective planning at the local level, that’s not just good transportation policy, it’s good energy policy. So we’ll be working with transportation committees to see if we can move in that direction.

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco claims she is committed to public transit and reducing motor vehicle congestion. In a speech to the Regional Plan Association (RPA) last April she said her flagship issues as speaker are energy independence and reducing global warming.

"Our infrastructure choices will help determine whether people can choose alternatives to driving their cars," Pelosi told the RPA convention. "In Congress, we are leading by example with a ‘Green the Capitol’ initiative that will make our complex a model of green infrastructure and environmental stewardship."

If that's the case, why didn't Pelosi fight for public transit in the stimulus bill passed in the House today, instead of a meager $9 billion that only rose to the original $12 billion because of an amendment by Rep. Jerry Nadler? Why is transportation spending so highway heavy at $30 billion? 

"This is not all we're going to do," said Pelosi's spokesman, Drew Hammill. "We know we can’t do everything in one bill and there’s restraints on what we can spend. She said we have to do something to quickly turn around the economic situation. The number one priority here is turning the economy around."

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