Sacramento Snapshot: Stabilizing key rail line at top of legislators’ agendas as they return

Editor’s note: Sacramento Snapshot is a weekly series during the legislative session detailing what Orange County’s representatives in the Assembly and Senate are working on — from committee work to bill passages and more.

Who should be in charge of advocating for upgrades and protections for the 351-mile stretch of rail line through coastal Southern California, especially as climate change continues to result in very real threats to the corridor?

That’s the intent of a small group of state senators — including four representing Orange County — who met last week to discuss future threats to the Los Angeles – San Diego – San Luis Obispo Rail Corridor (or LOSSAN Corridor) and updates to short and long-term stabilization efforts, particularly around San Clemente.

“We’re really not doing effective strategic planning for the whole corridor,” said Sen. Catherine Blakespear, D-Encinitas, the subcommittee chair. “I don’t think any of us really know when we have seven different owners and many operators along the corridor where should investments be made.”

As legislators returned to Sacramento last week after the month-long recess, one of the first orders of business was to convene the second hearing by the Subcommittee on LOSSAN Rail Corridor Resiliency.

“There are significant sea level rise, flooding and erosion events that are expected to continue happening in this corridor,” said Chad Edison, the chief deputy secretary for rail and transit for the California State Transportation Agency.

Bluff retreats average up to 6 inches per year in some places along the corridor, considered to be the second-busiest intercity passenger railway in the U.S., Edison estimated.

“The need to protect the corridor that’s there in the short term and look at realignment alternatives is very real,” he said.

Efforts to shore up protections and upgrades to the LOSSAN Corridor should include both short and long-term responses, said County Supervisor Katrina Foley, who traveled to Sacramento for the hearing.

“The faster climate changes and the longer adaptation efforts are delayed, the more difficult and expensive responding to climate action and climate change becomes,” Foley said. “It’s important that we proactively plan … instead of this piecemeal, costly, reactive planning that we’ve been doing over the past decade.”

The subcommittee did not take any action during the 2 1/2-hour hearing other than pose questions to the experts convened to testify on the environmental impacts to the corridor, stabilization efforts around San Clemente and investments made at state and federal levels.

Blakespear said she doesn’t yet have a clear vision for fixes for the corridor but is confident in the subcommittee’s ability to get there.

“We’re getting together all the different interests, we’re talking about it publicly, we’re elevating it and not just letting it fall into the ocean in places and otherwise have freight shift from the rail onto the road under our watch and not doing anything about it,” she said.

“These hearings are uncovering where our opportunities are for improvement,” she said in an interview.

All Orange County members — Sens. Josh Newman, D-Fullerton; Janet Nguyen, R-Huntington Beach; and Tom Umberg, D-Santa Ana — participated in the hearing.

The next hearing, Blakespear says, will be held in San Diego on the train up to San Clemente where she and other legislators and stakeholders can see what’s at risk.

In other news

• Legislative Republicans are not in favor of an effort to lower the voter threshold to approve certain local taxes and bonds for affordable housing, permanent supportive housing and other public infrastructure projects. The proposed constitutional amendment, working its way through the Assembly, seeks to lower the threshold from a two-thirds majority to 55% to approve these taxes.

“Local governments and local voters know best what their communities need,” Assemblymember Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, D-Winters, says of her proposal in the bill analysis. “In some neighborhoods, this means a new library or fire station; in others, this means an increase in the affordable housing stock or connecting their constituents to broadband service.”

But a group of Republicans in both chambers rallied outside the statehouse, arguing that an easier way to impose new taxes would “hurt workers and increase housing costs.”

“With our current tax burden on middle-class Californians, inflationary crisis and high cost of living, ACA 1 couldn’t come at a worse time,” said Assemblymember Diane Dixon, R-Newport Beach.

• Ahead of the summer break, Republicans — with the help of the governor and the new speaker — were able to advance a bill to make child trafficking a serious felony.

But it appears the drama isn’t over. Last week, the legislation was placed on what’s called the suspense file.

In other words, the suspense file is where legislators can place bills considered to have a high fiscal impact. The process of clearing out those bills moves much quicker than a regular hearing would — meaning, bills can quickly die there.

“As the Appropriations Committee is evaluating the cost of incarcerating traffickers, I hope they will also take into account the basic services associated with the life-long rehabilitation of victims and survivors of this brutal crime,” said Sen. Shannon Grove, D-Bakersfield. “There is no price tag that can be placed on a victim of human trafficking, especially a child.”

“There’s an ongoing debate on striking the right balance between criminal justice reform and sentencing, but this is a different issue,” Sen. Josh Newman, D-Fullerton, said of the bill ahead of the break. “We need to ensure traffickers are prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”

Source: Orange County Register