commissioner wiener: welcome, everyone, to the san francisco county transportation authority finance meeting. are there any announcements? >> no announcements. commissioner wiener: ok, what will go to item two? >> item two, up from the minutes of the june 12, 2012 meeting. this is an action item. commissioner wiener: colleagues, any comments? any public comment? seeing none, public comment is closed. is there a motion to approve the minutes? can we take that without objection? that will be the order. item three. >> state and federal legislative update. this is an information/action item. >> mr. chairman, members, i am here today to give you an update on legislation of

interest and what is going on in sacramento. i want to cover a couple of bills first, but i do want to know that last friday was the date that the legislature recessed until august 6. they completed their work for the year. when they come back in august, they will be dealing with appropriations for two weeks, the appropriation bills and the suspense calendar, and then they will go straight to the floor. a lot of bills moving in that direction, including some of the ones i will update you on. first, a slate of bills that have particular interest to the bay area, the community, and particularly san francisco. a.b. 57 includes the requirement that we saw that san francisco had a third representative. it is on the governor's desk, and as a result, i am organizing a check-in with the governor's office staff to make sure whether they are standing

on that, and i will have that completed by the end of the week. there are two bills by the senate transportation chairman that have been of high interest. the bill was basically killed in the assembly transportation early last week and is no longer valid for the year. s.b. 878 b which at one point started off as a bay area governance issue, restructured the relationships in the bay area, and then ran into trouble and became more of a bill to deal with economic strategies in the bay area. later, that became a bill no longer dealing with bay area governments but dealing with the state transportation commission. that bill has been sent to appropriation, and we will not see any more attempts to deal with governance this year. probably next year.

finally, s.b. 1339, a re-bill of senator yee, the bill had been sponsored last year, but it was statewide, and the governor chose to veto it. this year, the senator narrowed it down to be a mtc region bill only. the governor has asked them to keep it in moments, it is technically not on his desk until he can get around to taking a look at it, given the slate of work the governor had the last couple of weeks. assembly members scanner -- assembly member skinner has tried to enact legislation that would reduce parking requirements in cities. to help benefit in-fill development. her bill last year died due to opposition from the league of

cities. this year, she established a new bill in the last month, a.b. 904, and she ran into trouble with it, so she held on to it, so she will be back next year rather than surprising people in the last month of committees. there are a couple of bills that deal with ifd's. the speaker has a measure which would reduce the vote requirement to something like 55%, but it also would allow -- there are certain pass-throughs that come back to the city at certain points in time that would allow this to be integrated with the ifp process. i am not a technician, so if you need to know more about this, i will dig into it. i have a decent handle of what is going on, but the interaction between the two in the bill is

confusing to me. in addition, the senate local government share has introduced a local government bill late in the session to deal with it. her main attack is on the vote requirements for establishing an infrastructure finance district. that bill has not been heard yet. it is pending in local government. it seems to be outside the deadline, so it may be in trouble. she may be seeking a rule waiver. those are the high interest bills we are following this year and where they stand at this point in time. as you know and read about and a lot of us were working on for the last couple of months -- or the last six months in some cases here in the bay area -- on a high-speed rail funding package, the total package, which includes financing for the initial construction segment in the central valley, includes the

balkans, which this region really promulgated the whole notion of an additional investment -- includes the bookends. it lives the high speed rail authority into a modern era. finally, the one i have been working most directly on was for the connectivity funding, which is the path that provides the funding for in this case central subway project. earlier in the year i did not see a pathway to getting that done as a stand-alone basis, but i think the operators and related entities in the state were looking at connectivity with the department of finance. this is the time to make those investments. consequently, we had a series of meetings with finance and the cpc to get them to a place where

they accepted the updated program and put the money in the budget. with that, i will draw to a close. commissioner wiener: colleagues, are there any questions? commissioner elsbernd: what does that pot of money due for caltrain and electrification? how far down the path does that get us? >> i have heard conflicting reports that there was 700 million, but i have heard $600 million. the characterization i heard fully funding the electrification of the 700 level, so i do not understand the differential. it may be local funding included in the pot. >> good morning -- did i hear your question -- the high-speed rail money that caltrain

received -- is that all they needed to fully electrified? is it 70% of what they needed? >> this is $600 million that essentially completes the funding picture, but what we have pending -- there is a major commitment to making the extension top priority in the next generation of projects, but then we have to come up with more money and so on. commissioner wiener: any other questions? is there any public comment? seeing none, public comment is closed. >> mr. chairman, i do have -- i think given the circumstances, i should at least give you a very quick briefing on the fact that congress has approved the

federal surface transportation act after nine extensions of the previous and several years of waiting, so kudos go to senator boxer, especially in the senate, for pushing this thing through. it is only a two-year extension, and there are some significant changes that happened as a result. i promise you a written and more detailed, more organized presentation for the board meeting this month, but i wanted to highlight at least that there are some fairly significant areas of change. the bill has been funded at levels very similar -- overall levels verisimilar to 2012, and it only covers 2013 and 2014 federal fiscal years. so we are talking about a highway funding level close to

the $40 billion range, and a transit funding level in the $8 billion or $9 billion a year range. what is different is that some programs have been consolidated. notably, there is a new alternatives program, which brings together what used to be transportation enhancements as well as safe routes to schools, regulation of trails, but facilities, and other things like turning lanes, boulevards, retrofits, and so on. these changes have not sat well with the advocacy community, because they do represent, by lumping them all together, a fairly significant decrease in the total funding available for

these programs. the funding is we would estimate about 30% lower. that is not good news for san francisco, which has always competed very well, particularly in terms of discretionary programs. furthermore, the funds for this new category are now divided 50/50 between a path that goes to mr. perot -- metropolitan planning organization, and the other half goes to the state dot, so the state can opt out of using that money for this purpose and pour it into road construction or maintenance or anything like that, so we will have an advocacy challenge their at the state level present -- preventing the state from opting out because it would be a further hit to the amount of money that is available. at the regional level, i am trust and we will compete very well as usual.

there's also a fair bit of reform intended to streamline and reduce the amount of time it takes for projects to clear federal environmental regulations. among those things, the bill has expanded fairly significantly the amount of delegation that the federal government can do to states. there really is kind of a pilot program with the federal government delegates on the state to be the executives, and we're talking now about including a rail, transit, and multiple projects among the projects for which the state can accept delegation. that should be interesting in terms of streamlining things. and then there is another thing that is fairly significant, which is there is a categorical exclusion now for projects that are happening within an existing operating right of way.

and then projects that receive less than $5 million in federal funds and where federal funds are less than 15% of total cost are also categorical exclusion. i am not terribly concerned about any weakening of the federal environmental protection statutes because we have such a strong environmental protection law in california, but there's something to be said for what happens for states that do not have the general protection. the other area where there are very major changes this year -- this is the infrastructure fund that is facilitating the financing of projects like transbay -- the program has grown enormously at something like 400%. from the $120 million we had in 2012, we are jumping to $750 million, and there is a pretty clear recognition in that context of the importance of

bringing in the private sector. several provisions that make it easier to deal with public/private partnerships, and also a significant expansion of the ability of the state to add will see any federal aid facility. those are significant highlights. one negative -- the facilities program is being funded at less than half the size it has now. that will be an issue for us. and the new starts program is also being streamlined, and now it includes provisions that emphasize core capacity projects that at least a 10% decrease in capacity. it will be interesting to see how the program is managed. there are several areas where program management is being proposed revisited.

for example, they're no longer will be the program we have today, the guidelines and so on. there will essentially be a rolling application process, and as long as there's money in the bank, projects will have to be considered for funding. there is a relaxation of the financial criteria where they would be subordinate to private debt, which is complete opposite of what we have now. we will have to see whether the program moves forward and whether it becomes a way to streamline the program or whether time goes up in more discretionary positions at the federal level. that is a very quick summary. i would be happy to answer questions, but more likely, i am offering new -- promising you a written summary of this for a board meeting. commissioner wiener: thank you. colleagues, any questions? any public comment for the

addendum? seeing none, public comment is closed. we will move on to item three. excuse me, four. >> item four, recommend authorizing the executive director to execute a memorandum of agreement with the treasure island development authority in an amount not to exceed $150,000 for the fiscal year 2012/2013 operating budget and work plan to implement the treasure island transportation program and authorizing the executive director to negotiate the agreement terms and conditions. >> we are seeking the authority to execute an agreement with the treasure island development authority to implement the treasure island transportation plan. the 2008 california state assembly bill 981 authorized the board of supervisors to designate an agency to act as the transportation management agency for treasure in and -- treasure island and to be responsible for implementing the

very innovative transportation plan for the island, which centers on using fees generated on the island to deliver the multi modal transportation system to and from the island. in 2008 of last year, the tida board and authority board recommended that the board of supervisors designate the transportation authority as the treasure island mobility transportation agency. in december last year, the board executed an agreement to carry out pre-implementation activities, leading up to the designation of an agency as the tima as well as fund raising and other pre-implementation activities. this agreement would extend or renew our agreement for fiscal year 2012-2013, including the scope of work that would initiate the conceptual design and preliminary engineering, and

includes a budget which is funded by contributions from tida, which provides a local match to priority development grant, which provides the bulk of the funding for the work, and we were the top-ranked program. i am happy to answer any questions. commissioner wiener: thank you. are there any questions, colleagues? comments? seeing none, is there any public comment? seeing none, public comment is closed. is there a motion to for this? colleagues, can we do that without objection? that will be the order. next item. >> 5, introduction of new items. this is an informational item. commissioner wiener: any introductions? seeing none, public comment? public comment is closed. next item. >> item 6, public comment.

commissioner wiener: any general public comment? seeing none, public comment is closed. next item. >> item 7, adjournment. commissioner wiener: we are adjourned.

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