When the Metropolitan Transportation Commission decided last month to permanently increase Bay Area bridge tolls by one other $2.50, it was operating blindly, lacking basic financial data to justify the rise.
That's since the commission, which manages the region's transportation and transit funding, puts together the bridge toll funds. For example, money that voters approved for transit and other transportation projects will as a substitute be used for bridge maintenance.
The mixing effectively creates an enormous slush fund, making it inconceivable to find out how much money the authority has now and can need in the longer term to cover the prices of maintaining and rehabilitating the bridge, the stated reason for the toll increases.
Instead of requiring an accounting that will be useful in evaluating the toll increase, the commissioners uncritically agreed with their staff's advice.
As a result, the worth for cars to pass on the Bay Area's seven state toll bridges will increase by 50 cents annually from 2026 to 2030, bringing the full price to $10.50.
Since there isn’t a indication that the agency's staff plans to supply meaningful accounting to the Commission or the general public, it’s time for lawmakers to step in.
Sen. Dave Cortese, D-San Jose, says he’s considering a state audit of MTC's funds. Cortese is chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee and a member of the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, which assigns duties to the state auditor.
A member of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, Cortese served as chairman of the MTC and due to this fact knows the agency well.
“You’re asking the entire Bay Area to trust you with billions of dollars,” Cortese says. “You have to be able to prove that your house is in order.”
Exactly. A review of MTC cannot come soon enough.
Evasive answers
MTC's responsibilities include distributing local, state and federal transportation funds for the region, funding maintenance of the Bay Area's state toll bridges, and collecting toll revenue under three voter-approved ballot measures and three separate seismic safety upgrades.
The 18 voting commissionersThose indirectly elected to the MTC are just about all elected Bay Area county executives, mayors or city council members. Therefore, their primary focus is on their local jobs.
Before last month's vote on the toll increase, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, Alameda Mayor Marilyn Ezzy Ashcraft and Pleasant Hill Mayor Sue Noack were the one commissioners who took serious issue with the agency's handling concerned about their funds. They have been met with evasive answers from agency officials who consider they’re legally entitled to mix the varied components of the bridge toll funds.
The source of the present $8 automobile toll is split into 4 different programs:
The first dollar approved by voters in Regional Measure 1 in 1988 was for the operation, maintenance and substitute of the bridges, in addition to improvements to BART, Caltrain and San Francisco Muni.
An additional $3 — approved in $1 increments by the Legislature in 1997 and 2007 and by the MTC in 2010 — was intended to assist cover the associated fee of seismic retrofitting, including replacing the Bay Bridge's eastern span.
In 2004, voters approved Regional Measure 2, a $1 toll increase, and in 2018, Regional Measure 3, one other $3 toll, phased in with $1 increases starting in 2019. was introduced in 2022 and 2025.
RM2 and RM3 money should help fund public transit operations in addition to highway, transit, bicycle and pedestrian projects, including BART's seismic retrofit, recent rail cars and expansion to Warm Springs Station and San Jose; the fourth tube of the Caldecott Tunnel; and the eBART rail extension in eastern Contra Costa County.
Unclear accounting
There isn’t any expiration date for every toll component, although most of the projects they finance have limited costs. Thus, every measure should produce surplus funds at a certain time limit. But when and to what extent these funds will probably be available stays a mystery resulting from the unclear accounting of the Commission staff.
MTC officials argue that they’re legally free to make use of the surplus funds to take care of the bridge. If that’s true, does the agency need one other everlasting $2.50 toll for a similar purpose?
This can’t be determined because MTC treats program revenues as one giant pool of cash and has not prepared accounting records that separate the revenues and expenses of every program. They have even borrowed money through bond issues without assigning the liabilities to a particular program.
The public deserves transparency. And that’s clearly not coming from the Commission. That's why a state exam is so necessary.
What is required is an independent audit that programmatically disentangles past and future bridge toll revenues and liabilities. It should show what the cash has been and will probably be spent on. And it should clearly discover the bond revenues and payments attributable to every program.
Only then will we all know whether the bridge toll increase decided last month was justified and the way long it should last.
Originally published:
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