Gold Line funding doubled: SGV to be appeased?

MTA bit the bullet with the latest language for its sales tax ordinance and bumped the Gold Line funding up to $735 million. If the sales tax ordinance passes the MTA board. And through the state legislature. And through the voters.

Also, while the MTA chief Roger Snoble told me that the $735 million will be guaranteed by the county ordinance, right now there is a minimum number listed by the project at $328 million, suggesting that the project could receive somewhere between the two numbers. We'll be watching real carefully as the wording of the ordinance is released sometime in the next week. And so will the SGV politicians (so they tell me).

Meanwhile, there is still potential for state legislators from somewhere in Los Angeles County monkeying around with the project list in the required state bill to try and get more funding for their area projects.

That, says Snoble, would torpedo the whole bill from the county- they have made their project list and they don't want it messed with. Of course, first their own board members have to approve it.

Because of the timing of the county and state meetings on the bill, July 24 and August 4, respectively, the county is in the awkward position of having to approve the measure without knowing what the state might do to it. And if they don't like what it does they have only a few days to reconvene and pull back the ordinance (the county deadline to get the thing on the ballot is August 8, with an emergency last day of August 13 to repeal any ordinance submitted to the county).

If the board missed that deadline the county would be in the even more awkward position of either trying to get the legal standing of the measure killed through their lawyers, or by actually campaigning against the measure they pushed for in first place.

More in tomorrow's paper.

UPDATE: MTA board member and county supervisor Mike Antonovich is not happy with the San Gabriel Valley's share in the new plan, even though it is improved. Antonovich's staff says he will be proposing amendments at the next meeting that will lock in percentages of sales tax funding to equal the number of people in each region. The current MTA plan allocates 16.4 percent of the sales tax to the San Gabriel Valley, which has 18.3 percent of the county's population. Antonovich has other objections as well. This thing still has a long way to go.