Tackling California’s Transportation Funding Needs

In 2017 the California State Legislature passed and Governor Brown signed into law a landmark transportation funding package, the most significant investment in state and local transportation infrastructure in California’s history. Senate Bill 1 (Beall and Frazier) provides more than $5 billion annually to invest in road safety improvements, filling potholes, repairing local streets, freeways, tunnels, bridges and modernizing public transportation.

And our firm delivered for its various transportation clients.

For more than two years, the SYASL advocacy team met with key members of the Legislature, legislative leaders and the Governor’s Administration to emphasize the importance of including significant and sustained new investments in city streets, county roads, goods movement and freight projects, and public transit services and projects, in the transportation funding package.

As part of this process, our advocates developed and distributed numerous transportation funding requests tailored to each client’s locale, needs and specific circumstances, and, we mobilized agency executives, local elected officials, and local advocates and other stakeholders, to testify in favor of new transportation funding at committee hearings and to continually educate the clients’ legislative delegations as to the local needs.

In 2017, as the transportation funding package was being finalized, our advocacy team participated in daily meetings with legislators, expressing the positive impact of SB 1 on their districts.

And, SYASL coordinated with the Governor’s Administration and legislative leaders to secure the largest new state investment in transportation infrastructure in more than 40 years.