LA Chamber Stuck on the 405

An interesting take from the LA Chamber on the 405 fiasco:

Imagine your family needed to make an important purchase, and you had a time-sensitive discount coupon that would save you a substantial amount of money. Everyone in the family knew the purchase needed to be made, but one member of the family decided to block the purchase for selfish reasons. What would you do under these circumstances? Well, it just happened on an issue important to the L.A. region, as our latest legislative session ended on an especially sour note. Our own employees – people we pay to work for the state – threatened a lawsuit to prevent the contracting out of engineering for the greatly needed I-405 carpool lane, resulting in failure of legislation to get the project going. This failure has not only increased the cost of the project by losing out on $130 million of federal funds, but also has probably delayed the project, condemning L.A. drivers to more time sitting uselessly on the highway. That’s a shame. It should never have happened. Public projects should not be held hostage or delayed due to a lack of manpower. The voters said so when we approved Proposition 35, which allows Caltrans to “contract out” engineering services on high-priority projects if Caltrans’ own staff could not get the job done in a timely manner. Somebody in Sacramento needs to ask the question: who do the legislators really represent — the voters in their districts, or their special-interest constituents?

For their answer, click here