At the July Board of Directors meeting, staff presented  information about the  potential impacts of an  SB1 repeal. While plans for allocations and awards made to date have not been discussed at the State level, SBCTA staff is speculating that the impacts would be noticeable.

Reversing the legislation that introduces new transportation dollars to local agencies for local streets and road repair could stall some project delivery as it removes more than $60 million annually for these projects in San Bernardino County. In addition, benefits like the stabilization of programs such as the State Transit Assistance Fund and the State Transportation Improvement Program (STIP) may revert back to conditions prior to SB1. For example, the California Transportation Commission staff has indicated they would likely return to a deprogramming exercise in the 2020 STIP, as has been common in the recent past; couple that with the loss of future formula allocations to SBCTA in the Local Partnership Program and the ripple effect expands.

Recent competitive awards are not expected to be immune to the concerns expressed above. Staff has assigned a medium to high risk to $210 million of the $460 million competitively awarded to San Bernardino County agencies. The balance is in a low risk category, with the majority of this being allocated to the I-10 Corridor Contract 1 Project. The designation of 'low' is because the bulk of the funding for that project is from federal sources that have been combined with SB1 revenues.

Future competitive awards may also feel the effect as SB1 dollars may be slated as matching resources for federal grants. SBCTA staff was contemplating the submittal of a federal Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development (BUILD) application for the widening of a portion of US395 in the High Desert, but it was decided to defer the application as the absence of those matching dollars could affect other priority projects already planned for implementation.