Public Interest Briefs

Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, City Councilman Edmund Edelman, the City of Riverside and Center attorneys made legal history last month, as they joined forces to seek an immediate funding mechanism for a mass rapid transit system in Los Angeles.

The Center lawsuit, filed in the State Supreme Court on July 23, asks the Court to order officials who govern the State Highway Trust FUnd to allow cities and counties to spend their share of the Fund on rapid transit systems. The suit also asks that the state be permitted to build rapid transit systems.

Currently, state officials limit the expenditure of the $1.4 billion Fund (composed of highway user and gasoline taxes) to construction and maintenance of streets, roads and freeways. The spending limitation is based on official interpretation of Article 26 of the State Constitution, which controls gas tax fund expenditures. The Article states that gas taxes may only be spent for “highway purposes.”

What is a Highway?

If the suit is successful, then the term “highway purpose” will be legally expanded to include mass rapid transit systems.

In undertaking the suit, the Center and the plaintiffs believe the Court might be inclined to take a broader view of the term “highway” than state officials have taken in the past. Their optimism is based on case precedent.

In 1935, for instance, the California Supreme Court ruled that “highway” was a generic term for any public way or thoroughfare. The City of Long Beach was permitted by the Court to use gas tax funds to repair canals.

In 1941, following the same interpretation, the State Supreme Court permitted the City and County of San Francisco to use gas tax funds to hire a consultant to study transit systems.

Center attorneys became involved in the case when Councilman Edelman sought their services. Both Councilman Edelman and the Center staff earlier had been involved in in depth studies of the Trust Fund and its possible application to rapid transit uses. The City of Riverside was eager, as well, to try and find a solution to the smog that particularly plagues the desert area. Mayor Bradley was asked by Councilman Edelman to joint the suit, because of the suit’s importance–especially to the traffic and smog-clogged Los Angeles metropolitan area. Mayor Bradley, who serves as lead plaintiff, has long stressed his dedication to finding a cure for the transportation inefficiencies that distinguish Los Angeles from other large cities.

In setting down the legal argument, Center attorneys stated that the state’s limitation of the Trust Fund–solely to road uses–has “retarded the development of mass rapid transit and other alternative transportation systems designed to alleviate the critical problems of air pollution, traffic congestions and urban sprawl.”

The attorneys argued that a decision on the suit is imperative, in light of critical energy shortage and the need for Los Angeles to meet rigid federal clean air standards by 1977.

Respondents in the suit, which gained wide public attention, are the California Highway Commission, the California State Legislature, the California department of transportation, and its director, James Moe, the California State Transportation Board and the California State Controller Houston I. Flournoy.

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