As Gov. Jerry Brown pushes an international climate-change agenda, he faces a crucial test at home: ensuring that California’s signature program to tackle global warming survives into the next decade. Brown is fighting for a deal this month to extend the state’s cap-and trade program, which forces power plants, factories and refineries to pay to pollute and is set to expire in 2020. It has not come easily. He needs two-thirds of the Senate and Assembly to approve a complex proposal — one sure to have implications not just for planet Earth but also for Californians’ health and pocketbooks.
Our recent report about BART getting behind a proposed $1 to $3 hike in Bay Area bridge tolls to help pay for hundreds of new rail cars had Steve Jasik of Menlo Park reaching for his calculator — and making a startling discovery.
Three East Bay representatives deserve great credit for trying to restore some fiscal sanity and honesty to BART.
The Bay Area’s critical transit district is being run under a cloud of deceit. District officials last year convinced voters to pass a $3.5 billion bond measure for capital projects. They promised that the district would continue to kick in its fair share, but less than three months after the election they are moving to renege on that.
