Stimulus funds cut for BART extension
Funding for a Silicon Valley BART extension in a federal coronavirus stimulus bill that drew the scorn of Republican lawmakers has been removed from the package, a spokesperson for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Tuesday.
The Senate parliamentarian, the official adviser to the legislative body, ruled that the extension doesn’t meet rule requirements for being included in the bill because it’s part of a pilot project, spokesperson Drew Hammill said in a statement.
The $1.9 trillion coronavirus package that the House passed last week contained $30 billion for public transit systems whose budgets have been decimated by the pandemic. That included $1.4 billion for
dozens of capital projects for transit systems nationwide, of which $140 million would have gone to the envisioned BART extension into downtown San Jose and Santa Clara. The $6.9 billion Silicon Valley line would stretch BART 6 miles from its current terminus in San Jose’s Berryessa neighborhood, with construction starting next year.
“Of course it’s disappointing,” said Bernice Alaniz, director of external affairs for the BART Silicon Valley program for the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority, which is building the project. She said the expansion is part of an expedited project delivery pilot program that receives 25% of its funds from the federal government and 75% from local sources.
“Of course COVID has put a strain on the local funds, and this was supposed to alleviate that,” Alaniz said. She added the project has significant economic benefits, including 75,000 direct and indirect jobs.
The project became a punching bag for Republicans opposing the stimulus bill, arguing that the funding allocation favored Democrats. Republican lawmakers dubbed the BART extension “Nancy Pelosi’s Silicon Valley subway,” even though the project is 50 miles south of her San Francisco district.
“This project is not receiving special funding, it is simply being funded like all the other major transit capital improvement projects in the country,” Hammill said. Now that it has been removed, he said, “it is unclear how Republicans will justify their opposition to the American Rescue Plan, which has strong bipartisan support among the public.”
The House version of the stimulus bill also included money to expand the Transbay Tube’s capacity for BART trains, the conversion of Caltrain to electric power and Muni’s delayed Central Subway to Chinatown. BART spokeswoman Alicia Trost said Tuesday the Transbay Tube project was still scheduled to get funding.
Republicans had latched on to the money for the Silicon Valley extension as evidence that the stimulus was filled with pork unrelated to the pandemic.
House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield used a procedural maneuver when the House passed the overall stimulus bill to propose redirecting BART extension funds to children’s mental health programs. Democrats rejected the change, which also would have delayed consideration of the final bill.
In a tweet Tuesday, McCarthy issued a challenge to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York to “do the right thing” and “take Pelosi’s Silicon Valley Subway out of your $1.9 Trillion Dollar bill.”
“Don’t fail us,” he said in the accompanying video message.
McCarthy’s office said he couldn’t immediately respond to a request for comment after Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough ruled the BART Silicon Valley funding couldn’t be included.
Democrats are using a procedural maneuver called reconciliation to enable them to approve the stimulus bill with only a simple majority in the 100member Senate, unlike the usual 60vote threshold to advance legislation. But that tactic requires that everything in the bill fit specific criteria for how it will affect the federal budget, and MacDonough said the BART money didn't meet those rules.
The parliamentarian earlier doomed a key provision of the bill for progressives when she said a proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour likewise violated the reconciliation rules.