The Senate Transportation and Housing committee has approved Senate President Pro-Tem Don Perata’s seven-point-seven billion dollar transportation bond measure.  Perata says the money generated would provide funding for traffic congestion relief and local street improvements, as well as money to complete seismic retrofit work on bridges, including the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. 

Perata says something must be done to fix crumbling infrastructure and it’s appropriate to use bond money to do so.

 “This is like a mortgage on a home, you make a major purchase and you finance it over a period of time.  It is the historical, acceptable way to provide for investment in the public sector.”

Governor Schwarzenegger’s spokeswoman Margita Thompson says the plan is motivated by an intention to have the rest of the state pay for cost overruns on the Bay Bridge and that the Governor would veto the measure if it reaches his desk.