Supervisor withdraws motion to move transportation design oversight to Land Use committee after lengthy debate

On Jan. 6, Supervisor Croney moved to amend the board's rules of order to transfer jurisdiction for project scope, strategy, design endorsements and work plans for multimodal transportation projects from the Finance Committee to the Transportation and Land Use Committee. Proponents argued T&L could perform deeper strategic and safety reviews; opponents warned the transfer would create two committees issuing competing directions and complicate staff implementation.

Supervisor Croney said the move would let the transportation committee "really dive deeper and do an analysis, and look at the strategy and planning" for countywide projects. County Administrator Hemstreet and other staff advised the board to designate one committee to avoid conflicting instructions to staff. "The only thing I would ask is that definitely the items in the motion are implementation level elements and that the board just make a decision as to which committee it should go to. And, and it only goes to that one committee," Hemstreet said.

Several supervisors said they liked the concept of more strategic review but were concerned that implementation and funding could not be cleanly separated. After extended debate the mover agreed to withdraw the motion and to meet with the chair and committee chairs to craft a collaborative approach and bring refined language back later.

Next step: supervisors agreed to caucus with staff and committee chairs to develop clearer referral language rather than sending implementation items simultaneously to multiple committees.