Select Committee Eyes Consensus on Bay Area Transportation Priorities

The Metropolitan Transportation Commission today named 18 people to serve on a select committee established last week by MTC Chair and Napa County Supervisor Alfredo Pedroza at a special meeting of the Commission. Members of the select committee, which will be led by longtime MTC Commissioner Jim Spering of Solano County, are tasked with building regional consensus for state legislation that would authorize Bay Area voters as early as 2026 to consider a transportation revenue measure to preserve and enhance public transit in the region. 

MTC scheduled the June 12 special meeting after the late May announcement by state Senators Scott Wiener of San Francisco and Aisha Wahab of Hayward that they will pause the Connect Bay Area Act (Senate Bill 1031) introduced earlier this year and will introduce new legislation in 2025.  The Commission over the coming months will convene key parties to help inform Sen. Wiener’s and Sen. Wahab’s efforts to reshape and refine the Connect Bay Area Act. Representatives from both senators' staff will serve as ex-officio members of the new select committee, which will hold its first meeting on Monday, June 24. 

“Our Commission is most effective when it’s united,” said MTC Chair and Napa County Supervisor Alfredo Pedroza. “Discussions about Senate Bill 1031 at our May meeting made clear that the legislation as currently written doesn’t have the broad support it needs to be successful. But I know every one of our Commissioners is committed to working with all the members of the Bay Area’s legislative delegation to structure a ballot measure we can all get behind.” 

In addition to Spering, who also served as chair of the Blue Ribbon Transit Recovery Task Force convened by MTC in 2020 to address the myriad challenges facing the Bay Area transit network after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, eight other Commission members will serve on the new select committee:

• David Canepa, San Mateo County Supervisor
• Cindy Chavez, Santa Clara County Supervisor
• Nick Josefowitz, San Francisco Mayor's appointee and MTC Vice Chair
• Matt Mahan, San Jose Mayor
• Nate  Miley, Alameda County Supervisor
• Sue Noack, Pleasant Hill City Council member
• Stephanie Moulton-Peters, Marin County Supervisor
• Alfredo Pedroza, Napa County Supervisor and MTC Chair.

Members of the select committee who are not MTC Commissioners will include:

• John Arantes, Special Districts Industry Chair, Service Employees International Union 
• Alicia John-Baptiste, President and CEO, SPUR
• Manny Leon, Deputy Director, California Alliance for Jobs
• Adina Levin, Advocacy Director, Seamless Bay Area
• James Lindsay, International Vice President, Amalgamated Transit Union
• Ellen Wu, Executive Director, Urban Habitat
• Jim Wunderman, President and CEO, Bay Area Council. 

“The Bay Area’s future depends on robust and reliable transit,” noted MTC Vice Chair Nick Josefowitz, who serves as the San Francisco mayor’s appointee to the Commission. “That requires robust and reliable funding. It’s a smart investment to spend more time developing a framework for legislation that will help meet the Bay Area’s transit needs.”