The state's $20 billion pot of transportation bond money, approved by the voters in November, will go first and foremost to the counties that tax themselves to help solve traffic congestion, state officials said at a workshop in Santa Barbara Friday.

"If you have nothing to come to the table with, that's what you're going to leave the table with," Janet Dawson, chief consultant to the state Assembly Transportation Committee, told a group of local politicians and department heads at City Hall.

Pedro Nava

The workshop was convened by Assemblyman Pedro Nava, D-Santa Barbara, who chairs the Transportation Committee. While Nava was accompanied Friday by state parks and housing officials, the ins and outs of how to compete for transportation funding against Los Angeles and the Bay Area dominated the discussion.

Renewing Measure D, the half-percent sales tax for transportation in Santa Barbara County, is imperative, or the county will lose $500 million over the next 20 years, Nava said. The measure is set to expire in 2010.

A modified Measure D with a three-quarters percent sales tax failed to win the required two-thirds majority in November 2007, though 55 percent of voters supported it. There is talk now of placing another proposal on the November 2008 ballot.

Without a sales tax in place, the county could have a harder time securing a share of the $20 billion that the state disburses in competitive grants, officials said.

On April 19, the Santa Barbara County Association of Governments will hold a workshop in Santa Maria to discuss Measure D renewal.

"If it dies in 2010, we will suffer," Nava said. "We're going to be back towards the end of the line."

Recognizing that even $20 billion was not going to stretch very far, Dawson said the state is scrutinizing every highway proposal to see how it would improve people's quality of life.

"We want projects that make a difference," Dawson said. "We want to know: Is it going to get parents home to their families sooner?"

Projects that seek to widen freeways along one section without taking care of bottlenecks elsewhere will not go to the top of the list, she said.

"We don't want to build upstream capacity if it is going to choke downstream," Dawson said.

Nava agreed, saying, "We don't want to just pour concrete, because it doesn't get you where you want to go."

Most of the Santa Barbara City Council was present Friday, and several council members pressed Dawson and Nava for information on how to obtain bond money for commuter rail -- a project that the city believes would significantly reduce commuter traffic. An estimated 17,000 people drive to work in Santa Barbara daily from Ventura County, so it's a problem that crosses city lines, the council members said.

No funds were set aside in the transportation bond for commuter rail. But, Councilman Das Williams asked, what about money for sidings so that passenger trains can share the rails with freight trains?

"No local issue affects the lives of as many Santa Barbarans as traffic," he said.

Dawson said that as a former employee of Caltrans, her expertise was in highways and not in alternatives to the car. But she promised to find out whether the bond funds could be used for railroad sidings.

Councilwoman Helen Schneider said, "We're not one of the big metropolises in the state, but we want to get our fair share of the money the voters voted for."