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Fresno County's lead transportation agency struggled Thursday night to come up with their first lobbying list of the 2020s.
Fresno County’s attempt to reignite its Washington D.C. lobbying efforts for transportation projects stumbled into chaos late Thursday, with a last-minute list rewrite and Fresno and Clovis abandoning the trip altogether.
The Fresno County Council of Governments (COG), once a regular fly-in to Washington, has had its marque One Voice lobbying trip grounded the last four years. Its first attempt to take flight under the Biden administration raised questions about the region’s united front regarding securing federal dollars.
In their vote on what to prioritize in their first trip of the 2020s, COG’s board struggled to craft a coherent lobbying list. The meeting, punctuated by last-minute withdrawals and city bailouts, exposed deep regional divisions and a lack of clear vision for its transportation future.
The whittled-down lobbying list had so little support Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer had a hard time putting “One Voice” or even Fresno County’s name on it.
“Fresno County is the city of Fresno and Clovis. So that may be a little misleading,” Dyer said. “Call it Rural Voice or something.”
After wavering in informal votes on whether to cancel the trip entirely, COG’s board of rural mayors nearly unanimously agreed to lobby in Washington D.C. in March for a list heavily tilted towards the city of Fresno’s interests.
A lone rural project, a Parlier pedestrian trail, was joined at the last minute by Huron Mayor Rey Leon’s ambitious Cross-Valley light rail.
COG’s rural mayors settled on a list mostly made up of airports, suburban sprawl, and industrial sprawl. New projects include an industrial interchange in south Fresno, a new airport runway in central Fresno, and a road-widening project for luxury homes north of Fresno.
Clovis Mayor Lynne Ashbeck called the list “fairly weak.”
“We don’t have enough of a message,” she said. “I don’t think it’s robust.”
Since the mid-2000s, the Fresno County Council of Governments (COG) has scheduled a One Voice trip every year to go to Washington D.C. to lobby federal lawmakers for their top transportation projects. In the past, a consensus emerged around boosting old-school highway projects: Highway 168 and Veterans Boulevard.
Thursday’s confusion was sparked when Ashbeck yanked her city’s new Kings River water pipeline and a pedestrian bridge at Highway 168 and Dyer nixed an interchange project that would connect new sprawling subdivisions to the city’s core street network.
“We were probably premature on that, quite frankly,” Dyer said about adding a $100+ million interchange at Shaw Avenue and Highway 99 on the lobbying list.
With the county’s two biggest cities bailing on the trip, board chair and Parlier Mayor Alma Beltran was frustrated. “I don’t understand why we didn’t have this conversation in October,” she said.
Kerman Mayor Gary Yep’s suggestion to scrap the trip, arguing that smaller cities wouldn’t have clout without the backing of larger ones, drew ire from Leon, the Huron mayor.
“What are you saying? You’re undermining small communities with that perception,” Leon told Yep.
Leon expressed disappointment that Fresno County has failed to prioritize the cross-valley light rail project.
“Kings County, Tulare County – they’ve been moving quite a bit on trying to make it happen in their respective regions,” he said. “But we haven’t done anything on our end.”
Citing a 400% increase in federal rail funding under Biden, Leon urged the board to seize the opportunity. “This is effectively one that we could identify as an environmental justice project,” he emphasized.
“Let’s at least ramp it up because if the administration is going to be trying to invest $25 billion between now and 2025, then we should take heed here in our region…in the areas where we’ve been deficient.”
The finalized list includes:
- South Fresno industrial interchange ($10 million)
- Millerton Road widening projects ($35 million)
- A new Fresno air terminal runway ($75 million)
- A new Fresno air traffic control tower ($10 million)
- Parlier pedestrian trail ($5 million)
- Cross-Valley light rail
- Continued support for HSR
- A new Central Valley transportation training facility for future transportation workers
