Last year so many people, schools, organizations and local governments supported Asm. Chris Holden's student transit pass bill that one document listed more than 400. This year please add your logo to our sign-on letter of support (link is below) for a statewide program for discounted transit passes for low-income students at middle-schools, high schools, public colleges and universities.
Asm. Holden, our longtime student transit pass champion, has asked Assembly Budget Chair Phil Ting to adopt budget language providing $50 million from the FY 2018-2019 budget to fund the program described in last year’s AB 17 (read the bill language HERE). The budget talks are beginning now, in advance of the “May revise” that alters the Governor’s budget based on the most recent economic forecasts. The ask will be made in Assembly Budget Subcommittee 3 chaired by Asm. Richard Bloom—a good friend to students and to transit passes!—next Wednesday, May 2. Come on by to Room 447 in the State Capitol at 9:30 a.m.! (Best to get us your logo by COB Friday if you can.)
We described this “budget play” in earlier emails: Holden’s 2018 student pass bill, AB 2304, is being held on suspense in Assembly Appropriations and will hopefully secure funding for a study by the UC-Davis Institute of Transportation Studies. This bill was in response to the Governor’s AB 17 veto message—which stated the Governor wanted “a fuller discussion of how local transit discount programs work and how any new ones should be paid for.”
The budget play is one way to fund a statewide transit pass program next year without waiting for the study to be completed. This is our third attempt to win funding, but the bill has won such broad and bipartisan support, and we’re obviously so determined, that we believe this is a path that could get us all the way to victory this year!
Download the sign-on letter HERE and if you want to sign on send us your organization's logo, or customize the letter to make it your own and email it to [email protected] in Holden’s office. We'll let you know what happens!