"Much of California’s infrastructure – its highways, water delivery and sewer systems, prisons, schools, and higher education facilities – is nearing the end of its intended life…The tremendous gap between need for new facilities and the resources available demand creative and cost-effective approaches to meet that need. Contracting out for design and engineering services provides just such an opportunity to use the limited resources to efficiently and quickly deliver important infrastructure projects." California Taxpayers’ Association and the California Chamber of Commerce Report: Meeting California’s Infrastructure Challenge: Assuring Cost-Effective and Timely Project Delivery May 1999

"Without a change in contracting out practices, it may be very difficult for Caltrans to meet its ambitious project delivery schedules over the next few years."

Rebecca Long, Senior Fiscal and Policy Analyst
California Legislative Analyst’s Office
Los Angeles Times, July 11, 2000

"The 11,000 unionized California Department of Transportation engineers, architects and surveyors cannot do all the work, and current state law tightly restricts the amount of Caltrans planning that can be contracted out to private firms. They will have to be allocated more of this work if the program [Governor Davis’ traffic relief program] is to go forward without unreasonable delay. There is more than enough work for all, and it would take far too long to hire, train and house additional Caltrans workers."

Los Angeles Times Editorial
July 24, 2000

"If our level of transportation spending and the number of transportation projects envisioned under the governor's plan come to fruition, there's going to be more work in California than every single engineer at Caltrans and every single private sector engineer can handle. There’s plenty of work to go around."

Garry South, Aide to Governor Gray Davis
Los Angeles Times, July 11, 2000

"The ability to contract for architectural and engineering services could also result in construction projects being completed earlier. As noted above, during times of workload growth, the ability to contract for these services could result in projects’ completion earlier than through the hiring and training of new state employees. This, in turn, could have state fiscal impacts – such as savings in construction-related expenses. In these cases, faster project completion would also benefit the public as capital improvements would be in service sooner."

Analysis of Prop. 35 by Legislative Analyst
Official State Voter Pamphlet

"It’s a simple question really: If you want to preserve the Caltrans status quo of delays, vote no. If you want to see the public and private sectors working together to speed up project delivery, save taxpayers $2.5 billion annually and create 40,000 new jobs, vote yes on Prop. 35."

Mike Spence, President
California Taxpayer Protection Committee

"The Legislature’s budget analyst and other authorities, noting that the Department of Transportation already has thousands of engineering vacancies that it cannot fill in a tight labor market, have suggested that if engineering work is left to Caltrans, rather than contracted out, there could be substantial delays in delivering the highway and mass transit projects that the politicians are promising to relieve congestion."

Sacramento Bee
July 21, 2000

"The growth in California’s population has resulted in the demand for more than 90 billion in expenditures for highways, schools and other infrastructure improvement projects. The Fair Competition and Taxpayer Savings Act [Proposition 35] will make it possible to complete these projects in a cost effective way to deliver them safely and on time. By encouraging competition on projects between public and private companies, it motivates all those who compete to work smarter and more efficiently."

Ralph Faravelli, President
Santa Clara County Cities Association

"Prop. 35 doesn’t create any new complicated regulations or delays. On the contrary, it restores the public/private partnerships needed to speed up the delivery of thousands of backlogged public works projects. That’s precisely why hundreds of local governments, schools, transportation agencies, engineers, earthquake safety experts and more than a dozen taxpayer groups urge a ‘yes’ vote on Prop. 35."

Ron Hamburger, President
Structural Engineers Association of California

"A small group of Caltrans bureaucrats – concerned only with their self-interests – filed several lawsuits that essentially banned the state from hiring private architects and engineers. They even terminated 15 existing earthquake retrofit contracts with private engineering firms. Prop. 35 will allow California to once again make use of private sector earthquake experts to ensure the safety of our highways and bridges."

Loring A. Wyllie, Jr., Past President
Earthquake Engineering Research Institute

"The Fair Competition Act -- would provide an opportunity for enhanced project delivery, and is necessary to give the California Department of Transportation, as well as agencies such as ours, maximum flexibility in availing themselves of the appropriate mix of public and private resources to expedite project delivery."

Robert K. McCleary, Executive Director
Contra Costa Transportation Authority

"There is a huge backlog of transportation projects needed to reduce congestion and prepare our highways, bridges and overpasses for the next earthquake. Prop. 35 will allow us to use private experts to get transportation projects completed on time and on budget – and keep taxes down."

Todd Nicholson, President
Californians for Better Transportation

"Caltrans is hardly a model of efficiency – a recent university study shows the agency spends more on administration than on maintenance of our roads and highways. Caltrans has the highest engineering costs of any state in the country. Prop. 35 will allow us to contract out more engineering services and get more projects completed at a greater taxpayer savings."

Larry McCarthy, President
California Taxpayers’ Association

"The City of San Luis Obispo would be deeply impacted if it could not contract out for professional services. First it would require a significant increase in staff. Second it would require the hiring of specialists that may only be needed for one job. This would be costly and very inefficient…The "Fair Competition and Taxpayer Savings Act’ [Prop. 35] is an initiative that, if passed, will definitively allow all government agencies the control and ability to determine if work on design projects should best be handled by their staff, the staff of other public agencies, or by private consulting firms. The initiative is fairly simple and straightforward: choice is the prerogative of the agency."

Mike McCluskey, Director of Public Works
City of San Luis Obispo

"Without access to private sector resources, state, regional, and local infrastructure project schedules would be slowed, and project costs would be higher and quality lower. Prop. 35 could save California taxpayers and consumers $2.5 billion a year and create 40,000 new private sector jobs over the next ten years."

Steven Moss, Economist
Partner, M.Cubed

"State employees (primarily Caltrans engineers) have effectively banned State government from contracting with private engineers and architects. The ban has extended to the Department of General Services and Office of the State Architect, which is mandated to review all school plans prior to start of construction…This initiative is scheduled for the November ballot and would give state and local government the flexibility to contract with qualified private sector engineers and architects in applicable capital development projects."

Dennis Chaconas, Superintendent
Oakland Unified School District

"Prop. 35 would simply restore state and local agencies’ choice to utilize private experts – using the same fair selection process on the books today – to select the most qualified architects or engineers to get these projects designed and built on time and on budget."

Carl Harris, President
Coalition for Project Delivery

"California, which once had the best highway system in the country, now ranks 43rd among states in the condition of its roads…Half of California’s urban highways are congested. The rate of congestion on the state’s highways -- 47 percent – is 65 percent higher than the national average. Four California metropolitan areas are ranked in the top 10 most congested urban areas in the country: Los Angeles, San Francisco/Oakland, San Diego and San Bernardino/Riverside."

Transportation California:
A Non-Profit Coalition Dedicated to Highway Improvement and Safety
Report: California’s Transportation Challenge: Meeting 21st Century Mobility Demands
August, 1999