As part of a budget presentation last week, BART finance official Pamela Herhold said the cuts in Newsom’s proposal could involve funds that the agency is counting on to balance its budget in the coming year.
BART had been planning to use $350 million of the capital funding that’s now at risk for its core-capacity project. That’s a program that’s been years in the making to modernize its train-control system and significantly increase the frequency of trains. An additional $375 million that could now disappear had been committed to the BART-VTA extension through downtown San José.
“So, a lot is up in the air right now, and we’re actively monitoring the situation,” Herhold said. “It’s concerning, but it’s not a done deal.”
Wiener, serving this session as chair of the Senate Budget Committee, said, “There’s a lot of support for reversing this cut” through negotiations with the governor’s office.
Newsom’s latest budget proposal also ignored an urgent request from Bay Area lawmakers for an additional $2 billion in emergency funding that could be used by transit agencies facing hundreds of millions of dollars in deficits beginning in mid-2026.
Wiener said that the proposal isn’t dead, though getting emergency aid will be a struggle given the state’s need to address crises in health care, housing and homelessness funding.
Newsom’s proposal to cancel transit funding from the cap-and-trade program “makes it more challenging, because now you’re digging out of a hole, because that was a cut to existing funds,” Wiener said. “But there is definitely a lot of support in California for making sure that we have strong public transportation systems.”
In response to a request for comment from the governor’s office, California State Transportation Agency spokesperson Kimberly Erickson acknowledged challenges facing transit and said the administration is committed to negotiations with the Legislature.
“Transit ridership in California has been declining for many years, and the lingering impacts of COVID-19 have only heightened this challenge,” Erickson said in an emailed statement. “Despite substantial investments, increasing ridership remains the most pressing challenge for many transit agencies across the state.”
She said the goal of negotiations over cap-and-trade resources “is to align limited funding with shared statewide priorities while considering regional differences in need and fiscal capacity.”
The Legislature faces a June 15 deadline to approve a balanced budget.
