State lawmaker seeks audit of Bay Area bridge toll spending

An influential state senator in the South Bay wants an auditor to dig into the finances of a Bay Area commission that’s facing scrutiny for its manner of spending billions of dollars in tolls across seven bridges.

State Sen. Dave Cortese, a Santa Clara County Democrat, sent a letter to the state Legislature’s Joint Committee on Legislative Audit on Thursday that asks lawmakers to approve an audit of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.

The government body receives about $700 million each year in tolls that residents pay to cross bridges, including the Bay Bridge and Richmond Bridge, and has broad power to spend that money — for example, on bridge painting and maintenance or regional transit projects.

“It’s a lot of money,” Cortese said. “We’re talking about tens of billions of dollars.”

As the commission continues to raise tolls and considers asking voters to sign off on a sales tax increase, some officials are asking questions about the commission’s use of that revenue, citing columns by Bay Area News Group that blast the commission for operating a “slush fund.”

“An independent review would help provide clarity on the financial management of these funds and foster confidence in the ongoing toll increases,” Cortese’s letter says.

If the legislative committee approves the request, an audit could be complete by the end of 2025, the senator said.

“We look forward to working with the state auditor to answer the questions raised in Senator Cortese’s request,” said John Goodwin, a spokesperson for the transportation commission.

In particular, the commission is facing questions for its accounting practice of pooling together funds from several measures approved since 1988 by Bay Area voters.

Those measures, which raised tolls, were supposed to fund specific kinds of projects.

For instance: voters passed Regional Measure 2 in 2004, which raised the toll price on bridges by $1 to pay for pedestrian, cycling and traffic projects on and around the bridges. However, commission leaders have been unable to say how much money was raised from the measure, or other pots of money, and what exactly the various tolls are paying for.

In a December meeting of the Bay Area Toll Authority, which votes on toll increases, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan asked commission officials how much money was raised by Regional Measure 2. Andrew Fremier, the commission’s executive director, said commission staff were working on that.

Meanwhile, a column by this news organization said the commission spent $73 million approved by voters in 2018 for public transit and freeway improvement projects to instead pay for maintaining the bridges. At the December meeting, Fremier also said that income raised from the toll increase can legally be used for bridge maintenance that isn’t stated explicitly in project details.

When asked for information about accounting, the commission’s leaders “tend to be somewhere between clamming up and just not being able to produce information,” Cortese said.

“That’s usually kind of a red flag to get the auditor in … and perhaps take a deeper dive,” the senator said.

The San Jose Democrat acknowledged there’s some “tension” around the commission’s spending, but he emphasized that an audit “isn’t an indictment.”

Specifically, the request for an audit asks for the details of each program’s funding and spending, as well as annual bond payments and liabilities.

It comes as Bay Area drivers will see toll increases each year for the next five years.

In December, the Bay Area Toll Authority voted to raise tolls annually from 2026 through 2030 on seven bridges: the Antioch, Benicia-Martinez, Carquinez, Dumbarton, Richmond-San Rafael, San Mateo-Hayward or San Francisco-Oakland Bay bridges. The Golden Gate Bridge, connecting San Francisco and Marin County, operates its own toll schedule.

Bridge tolls for double-axle vehicles will increase by 50 cents annually from 2026 to 2030. That means drivers of two-axle vehicles or motorcycles in 2030 will have to pay $10.50 for a trip across the bridges.

Commission leaders said the toll increases were needed to pay for bridge maintenance, paint and improvements in particular. Traffic across the bridges — and the tolls that come with it — never fully recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Trips across the bridges declined by about 10% after the COVID-19 pandemic, driving revenue declines, Goodwin said. That has forced the commission to take on $560 million in debt for bridge rehabilitation projects since 2021.