San Diego gas prices among the highest in the U.S.

“San Diego gas prices are among the highest in the U.S.” That was the front-page headline in Monday’s U-T San Diego.

When gas prices are high, more people, particularly seniors, students, others on fixed incomes, and people who drive older cars, turn to public transportation for a reliable, affordable way to get to work, school and around town.  Yet earlier this month, House Republicans, with incumbent Congressman Brian Bilbray in lock step, proposed a highway bill that ends three decades of support for public transportation.

It guts funds for bike lanes and sidewalks, and ends the critically important “Safe Routes to School” program which helps neighborhoods pay for infrastructure improvements that keep kids from getting hurt or killed while walking and bicycling to and from school every day.

House Republicans are trying to de-fund the Safe Routes to School Program.

So less money for public transit and more money for freeways when gas prices are skyrocketing – this makes no sense. And it doesn’t get us any closer to a practical and sustainable national energy policy that reduces our nation’s dependence on fossil fuels and foreign oil.

As a member of Congress, I will make development of a sustainable energy policy a priority.

We must work toward a long-term energy policy that: 1) creates new American jobs; 2) emphasizes greater energy independence; 3) invests in the development of alternative fuels; 4) promotes clean energy technology like wind and solar; 5) ensures greater national security; and 6) provides automakers with incentives for producing fuel-efficient vehicles.

We also need to do a better job of building housing and employment centers nearer to one another to reduce commutes. And we need to invest in making all our communities more pedestrian- and bicycle- friendly.

There are also things we can and should be doing now.

For starters, Congress can act now to stop price-gouging at the pump by holding Wall Street commodities traders and speculators more accountable. Many experts agree that speculation in energy markets drives up the price of oil, which raises the price of gas for consumers. Last year, House Democrats tried to increase funding for the agency in charge of policing price manipulation in oil markets. But Republicans, Bilbray included, voted to slash these funds by almost half.

We’ve also got to stop subsidizing oil companies.

Last year, the five largest oil companies posted record profits of $137 billion. That’s a 75% increase over 2010. Yet, House Republicans, Bilbray included, continue to support enormous tax breaks, deregulation, and subsidies for them, while taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from them.

Brian Bilbray alone has taken almost $190,000 from the oil and gas industry. Are the votes and the contributions connected?  The voters are smart and they’ll decide for themselves.

Scott leading planning professionals on a tour of Bird Rock in La Jolla, one of America's "Most Re-Made Neighborhoods"

Last week I got to lead groups of planning professionals in town for a national smart-growth conference on walking tours of the Bird Rock neighborhood in La Jolla.  Bird Rock is now considered a model for how cities can re-make older, urban neighborhoods and turn them into thriving, walkable places where small businesses can flourish. In fact, the conference program book posed the question, “Could Bird Rock be America’s Most Remade Street?”

I wrote about Bird Rock in this blog last fall, about how, as a City Councilman, I worked with residents and business owners who created a new vision for what was then a dreary corridor of empty storefronts that drivers treated as a thoroughfare.  A portion of this $5.6 million project was funded with federal transportation funds aimed at building pedestrian and bike-friendly communities.

Last week, the House Transportation Committee, supported by the Republican leadership, proposed to gut the alternative transportation fund, jeopardizing not just funds for neighborhood projects such as these, but also for all forms of public transportation — and for projects that support alternative transportation like biking and walking — that many Americans count on to get to work and school.  This assault on transit couldn’t come at a worse time. When the economy is struggling and gas prices are high, people need all types of affordable and reliable transportation.

Roundabouts made Bird Rock more pedestrian friendly

The bill also takes away the small portion of Federal Transportation funding sent aside for bike paths, to make communities friendlier for pedestrians, and to create safe passage ways for kids to walk to school. Yet, it leaves completely intact funds for more monstrous highway projects that will lead to more cars on the road, more air pollution, and more dependence on fossil fuels. It’s just bad policy all the way around; it’s bad for our children, our neighborhoods, for small businesses that rely on foot traffic to succeed, and it’s bad for our environment.

This outrageous move essentially rolls back 30 years of federal transportation policy that sets aside a small share of gas tax revenues to fund transit. If approved, long-term stability for public transportation projects, which often take years to build, will be gone. States, cities, communities and their transit systems could lose billions.

For more information about this terrible proposal, go to this link http://t4america.org/blog/ and let your representatives know that you support neighborhoods, walkable communities, bike paths and dedicated funding for affordable mass transit.

On Monday, MLK day, I wrote about my dad on my Facebook Wall.

My dad, Harvey Peters, my grandparents and Martin Luther, King. Sr.

Hanging on my office wall is this picture of him in his vestments, with my grandparents, and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Sr. Harvey Peters was a Lutheran minister who fought housing discrimination in the Detroit suburbs where I grew up. I said in my post “I am grateful to him, and my mom, for the values they instilled in me and my sisters.” I truly am.

The post received a lot of Likes!  (Okay, four were from my mom and three sisters.)  But that day many people wanted to know more about him.  I am honored to tell you more about Harvey.

In the late 1960s, my dad was the President of a group of interfaith clergy that worked on matters of common concern; one was housing discrimination.

They shared stories and suspicions of segregation, and brought to light that many real estate contracts contained “covenants” precluding home sales in certain neighborhoods to non-whites. They gathered stories from Jewish people and blacks who were steered away from neighborhoods like Southfield and nearby Lathrup, both all-white Detroit suburbs.  He and a woman working with their group once actually posed as a Jewish couple and met with a realtor who only agreed to show them homes in “predetermined” neighborhoods.  They documented and publicized these examples and took action.

First, they reminded their congregations that discrimination was contrary to their fundamental religious beliefs, and urged them to stand up against injustice.  They convinced schools to allow them to provide a curriculum to teachers so they could address prejudice in the classroom. They circulated petitions to urge a stop to housing discrimination, and they proposed an Open Housing Ordinance which was eventually adopted.

Dad brought together a group of realtors and appealed to them as business people and Christians to stop these discriminatory practices and to welcome all newcomers to our community. One realtor was brave enough to stand with him and ask others to join them; he was subsequently fired for his stance.

He met an African American couple who had purchased a home being built in well-to-do Southfield. The man was an assistant school principal and a former Marine who had served our country honorably. His wife was also well educated. They were harassed and warned not to move to the neighborhood.  The men building their home walked off the job when they learned it would be owned by blacks, and the builder asked them, in front of my dad, how much it would take to buy them out and get them to stay away. The husband replied, “We’ll take one million dollars: $50,000 for what we paid and the rest for the insult to our family and our citizenship.”  My dad, the clergy association, and other supporters, including the local police chief, stood with them. By the way, Southfield has come a long way. The city’s current Mayor is an African American woman!

As a result of his involvement in these highly charged issues, dad made many friends, and also some enemies.

One year, shortly before Easter, the phone began ringing at exactly 5:00 a.m. for several days in a row, but there was only silence on the other end when answered. Then, he began finding notes in our mailbox which read:  “You better watch out for yourself and your family. You’re a troublemaker and we know where your children walk to school.”

On the advice of his police chief friend, he decided to get us all out of town for awhile. So on that early morning, we got in the car and I went on my first trip to Washington, DC.

In 1968, after Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated, my dad attended a Lutheran Convention in Atlanta, where he met Martin Luther King, Sr. at the Baptist church where King was the pastor. Rev. King asked my dad where he was from, and then asked if he could preach at my dad’s church.

Dad says “Daddy King” was powerful, breathtaking, inspiring, and humbling. Only five months earlier his son was slain, yet, he was preaching a message of reconciliation and hope to a white congregation in the Detroit suburbs. After that, my dad kept up a relationship with him and his sisters, and with their Baptist Church in Detroit.

In my campaign for Congress I’ve talked a lot about problem solving, and my ability to bring people together to accomplish something for the common good.  Dad says it’s in my DNA.

I’m really lucky to have such a remarkable dad, and an equally remarkable mom.  Thanks to you both for letting me tell this story.