Breaking: California Transportation Official Demoted for Opposing Highway Expansion
Traffic on I-80 traveling toward Sacramento, CA. (Source: Wikimedia Commons/Pacific Southwest Region USFWS.)
Jeanie Ward-Waller, former deputy director of planning and modal programs for the California Department of Transportation, was allegedly terminated after voicing opposition to two Highway 80 construction projects—which she claims will widen the highway and misappropriate funds earmarked for road maintenance.
Freeway fighters, who are often ordinary citizens who coalesce to combat an impending highway expansion, have a hard time finding allies in the institutions that advance these projects. Advocates in California, however, may have found a friend in the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans)—that is, until she was allegedly terminated for opposing two of the state’s forthcoming highway construction projects.
Caltrans manages the state’s highway system and the financing available for most transportation projects, including rail, bicycle, and pedestrian infrastructure. Until recently, Jeanie Ward-Waller was the agency’s deputy director of planning and modal programs, and oversaw much of its long-range planning and research.
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According to Politico, which first received the news, just weeks prior to her termination, Ward-Waller voiced opposition to two construction projects on Highway 80 (also known as the Yolo Causeway) which runs between Davis and Sacramento. She claims that Caltrans’ state and federal permits inaccurately framed the scope and environmental impacts of the Sacramento-area project.
Ward-Waller insists that the region’s Pavement Rehabilitation Project will actually widen the road to accommodate new lanes, which in addition to misrepresenting the project’s scope, misappropriates funds. State funds earmarked for maintenance are instead funding an expansion, she claims. She also believes the agency was able to bypass the scrutiny of the California Environmental Quality Act and the National Environmental Policy Act by packaging what she feels is a single project into two separate endeavors.
“My job at Caltrans headquarters was really to help move us in a direction where we’re not widening highways so much anymore,” Ward-Waller told Politico. “We care about climate, we care about equity, so we’re trying to move towards more multimodal options and do less widening.”
Ward-Waller was offered the option to either return to position prior to being deputy director or to enter a new role entirely. In her whistleblower complaint, she identified additional transportation projects that may be putting maintenance funding toward expansions: “This was somewhat their way of doing business.”
Asia (pronounced “ah-sha”) Mieleszko serves as a Staff Writer for Strong Towns. A dilettante urbanist since adolescence, she's excited to convert a lifetime of ad-hoc volunteerism into a career. Her unconventional background includes directing a Ukrainian folk choir, pioneering synaesthetic performances, photographing festivals, designing websites, teaching, and ghostwriting. She can be found wherever Wi-Fi is reliable, typically along Amtrak's Northeast Corridor.