Councilwoman Anna Hernandez: Capitol light rail extension vote is a broken promise

CAPEX is no more. That’s the light rail extension to the state Capitol. The news comes after the Phoenix City Council voted Wednesday to shelve the long-sought project, caving to pressure from Republican state lawmakers who didn’t want it.

Instead, council members voted to expedite a different extension of the light rail — this one along Indian School Road to the Desert Sky Transit Center in West Phoenix’s Maryvale neighborhood.

It was almost a decade ago that Phoenix voters approved the Capitol extension — but opposition from GOP members of the state Legislature had threatened to derail the project since. In recent weeks, they sent letters to the Council nodding to the various ways they might try to kill the project.

Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego said she had worked for years to secure CAPEX, but hurdles kept popping up. This, she argued, is the best way to make sure Maryvale gets light rail, but avoids a fight with lawmakers.

But, Councilwoman Anna Hernandez said this is a broken promise to voters. Hernandez represents parts of Maryvale and other communities that would have been near the extension. The Show spoke with her after the vote — and she told The Show why she backed the capitol extension.

Full conversation

ANNA HERNANDEZ: Well, for a lot of reasons, right? It brings so much opportunity to the neighborhoods, the Oakland neighborhood, the Grand Avenue neighborhood, the St. Matthews and the Woodland neighborhoods, just opportunity for growth there. It's the Capitol Mall District, right?

So the government mall area, it's another connection point for the rest of our city to the Capitol area, which I think I would love to see more people involved down in our state politics, but it really is the tangible, well it was the real tangible first step to get light rail all the way into the West Valley.

And that is why I'm very disappointed because I really truly feel that by taking the step we took that we are jeopardizing the entire future for light rail in Phoenix.

LAUREN GILGER: I wonder though, because I mean, lots of Maryvale residents spoke out to the City Council saying they were in support of this Indian School extension, that it'll be a big boon to the West Valley and to these kind of communities that have yet to see and have not gotten approval for light rail extension in the past, right?

I mean, is this, did you want more? I mean, this is still going into the West Valley.

HERNANDEZ: Yes, the problem here is, and what I mentioned at the City Council, at the policy meeting was that that's very true. Those neighborhoods and those residents have been neglected for years and have been passed over and pushed to the back of the line many times. And that's exactly what I'm worried is going to happen now.

And something that I raised in the council meeting was that as we worked on previous extensions, the West Valley extension should have been one of the first to go that in South Central extension. And that's not what happened.

The problem with the decision we made is that by accelerating the Maryvale line on the Indian School, there's no real work that has been done around that. The only thing that had been identified was that our line is going to go on Indian School. So it's going to take us up to two years, about two years to know if that is even going to be a viable path for acceleration.

GILGER: This is different as well than what voters had approved initially, right? Which would have been two light rail lines into the West Valley, including this capital extension, right?

HERNANDEZ: Correct. Because the Capitol extension was the first phase of the Capitol 10 West, which means that following the Capitol extension, we were going to do the I-10 West extension leading us up until the Desert Sky Transit and then Indian School across.

So really we went from delivering two light rail options for the west side of Phoenix to to maybe one.

GILGER: Let me ask you about the argument we've been hearing about light rail in general for a long time now. Like, this all happened under pressure from Republican state lawmakers who have been opposed to the Capitol extension of the light rail for a long time.

They essentially say it's a waste of money. It's not worth public investment. The cost of it keeps going up and up. What do you say to that?

HERNANDEZ: I mean, the costs do go up, right? As we have seen that with everything across industries. So I can't really fight the cost side because it is true. Costs have went up for construction, for all of the things.

But I still believe that the investments that follow light rail construction are so great that they outweigh my concerns on cost because we have seen the investment that follows it, right? We have seen housing being created, the economic development that comes along those rail lines, and that cost concern is offset by the investments that follow it.

I mean, we're also talking about good paying like long term jobs for these communities where light rail is built. So there's so much more benefit that outweigh the cost to me, which is why I'm very supportive of light light rail being one of the one of the many public transit options that we need, right?

The city of Phoenix is the fifth largest city in the country. We should have more transit options.

GILGER: That's interesting. I wonder because we heard so much pushback to the extension of the light rail that happened down South Central Avenue, right, in kind of an historically underrepresented, underserved area.

Did you hear any of that kind of pushback in your district when this was up on the table?

HERNANDEZ: Not from the CAPEX and I-10 West folks. The communities in that area were very supportive, and they did have their concerns, which were shared early on, in earlier path iterations, and Valley Metro did a really good job to really address those concerns, especially in the Woodland neighborhood. So I didn't hear too much.

What we did hear, though, at the meeting was a lot of the same pushback from the business owners along the Indian School line.

GILGER: Right.

HERNANDEZ: You know, on the other side of that, though, what I will say is that we continue to learn and get better at how we deliver these infrastructure projects. And I am someone that is very, very committed to making sure that the community is taken care of, that we truly are the resource for our small businesses as we deliver big infrastructure projects.

GILGER: Right. The construction of these projects takes so long, it can definitely hurt businesses in these areas. Yeah.

Let me ask you lastly, councilwoman, like, were you or other members of the council concerned about leaving this open to potentially attacks from the state Legislature? Like, if they did not want this Capital extension, they would, you know, eventually be able to find a way to block it.

HERNANDEZ: I mean, no. Why I say no, my concerns weren't very great. There is one, I am the most recent member that has served on, that serves on the current council that has ever served at the Legislature. I went and talked to legislators on both sides of the aisle. And while overall, at least the Republican colleagues do not support light rail, there was a consensus and there was buy-in that, OK, if we are gonna do light rail, this is the better path, which was the 16th Avenue South. So I don't really think that they would've worked really at more ways to create barriers.

And then on the other side of that, there is a dispute in interpretation of the Arizona state statute that some believe that gives the JLBC full authority to block this and others that we believe that that's not the correct interpretation.

So I think that there was still time to, if those concerns were valid, we could have gotten through and address those concerns. So I am less concerned, it was less concerned about action from the Legislature if we continue with the Capitol extension.