Reading voters' lips and how they cast their ballots on new taxes don't always synch, and that disparity may give Ventura County transportation officials hope.

Local voters have twice rejected a county sales tax to pay for fixing roads and improving mass transit.

But despite the dismal economy and an aversion to taxes, voters elsewhere in the state on Nov. 4 approved local transportation sales taxes in at least five counties, garnering the more than two-thirds necessary to pass tax measures.

As officials begin the first stages of what will likely be a two-year effort to pass a similar measure here, they are looking at how voters across the state cast their ballots.

"I was up until 1 a.m. looking at returns," said Darren Kettle, executive director of the Ventura County Transportation Commission.

The bad economy did not preclude support for local sales tax as long as voters knew what they were going to get and had a chance to weigh in on what kind of projects would be funded, said Kettle.

Voters also see the relationship between infrastructure improvements and improvements in the economy, he said.

That takes time and is part of the reason the effort locally has a two-year timeline. It will give transportation officials time to hear from voters and identify their top transportation priorities.

"Transportation is one of the top two or three public policy priorities for people," Kettle said. "It's a massive problem. Voters have said it's so big we need to fix it."

A half-cent transportation sales tax here would raise about $65 million, and, according to Kettle, help the county compete for state and federal transportation funding. Increasingly, local jurisdictions that can't match or contribute to state or federal funding for infrastructure projects get put at the end of the line, said Kettle.

Learned from failed effort

In two counties, Santa Barbara and Imperial, the margin of victory on the sales tax was big, hovering around 80 percent.

"We got the fourth-largest majority of any transportation sales tax initiative," said Greg Hart, of the Santa Barbara County Association of Governments, which worked to get the measure passed.

At a presentation last week, Hart said backers of their measure learned from a failed effort in 2006 to focus what they were asking voters to support and to involve as many people as possible in deciding how the money would be used.

"That included seeking out active opponents of (the 2006 measure)," Hart said.

The measure raises about $35 million a year for transportation in Santa Barbara County. Hart believes pledging that the money would be directly used to help widen the congested Highway 101 played a role in it passing.

Even in counties where tax measures were shot down — Monterey and Stanislaus — they failed by very slim margins.

It was the third time voters in Monterey rejected a transportation sales tax.

"What's interesting is that in those sub-regions that are being hit by foreclosures and the bad economy, they still almost pulled this thing out," Kettle said.

But Kettle also noted that in Santa Barbara County, voters were being asked to support renewal of an existing transportation sales tax measure.

Kettle paid special attention to how neighboring Los Angeles and Santa Barbara counties voted.

Both counties have a transportation tax, and voters reaffirmed their support of the taxes, although it took Santa Barbara two tries to pass its renewal.

Worthwhile to ask third time

With Imperial's recent passage of a local tax, there are now 20 so-called "self-help" counties in the state. They are called that because a local sales tax generates money for roads and mass transportation.

Ventura County voters have twice rejected similar transportation measures, but as state and federal money dries up for transportation, local officials say it's worthwhile to ask a third time.

According to commission members, the county is the largest in the state without a local transportation sales tax.

In October, members of the Ventura County Transportation Commission approved hiring the firm California Strategies, a Sacramento-based lobbying and consulting firm that has been involved with the successful passage of at least five local transportation measures in the past six years.

The firm has already had some preliminary meetings with local government and business officials.