It was all smiles and hugs in June 2014 when, after decades of debate, the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District board approved spending $76 million to install steel-mesh nets under the span to prevent suicide jumps.

Since then, however, a big detour has come up that puts the whole project in doubt.

That detour is the price: Two bids came in for the job, and the cheapest was $142 million — nearly double what the board expected.

“Obviously, the consultant missed the mark,” said bridge district General Manager Denis Mulligan.

Throw in management costs, materials testing and construction engineering expenses, and the district has to come up with another $110 million for the job. And it needs to do so by January, when the bid clock runs out. Mulligan is optimistic, but he admits that time is short.

The bridge district has already committed $20 million of its own money to the project. But getting more out of tolls would be tough, given that the agency is facing a projected $50 projected deficit over the next five years.

The state isn’t doing much better. The California Transportation Commission just cut $1 billion from transportation funding on projects all across the state.

“The truth is, the state has been taking money away from transportation projects, not giving them more,” said spokesman Randy Rentschler of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.

Mulligan said the antisuicide net still has a good deal of support on the federal level. But getting tens of millions of dollars out of Washington in the next 90 days would be quite an accomplishment.

“That is the kind of wind they are facing,” Rentschler said.

Political handoff: Santa Clara community activists are throwing flags on what they call a behind-the-scenes effort by allies of the San Francisco 49ers to oust City Council members who are questioning the team’s lease agreement at Levi’s Stadium.

“This is not the way politics should be done,” said Burt Field, a spokesman with Stand Up for Santa Clara.

At the center of the controversy is the handoff of $49,265 from Blupac, a nonprofit “civic education” group, to a Long Beach political consulting outfit running an operation called Citizens for Economic Council. The money is funding a mail campaign aimed at helping City Council candidates Ahmad Rafah, John McLemore, Mohammed Nadeem and former Mayor Patty Mahan in the Nov. 8 election.

“We normally don’t do this sort of thing, but we saw it a chance to be a force for good government,” said Bluepac founder Doug Chan.

Field notes that Chan works at a law firm with Rich Robinson, whom Field calls “a close friend and consultant for the 49ers.”

Chan is a member of the San Francisco Civil Service Commission and onetime member of the city’s Police Commission, and he has long been involved in Bay Area politics. He confirmed Bluepac as the source of the $49,265 for the mail campaign, but he declined to confirm or deny the 49ers’ involvement.

“Our funders come from a wide variety of business and civic interests.” Chan said.

He did deny that Robinson works with the 49ers. On his website, however, Robinson lists the pro-stadium campaign in the 2010 Santa Clara elections as one of his numerous clients.

Robinson was out of town Tuesday and could not be reached for comment.

As for the Niners: “Typically we do not comment on political matters or rumors,” said team spokesman Bob Lange.

Field and other members of Stand Up for Santa Clara called the $49,265 contribution “dark money” and said the true source of the funds is being hidden.

“This is not the kind of politics we want in Santa Clara,” Field said.

All this comes after Santa Clara Mayor Lisa Gillmor and City Council members Debi Davis, Kathy Watanabe and Teresa O’Neill have called for an audit on how much city money is being used for stadium operations. Davis, Watanabe and O’Neill are all running for re-election in November; Gillmor’s term isn’t up yet.

The audit, which is now under way, is aimed at finding out whether city money is improperly being used in Levi’s Stadium operations — and whether the city is receiving “our fair share” of revenue coming in to the stadium.

All of this is rotating around the 49ers’ request for $5 million annual rent reduction for the remainder of the team’s 40-year stadium lease.

“So we’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars over the life of the lease,” Gillmor said.

Dubious boast: While the Millennium Tower’s developer and the agency constructing the Transbay Transit Center go back and forth about who’s to blame for the condo high-rise’s descent into bay fill, it’s interesting to note how the building’s original geotechnical engineering firm touted the tower.

The transit center agency has said its “dewatering” of the land beneath the Millennium isn’t the problem, arguing that the high-rise’s piles were too puny to support the building’s weight.

It will probably take years of legal fights to determine who’s right. But it’s worth noting that during construction, Rollo and Ridley, the geotechnical engineering outfit behind the tower, proudly noted on its website that “when completed, this building will be the heaviest on the West Coast.”

San Francisco Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross appear Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays. Matier can be seen on the KPIX TV morning and evening news. He can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call (415) 777-8815, or email matierandross@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @matierandross