“Sacramento’s latest trick”

Monterey Herald, Aug. 12, 2024

California’s high-speed rail project was supposed to be the golden ticket from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Instead, it’s the nation’s most expensive “under construction” sign, stretching into eternity. Sold to voters in 2008 as a $10 billion marvel, it has since ballooned toward $100 billion — without delivering so much as a single ticketed ride.

The critics saw it coming. Before the first bond was even approved, watchdogs at the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and the Reason Foundation warned that the rail authority’s ridership projections belonged in a fantasy novel and the cost estimates were pure fiction. State auditors later backed them up, citing bad decisions, sloppy management and enough overruns to make the Pentagon blush.

Even the feds have pulled the plug. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced the Trump administration will claw back nearly $4 billion, bluntly saying Americans don’t want billions poured into a train that’s never built. You’d think that would end the charade.

But not in Sacramento. Gov. Newsom and his band of choo-choo cheerleaders while facing a massive budget shortfall, are now hunting for “creative” funding ideas—which in political-speak means “how can we raid your wallet next?”

Enter Senate Bill 545, the latest act in this tragic comedy. It pretends to be an innocent “study” of economic opportunities along the train’s path. But tucked inside is the real gem: creating “infrastructure districts” to funnel tax revenue into rail construction. The “variety of funding mechanisms” they’ll explore? Translation: higher property taxes and other forced “contributions” you didn’t volunteer for.

If “infrastructure districts” sound suspiciously familiar, it’s because they’re the reincarnation of California’s old “redevelopment districts” …the same ones infamous for abusing property rights, siphoning funds, and turning “blight” into a developer’s playground.

Let’s be clear: this train isn’t behind schedule. It’s off the rails, buried in a sinkhole, and being used as a money pit for political vanity. It began decades ago as a “study,” and here we are again, another “study” to justify keeping it on taxpayer-funded life support.

Sacramento could have the decency to admit the obvious: the high-speed rail is a failed promise that no amount of new taxes will salvage. Instead, they’re trying to strap California’s homeowners to the tracks and hope no one notices the budget train bearing down.  It’s time to pull the emergency brake!

— Rosemarie Barnard, Prunedale