Xblog

I think it is safe to say that California is long overdue for some upgrades to its transit infrastructure. There’s also some federal dollars out there somewhere that are probably going to waste if the state doesn’t find a way to provide matching funds.

So, on one hand, it’s hard to argue against increasing spending on streets, highways, train systems, etc. Aside from all of the above it’ll provide for some extra spunk to the economy.

What annoys me is that we don’t fund this spending the old fashioned way: tax increases. I suspect this has a lot to do with a certain fateful “Read My Lips” statement made years ago by the only president since Jimmy Carter to lose a reelection. Politicians are afraid to put in a vote for a straight, across the board tax increase. So instead, we have these huge, long standing bond obligations which have the same effect (increased taxes), but which also cost tax payers in the form of interest charges.

Of course, when this bond runs out, we’ll almost certainly need to fund a new one as all of our transit infrastructure spending for the preceding years would have been used to pay off our bond debts. ;-)

Unfortunately, I think in this case a little bit of realpolitik has to be applied here. Since the voters of California won’t support politicians funding this kind of spending the right way, I am either going to have to live with an infrastructure that falls apart in a few more years or I’m going to have to live with funding this project the wrong way. Given those choices, proposition 1B seems like the lesser of two evils.

I’m sorry, but I have to be cynical about this one. The state has already passed one proposition (on top of the wording for the initial taxes themselves) to keep the gas tax money for spending on transportation infrastructure. Yet time and time again, our legislature and our governor keep spending that money on other (less important?) things.

Remember our last budget crisis? Part of the problem was that with all the propositions and rules, it turns out there is very little room in the budget for the legislature and the governor to address a short fall in revenue. Of course, the problem was compounded because the previous year the legislature had used up every last accounting trick to make things work out.

The bottom line is you vote your elected officials in to govern. You figure out how much you want to be taxed, and you figure out what you want to spend things on, and then it’s up to them to make the best of it. If you think they are doing a lousy job, you vote them out (although term limits have dulled the sharpness of that particular blade).

These kinds of measures essentially treat the legislature and governors like children, and limit their governing abilities to those of children as well. I’m sorry, but if that’s the approach we’re taking, we’re paying those children way too much money.

If we have a budget shortfall, it’s easier for me to live with traffic congestion and a few more potholes than to hear the second grade has been canceled this year, or that we’re going to let a few thousands houses burn to the ground, or that a few of the prisons have been closed for a year and their inmates are running the streets. It sounds nice to think that this money is locked away for transit infrastructure, but when you think about it, if anything was more important than transit infrastructure, you’d probably prefer the money be spent there.

This one is going to get a thumbs down.