by Bob Walsh
Like most good liberals, Jerry Brown loves expensive, new "Green" toys, especially if the tax payers have to pay for them. And pay. And pay and pay and pay.
State lawmakers in the formerly great state of California have decided that there is going to be an actual, legitimate audit of the project in order to determine if it can be completely somewhere in the ballpark of on time and on budget.
The state auditor, Elaine Howle (who is apparently an honest and capable person) has said the audit will take from six to nine months. In the meantime the HSR (highs-speed rail) Authority is schedule to release their biennial business plan.
Interestingly both Democraps and Republicans are supporting the audit. Also the head of the HSR project is at least pretending to support it.
The projects supporters have already conceded that the train will NOT meet it's speed goal nor will it be self-supporting. The real problem is that performance goals were built in to the bond issue passed as an initiative by the voters and if the project can not perform as originally sold it may be at risk.
That would, IMHO, be a good thing. Toy trains are nice but at $67 BILLION dollars this one will be expensive and will under-deliver.
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