California’s punitive tax structure virtually guarantees high volatility in state finances, particular during times of boom and bust in the economy. But through thick and thin some things never change. As this report notes, the state’s payroll and the size of the state workforce hold steady, and there’s always more to that story. Consider,…
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California governor Jerry Brown is an ardent supporter of the state’s high-speed rail project and as this report shows, he has now come up with a new reason for it. “There’s a lot of old people who shouldn’t be driving,” he recently told some union bosses in Sacramento. “They should be sitting in a…
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As we have noted, the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge cost $6.4 billion, $5 billion more than the original estimate, and came in ten years late. Despite the prodigious waste and delay state politicians and Caltrans bosses hailed the new span as a great victory. But problems quickly arose. Steel rods broke…
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The new eastern span of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge cost $6.4 billion, with cost overruns of some $5 billion, and its opening was delayed 10 years. That amounts to waste on a colossal scale, but according to testimony in a State Transportation and Housing Committee hearing last Friday, other concerns remain for all…
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This week California is marking the 150th anniversary of the first train service between San Francisco and San Jose. The Southern Pacific Peninsula train began in 1863 as a private for-profit business to meet transportation needs. It cut the travel time between San Francisco and San Jose from eight or nine hours to 31/2…
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“I’m not going to sit here and promise that there will not be cost growth.” That was Dan Richard, chairman of California’s high-speed rail authority, at a May 28 congressional hearing at Madera in California’s central valley. Richard’s non-promise was in vain because as rail subcommittee chairman Jeff Denham noted, enormous cost growth is…
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Lawyers are beginning to complain about California’s cuts to the court system, one of “the hardest hit arms of government during the recession” with revenue “slashed by $1.1 billion over the last five years – an agonizing 30 percent cut since 2007” according to Brian Kabateck, president of Consumer Attorneys of California. As a…
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The Associated Press reports that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) questions the claims of the Obama administration regarding projected budget deficits over the next ten years in which the White House overestimates tax revenues and savings from Medicare payments to doctors. A new assessment of President Barack Obama’s budget released Friday says the White…
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