Shortly after signing a contract with general manager Mike Wiley, Sacramento’s Sacramento Regional Transit “slipped into financial duress from which it has yet to recover,” wrote Tony Bizjak of the Sacramento Bee. “The agency has tapped reserve accounts in the last three years to balance its budget, leaving it with virtually no emergency funds…
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Six years ago, the U.S. Congress passed the Telework Enhancement Act of 2010, which permitted eligible bureaucrats who work in the civilian portion of the executive branch of the U.S. federal government to telecommute to work. When the law was passed, lawmakers expected to realize several benefits, particularly in the nation’s capital: Less traffic…
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The CBO has issued its mid-year update to its Budget and Economic Outlook, which covers the years from 2016 through 2026. Here’s their summary of the main change in what they project for the next 10 years. CBO’s estimate of the deficit for 2016 has increased since the agency issued its previous estimates in…
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As we noted, California’s vaunted high-speed rail project will require 35 miles of tunnels through the mountains north of Los Angeles. Governor Jerry Brown, a backer of the bullet train, also has tunnel vision for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Brown wants to dig 35 miles of tunnels to convey water to the State Water…
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They came before dawn, a squad of six armed officers, banging on the door of Maria Elena Hernandez, 62, a Los Angeles grandmother. When she identified herself, one of the officers twisted her arms behind her back and slapped her in handcuffs. Hernandez protested that the officers had the wrong person, but they duly…
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In 1996, construction began on a brand new major league ballpark in Phoenix, Arizona, which became the home of the Arizona Diamondbacks when it was completed and opened in 1998. Originally called Bank One Ballpark, the stadium is now known as Chase Field. The stadium cost $349 million to complete, of which, $238 million…
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The Department of Veterans Affairs has gotten itself into hot water with its Inspector General again, this time, for wasting over $292,492 to buy some 282 television sets for a new patient area in the John D. Dingell VA Medical Center in Detroit, Michigan that was never built, where the TVs were thus never…
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Politicians may bill it as “free”, but government monopoly in education is big business that racks up considerable public debt. As Dan Walters of the Sacramento Bee observes, in recent decades California has issued $45 billion in school bonds now being repaid at a cost of nearly $3 billion a year. With interest the…
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As much as we focus on the U.S. national debt, there’s a lot that we can learn from other governments whose national debts have surpassed their people’s ability to even hope to pay back their nation’s creditors. A very strong argument to be made that the nation with the worst problem arising from its…
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Last May, the City of Los Angeles decommissioned its Memorial Sports Arena, lowering three flags that had flown over the facility — those of the United States, California, and Los Angeles County and City — for the last time before making way for a new $250 million sports development in Exposition Park. But there’s a…
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