Pump the brakes on rail madness – Latest News
How does a huge rail project that was by no means on observe go even additional off the rails?
Through a gorgeous show of incompetence by Gov. Gavin Newsom and different state officers who oversee California’s high-speed rail failure.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom shaking fingers with an Iron Workers Local 155 employee. AP
The state auditor has already investigated the project 10 occasions, going back more than 15 years. Any project in the personal sector that functioned this fashion would have been shut down long in the past.
Just days after Newsom took a unhappy victory lap for high-speed rail — the place he posed in entrance a immobile freight prepare — information emerges that state officers bumbled their method into a large new price for taxpayers.
California pays a construction company $537 million to settle a lawsuit over delays and change orders in the rail boondoggle, The Post reported.
The contractor, Selma, Calif.-based Dragados Flatiron Joint Venture, instructed one other information outlet that revisions, design adjustments, and land acquisition points — 597 change orders in all — wildly drove up prices.
Governor Gavin Newsom speaks at a podium with different officers and construction employees current. Governor Gavin Newsom’s Office
This coincides with information final week that Newsom and legislators are pushing a invoice, AB 1608 by Lori Wilson (D-Suisun City), that might authorize concealment of embarrassing high-speed rail data.
What self-serving vanity.
It is galling, and sure unlawful, for state officers to dam taxpayer entry to the data of initiatives paid for by the public.
State officers offered California voters on high-speed rail in 2008 with a $9.95 billion bond towards a $45 billion “bullet train” project connecting LA and the Bay Area.
Eighteen years later, the project has not a stick of observe to show for it, and value estimates have soared to effectively over $100 billion.
The newest $537 million price bump is simply one other signal: The project — long a national punchline for its wheel-spinning — is a financial prepare wreck going nowhere.
