The San Mateo County Times' website is behind the dead-tree version as usual, but today's front page article titled "Project planning costs are going up" is no April Fool's joke. The piece notes
California rail leaders said Tuesday it will cost an extra $97 million in office and field work to design the rail line, which has famously seen its construction costs double to $69 billion since voters approved it five years ago. .... Rail officials say the new pre-construction planning budget of $878 million, while an increase of 12 percent, is still within the limit approved by voters in 2008.
It's seriously naive to believe either the "revised" $69 billion backtrack from the previous $98 billion number or to think that voters had any conception of what $800+ million of pre-construction planning costs could balloon to. Further into the piece we read
In addition to the extra $92 million in consulting costs, Gov. Jerry Brown's administration this week asked the Legislature to approve another $4.8 million for the rail authority staff. Most of the money will go toward filling 44 new positions, along with $826,000 to raise the salaries of existing staff...and a $26.2 million loan from a state public transit account to fund high-speed rail planning from July through June 2014.
So the robbing of Peter to pay Paul continues. In a related news blurb, the SacBee notes
Were California's state government a business, it would be a candidate for insolvency with a negative net worth of $127.2 billion, according to an annual financial report issued by State Auditor Elaine Howle and the Bureau of State Audits.
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