Klamath going dam-free wrote:
longroad wrote:agree...but it's much more subtle than "hey, i got the money, i'm not going start building rail, i'm going to use it to fix roads".
frankly, i wish they would have taken the money and used it for something else. high speed rail in california makes no sense at all. but they took the money since it provides jobs. they set up entire offices for high speed rail and they are going to run out of money tracks can be laid.
Californians are probably scratching their heads wondering what happened to all the money they had approved for bonds over the past few decades — something close to $20 billion (not including the latest water bond, Proposition 1, which alone was $7.5 billion).
When a bond is approved, the money is allocated according to the official stated purpose and/or specific projects to be built. In fact, some of those bond accounts are still flush with hundreds of millions of unused dollars, which might have been approved by voters to use on existing infrastructure projects like shoring up the Oroville Dam.
But Gov. Jerry Brown never thought to ask them.
According to a PPIC report on how the money has been disbursed on the latest water bond, all the pork projects got funded, but not a penny has been allocated for water storage.
http://www.ppic.org/main/blog_detail.asp?i=2075
That's very similar to the levy situation in New Orleans which led to the flood after Katrina. Loads of money was directed away from shoring up the levies. Governments suck.