Some Praise and Constructive Criticism for Gov. Jerry Brown

Gov. Jerry Brown deserves some praise and some constructive criticism concerning his 2012 State of the State speech.

I want to continue to work with Governor to solve California’s problems.  I supported his efforts last year to save the taxpayers millions of dollars by drastically cutting the number of state cars and cell phones used by bureaucrats.  I like his proposal this year to consolidate some departments and eliminate some boards and commissions.

However, it’s hard to take the Governor too seriously when he continues to ignore the utter mismanagement at his Department of Transportation (Caltrans) and utter failure that has come to characterize the High Speed Rail project.

Caltrans reports directly to the Governor, yet he ignores the underlying problems which wastes billions of dollars and jeopardizes the safety of Californians.

For the last year other legislators and I, in addition to the non-partisan Legislative Analyst and the State Auditor, have blasted Caltrans on several fronts including:

• Handing out 40 percent pay hikes over the last three years;
• Establishing an average yearly salary over $100,000 for all 20,000 Caltrans employees;
• Running up highway project costs (due primarily to pay hikes) by over $300 million;
• Withholding budget information from the Governor, Legislature and public;
• Keeping 1,500 Caltrans employees on payroll even though their jobs cannot be justified;
• Ordering new vehicles when unused fleets sit gathering dust;
• Billing taxpayers for junkets, including one to a Palm Desert resort;
• Covering up phony inspections of the Bay Bridge.

The proposed High Speed Rail proposal has been called a shell game by its critics because voters were given: 1) misleading ridership projections that turned out to be overly inflated, 2) low-ball construction cost figures that have jumped astronomically and 3) business plans that were known to be unrealistic.

California is broke and we need to make choices right now about whether to continue wasting bond money on High Speed Rail or instead use our bonding ability for water projects to help make California’s agricultural land fertile again and lower double-digit unemployment in rural areas of our state.

The Governor and I have discussed Caltrans and High Speed Rail a number of times and I have been very encouraging to him.   He needs to begin actually implementing major reforms at Caltrans immediately, from the Acting Director on down.  Moreover, he needs to cut the state’s losses on High Speed Rail and end this scam now.