California’s biggest boondoggle just broke the bank.
Not only is the massive high-speed rail project 11 years behind schedule and billions in the red, but managers are also now saying they will need to ramp up spending to hit a 2033 deadline.
California’s money pit cost taxpayers $3.1 million a day last year.
But that’s small potatoes compared to what they’ll have to shell out over the next four if they want to meet their deadline and budget, estimated most recently at $100 billion in a report last month by The New York Times.
The California High Speed Rail Authority will have to increase its daily spending by nine times.
“It’s a very aggressive spending rate,” Russell Fong, the authority’s chief financial officer told the Los Angeles Times, admitting that future goals may be difficult to achieve.
If the rail authority misses its 2033 target, inflation will likely raise the project’s price tag by as much as $2 billion a year. That’s because billions of dollars of work would be shifted to the future, when costs will be higher. – READ MORE
[divider][/divider]But as Jerry Brown’s tenure as governor of California draws to a close in January, capital punishment supporters have raised the specter that he could commute many, if not all, of the sentences.
On March 28, California’s Supreme Court issued an administrative order making it possible for Brown to commute the sentences or grant clemency.
Michele Hanisee, president of the Association of Deputy District Attorneys in Los Angeles County, told the Orange County Register earlier this week that this removes any impediment Brown may have faced. Before that, a governor had to get the approval of the majority of the state Supreme Court in the case of an inmate with two or more felony convictions.
“They basically have green-lighted the governor to grant clemency to anyone…and said they won’t interfere,” she said.
California has the largest death row population in the country, but only 13 have been executed since capital punishment was reintroduced to the state in 1978, with the last one occurring in 2006. Appeals that drag out for many years are common. Last year, there were 400 death penalty appeals pending.
Despite its liberal reputation, more than half of California’s residents have expressed support for the death penalty, striking down referenda calling for it to end. – READ MORE
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