While California’s leaders like to tout the Golden State as a national leader in innovation and progressive governance, the on-the-ground reality is often wholly detached from such lofty rhetoric.
The latest evidence comes from the new “Follow the Money” report, covering 2021, by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.
The report compiles some of the most egregious types of waste, fraud and abuse in California government, including:
• Lifeguards in Los Angeles County making as much as $382,000 in pay and benefits.
• Five DMV employees in the Torrance and Lincoln Park offices “admitted taking bribes in exchange for issuing licenses to unqualified drivers.”
• A nonprofit founded by First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom grabbed $800,000 in donations from companies lobbying her hubby, including PG&E, Kaiser Permanente, AT&T and Comcast. Gov. Newsom denies there’s anything unethical about this, when anyone with a pulse and vague hint of common sense can see the problem.
• Even as the Legislature locked down the state during COVID-19, bankrupting thousands of businesses and killing tens of thousands of jobs, “legislators themselves enjoyed trips to Pebble Beach, Australia, Scotland, Portland and Maui. Many of these trips were paid for by lobbyists with important business before the Legislature.”
• High-speed rail keeps on boondoggling. The one small segment that might get completed, in the Central Valley, already is $1.4 billion over budget and delayed again. The rail authority’s Feb. 2022 business report calculated the whole project would cost $105 billion. That’s 163% above the $40 billion price tag sold to voters who approved it in 2008 with Proposition 1A.
• Tents for “sleeping villages” for the homeless in San Francisco cost $5,000 per month, more than putting the people up in luxury apartments.
• “Tiny home villages” were built in Los Angeles made up of “64-square-foot aluminum and composite sheds” costing $130,000 each — 10 times that in other cities. In addition, the money wasted on tiny home and sleeping villages could have been used to build more housing for additional homeless folks.
• There’s the story of James Hammond, superintendent of the unremarkable Ontario-Montclair school district, who now receives more than $700,000 in annual compensation.
In a couple of weeks, Newsom will present the May Revision to his Jan. 10 budget proposal, which anticipated a $45.7 billion surplus for fiscal year 2022-23, which begins on July 1.
Local governments, many of which are still bloated with federal cash doled out unnecessarily throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, are likewise in the middle of their budget processes for the upcoming fiscal year.
It’s all reminiscent of the words of the late P.J. O’Rourke: “Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.”
HJTA’s report chronicles how this plays out in California well. We can only hope that Californians begin to hold their elected officials accountable for their failures.