As someone in Sacramento told me, deadlines mean nothing to our legislature.. Schwarzenegger has just announced that he will sign AB-3034, well past the deadline imposed by the Secretary of State.

This late signing may trigger lawsuits, we shall have to see.

“In the midst of all the wreckage caused by the real estate boom and bust, some think that they have found a way forward: build more houses, thousands and thousands of them.

On the western edge of Merced County, near the Diablo Range that separates the Central Valley from the Pacific Coast, is a stretch of empty land that a coalition of landowners has wanted to build on for years. The plan calls for the eventual construction of a city of 16,000 houses called the Villages of Laguna San Luis. (this is at Los Banos)

“In many ways, the idea makes sense. The pass over the mountains is winding and slow, but if a proposed high-speed train is ever built, the Villages could end up being a bedroom community for San Jose. By 2025, California is projected to grow to 44 million people from the current 37 million. They will need somewhere to live.”

So here perhaps the reason why a station at Los Banos was proposed.

Again we say, this project is not about transportation. This project is about the money. Its about the money to be made by land speculators, home builders, contractors, rail hardware manufacturers. With $45 billions to be had, they are all seeking a piece of the pie.

Vote NO on Prop 1.

Sunday is the real deadline for enacting AB 3034, a bill aimed at improving the $9.9 billion high-speed rail bond on the Nov. 4 ballot. This is according to a memo sent this week from the High Speed Rail Authority staff to board members and rail supporters.

The Secretary of State’s office “told us that August 24th (Sunday) is the true deadline for enacting AB 3034,” rail consultant Steve Schnaidt writes in the memo. “County election officials are finalizing the ballot layouts, translations, etc., that will be printed in their respective jurisdictions … They need to know what will be on the ballot and in the ballot pamphlets.”

With the on going budget crisis, there appears to be no way AB-3034 will beomce law in the next 3 days. The November 4th ballot will therefore have the original Prop 1 up for approval or rejection by the voters of California.

This is the bond measure on which the State Senate Transportation and Housing Committee issued the 35 page scathing report. AB-3034 was intended to cure some of those very serious problems.

The Governor was against the High Speed Rail project unless AB-3034 became law. Is he going to now support this bond measure that has none of his objections met? There is no provisoin in Prop 1 for the public/private partnerships he so dearly wanted and which were so strongly advocated by his financial advisor, David Crane.

How about the Sierra Club? Prop 1 will allow a station to be built at Los Banos. They were adamantly against the project until the possibility of a station there was removed.

Prop 1 must be defeated this November. VOTE NO ON PROP 1.

Mark Paul in writes in an article in the LA Times California’s ballot billions

“No matter what budget Sacramento comes up with, California voters will probably increase the deficit in 10 weeks.”

“California has two budgets. One is passed by lawmakers. The other is improvised at the ballot box. The state’s Constitution requires that the budget put together in Sacramento at least pretend to be balanced. The spending that voters enact operates under no such discipline. We do what we please.

And what usually pleases us is to add billions in spending obligations without providing any revenue to pay for them. Over the last decade, voters have passed bonds and programs, as well as shifted general tax revenue to transportation, that will cost the general fund — when all the bonds are sold — about $9.5 billion in debt service and spending a year, according to estimates by the Legislative Analyst’s Office. That’s equivalent to 9% of the current general fund,or about the total cost of all of today’s state social service programs.”

This is precisely the heart of the lie that Diridon keeps preaching. The voters keep passing bonds on ballot measures, but they don’t pass appropriations for those bonds. That’s what is happening with Prop 1 and with any other bond measures that will appear this fall. That’s what has been happening with regularity in recent years.

The way to fix this would be to pass a constitutional amendment that would demand new spending propositions include with them, new revenues for paying for these measures.

Don’t be fooled, Prop 1 will increase your taxes.

Lawmakers pass changes to high-speed rail measure
The Associated Press
Article Launched: 08/13/2008 06:12:23 PM PDT

SACRAMENTO—The state Assembly has approved a bill increasing financial accountability in the high-speed rail measure that is on California’s November ballot.

Lawmakers will not send the bill immediately to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger because he has pledged to veto every bill until legislators pass a budget.

If a Saturday deadline passes without the bill being signed into law, the new wording will not be included in the initial ballot pamphlet sent to voters. It would have to be included on a supplement pamphlet, instead.

The Assembly voted 54-15 on Wednesday to accept Senate amendments to the bill.

It amends a previously approved high-speed rail measure that asks voters to approve $9.9 billion for the initial phase of the project.

The new language includes a requirement for detailed financial plans before construction of each segment of the rail system can begin.

This was supposedly the deadline that had to be met for AB-3034 to pass through the full Assembly and get the Governor’s signature in order to get on the Nov. 2008 Ballot.

Whether this really kills AB-3034 is not absolutely certain. We have been told that deadlines sometimes mean very little in Sacramento.

The petition can be viewed here for those interested in the legal paperwork.

Those joining in the suit are:

Planning and Conservation League (PCL)
Town of Atherton
City of Menlo Park
Bayrail Alliance
Transportation Solutions Defense and Education Fund (TRANSDEF)

Noted by Stuart Flashman the attorney for the lawsuit:

Those disparate interests have joined forces in the lawsuit, which Attorney Stuart Flashman said he plans to file today in Sacramento County Superior Court.

“A lot of the concern is that the (authority’s) board wasn’t given accurate information about the relative impacts of the two alignments,” Flashman said. “The staff of the high speed rail authority, I don’t know if I’d say they cooked the books, but they tilted things very strongly to make it look like (the Peninsula alignment) had a lot less impact than it does.”