California taxpayers are angry enough over the nation’s most embarrassing boondoggle – the infamous high-speed rail project. But imagine the outrage if the state Legislature approved a plan to pay for the project with higher property taxes. Visions of tar and feathers immediately come to mind.
No other topic has been the subject of this column more than HSR over the last 15 years. Just last month we noted how opposition to the project has only increased over time. What began as a $10 billion bond measure to fund a rail project that would travel from Los Angeles to San Francisco is projected to cost almost ten times the original bond amount.
Critics of the project have been vindicated in their predictions of failure. It started with a Due Diligence Report from the Reason Foundation and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association prior to the November 2008 election authorizing the HSR bond. The study concluded that, “The CHSRA [California High-Speed Rail Authority] plans as currently proposed are likely to have very little relationship to what would eventually be built due to questionable ridership projections and cost assumptions . . .”
Since then, reports and studies from official California agencies have warned that the project may not be viable at all. These include a 2018 report from the California State Auditor (“Flawed Decision Making and Poor Contract Management Have Contributed to Billions in Cost Overruns and Delays”) and a 2025 Legislative Analyst’s Office review of the rail authority’s 2025 Project Update Report.
Now, more than 14 years later, the federal government is withdrawing its financial support. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the Trump Administration will proceed with its decision to claw back nearly $4 billion in federal funding. “I don’t think Americans want to see — I know they don’t want to see — billions of dollars going into a project that is never built,” Duffy told Spectrum News this week during a stop in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.
Like Monty Python’s dead parrot skit, Gov. Gavin Newsom and other cheerleaders for this horribly flawed project are in denial about its inevitable demise. While California has a budget shortfall in the tens of billions, various schemes are being considered to keep the project on life support.
The worst of these is reflected in Senate Bill 545, which would require the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development “to commission a study on economic opportunities along the corridor of the California high-speed rail project, as defined.” Further, the bill “would require an infrastructure district, as defined, that uses its revenue to finance the construction of the high-speed rail project to dedicate a majority of its revenue to infrastructure projects within the jurisdiction of the local agencies that establish the district.” The study would “assess funding potential across a variety of funding mechanisms that can support the high-speed rail capital program or discrete system elements.”
When the government starts looking at “a variety of funding mechanisms,” there’s only one thing they’re seeing: tax increases. Politicians may call them by another name, but if payment is compelled as a condition of owning, working, building or just breathing, it’s effectively or explicitly a tax.
Although SB 545 at this point envisions only a “study,” recall that the high-speed rail project itself began as a “study” decades ago. Moreover, the references to “infrastructure districts” should also raise a red flag. These districts – previously delineated as “redevelopment districts”– were infamous for abusing the rights of property owners and taxpayers.
It’s time for HSR sycophants to throw in the towel and start spending our limited tax dollars on projects which actually provide value to the citizens of California.
Jon Coupal is president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.