California’s tax burden is always a hot topic, especially now. With a state budget that is allegedly short of money (fact check: spending discipline is the only thing lacking) and multiple tax hike proposals being discussed for the 2026 ballot, voters are starting to pay attention to how much government is extracting from their pockets.
The state’s tax troubles have resulted in the well-documented exodus out of California. The sole silver lining has been the high-tech industry which continues to produce prodigious amounts of tax revenue from stock options and capital gains by the very wealthy. But even this source of revenue is now threatened if the “billionaire’s tax” proposal starts to gain traction.
With all this focus on taxes it’s easy to forget about another problem infuriating citizens – the sheer amount of government waste. A couple of years ago, a PPIC poll found that nearly half of respondents, 48 percent, believe the state wastes “a lot” of their tax dollars, 43 percent said the state wastes “some,” and only 8 percent said the people in charge of the state government “don’t waste very much.” (Apparently, 8 percent of Californians have no access to media outlets).
What caught our attention last week was yet another story about our political leaders demonstrating gross incompetence in handling our tax dollars.
In a comprehensive investigative piece in the Sacramento Bee, reporter William Melhaydo uncovers yet another embarrassing face-plant by state government leadership. After the Camp Fire, Governor Newsom pledged to upgrade California’s antiquated 911 emergency response communications system. Toward that end, “Between 2019 and 2025, California paid four technology companies over $450 million to build out its Next Generation 911 (NG911) system, a more advanced emergency communication tool that would provide dispatchers with enhanced location services and other ways for the public to communicate with first responder operators.”
But the system didn’t work, and Cal OES decided to abandon the project and start over from scratch. Veteran political journalist Dan Walters correctly noted that the “governmental landscape is littered with information technology projects that have failed to deliver the promised benefits, have experienced huge cost overruns, or have been abandoned.”
It’s not just tech projects that have a history of waste and ineffectiveness. California’s failed “green” projects are not only wasteful, but they also frequently end up hurting the environment. One would hope that politicians would be more circumspect with expensive “green” projects after the Solyndra debacle from 2015, but apparently, that lesson never sunk in.
The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System is a “solar thermal plant” in the Mojave Desert that uses mirrors to heat water and generate electricity. Initially a large-scale renewable project, it is now scheduled to be decommissioned next year because it failed to meet its energy production targets, it isn’t competitive, and it kills birds by the thousands. (It also, ironically, requires natural gas in order to remain operational).
Jason Isaac, CEO of the American Energy Institute summed it up by stating that “Ivanpah stands as a testament to the waste and inefficiency of government-subsidized energy schemes.”
Battling food deserts is an invented solution to a more complicated problem
Agree with him or not, Noam Chomsky’s ideas are still worth grappling with
CPUC traps utilities in high-cost, bird-frying Ivanpah contract
A modest proposal: What’s good for drug boats, even better for freeway chases!
John Seiler: Celebrating 30 years of Antiwar.com as the war machine rages on
Of course, no discussion of government waste in California would be complete without noting the $50 billion in fraud by the Employment Development Department during COVID. The core of the scandal was the abject failure on the part of the EDD to verify the identities of individuals who were receiving benefits. Transnational organized criminal groups from China and Africa have made off with billions of dollars – used for child trafficking, drugs, and terrorism – while millions of deserving taxpayers have been struggling just to stay afloat.
We could go on endlessly about politicians’ lack of concern about how our money is spent. Tops on the list, of course, is the High-Speed Rail project. Add to that local government spending on transit, the Capitol Annex project, and the ineffective spending on the state’s homeless problem.
Regrettably, wasting taxpayer dollars in California is now an art form. It reminds us of Ronald Reagan’s observation that politicians are like diapers. They need to be changed periodically.
Jon Coupal is president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.