Crossposted from my high speed rail blog

According to an article the LA Times just put up on their website, Union Pacific Railroad is balking at sharing its right of way with high speed trains. For context, the CHSRA plan has always involved building HSR-specific tracks alongside existing rails currently owned by UP, to minimize environmental impacts and disruption to existing urban development. So this has the potential to be a serious problem:

Officials at Union Pacific railroad recently told the California High Speed Rail Authority that they have safety and operational concerns about running a bullet train close to lumbering freight trains.

“Just look at what happened in L.A. a few years ago,” said Scott Moore, a Union Pacific vice president, citing the 2005 crash of a Metrolink passenger train that killed 11 and hampered rail operations.

“Those accidents happen.”

This rationale is flatly ridiculous. As UP well knows, the accident referred to is the subject of an ongoing trial of Juan Manuel Alvarez who tried to commit suicide by parking his truck on the Metrolink tracks near Glendale. He did this on an at-grade crossing, which will be eliminated as part of the HSR project. And as is the case around the world, the HSR tracks will be fenced off from the public, making it difficult for a similar accident to occur. In fact, accidents of any kind are very rare on HSR systems, and it is very uncommon for HSR trains to hit passenger vehicles.

Further, I know of no specific problems where HSR trains have ever had an issue sharing tracks with any other trains – and I find it interesting that UP had to cite the 2005 Metrolink crash, since they couldn’t come up with any actual issues of HSR and freight running in close proximity. Trains commonly share multiple tracks next to each other without any problems.

So we have to ask what UP is really up to with this statement. I believe they are holding out for more money. They’ve done it before – several years ago Santa Cruz County resolved to purchase the branch line from Pajaro to Davenport, running through Santa Cruz and paralleling Highway 1, from UP. The negotiations dragged on for years as UP tried to overstate the value of the line and get the county to assume responsibility for all repairs of tracks and bridges – and when the county balked, UP threatened to refuse to sell the line. UP’s statement may well be a ploy for more money, some role in operations or profits from HSR, or other assurances from CHSRA and the state.

And of course, UP had no objection to – and has benefited greatly from – government-funded projects such as the Alameda Corridor.  For them to turn around and try and screw HSR is inconsistent at best. The state and federal governments should play hardball with UP over this – if they continue to drag their feet on negotiating with CHSRA, then perhaps UP doesn’t need the Alameda Corridor East, or the Colton flyover, or continued deregulation of the industry.

Some want to believe this is a crisis for HSR. If UP holds firm in its refusal to share ROW, there’s always eminent domain, but that would involve a long and drawn-out court process. If the CHSRA has to abandon the ROW-sharing plan, then they’ll need to completely redo the environmental impact reports, which could add 3-5 years to the construction time on the project.

That would be inconvenient, but it is long past time for us to get started on HSR. Gas prices and global warming have finally given urgency to HSR, and that should in turn give the public and their representatives the clarity of vision and sense of purpose to ensure that UP doesn’t hijack the project for their own concerns. State and federal political leaders need to ramp up the pressure on UP – and we need to do the same. High speed rail is too important for one company – even Union Pacific – to block. We can find ways to assuage their concerns while staying on track to get the high speed rail system approved and under construction by 2010.

As we’ve reported before, the CSU has had a problem with refusing to allow potential employees to modify the state’s loyalty oath to fit the employee’s religious needs, despite the fact that the UC system has had no problem accommodating such religious freedoms. Eventually People For the American Way got involved and today they reached an agreement with CSU that gets one of the fired employees a job this fall and ensures that CSU will finally begin properly administering the oath:

CSU has agreed to appoint [Wendy] Gonaver as a temporary lecturer teaching two classes in American Studies and Women’s Studies during the fall 2008 semester, and to allow the attachment of a revised explanatory statement to the oath that CSU agrees does not undermine or qualify the oath….

Judith E. Schaeffer, Legal Director of People For the American Way Foundation and Gonaver’s attorney, said the settlement clears the way for others with religious or other objections to the oath to attach an explanatory statement, as long as the statement does not undermine or qualify the oath.

This is a welcome result – Wendy Gonaver should never have been fired and the CSU should have had better practices to handle religious objections to the oath. Still, this doesn’t mean everything is now fine – the loyalty oath still exists, and remains an obsolete relic of a McCarthyist past. California legislators should ramp up their efforts to do away with this pointless oath, so that schools and teachers can get on with the business of educating their students.

Calitics has deleted several posts by BlueBeaumontBoyz that made allegations against Manuel Perez that could not be confirmed or substantiated. It is Calitics policy to remove diaries that make these kind of unproven criminal charges about a candidate.

Given all the buildup that came before Arnold Schwarzenegger’s May Revise, it may seem surprising that we have heard relatively little about the budget from the state’s media and politicians over the last few weeks. The June primary is partly responsible for this, as Sacramento’s attention is on the various primary contests in legislative districts around the state.

But an even bigger factor is that there does not actually seem to be any budget solution being actively discussed, and certainly none that would realistically solve the budget deficit. Arnold’s May Revise used as its cornerstone a questionable lottery borrowing plan, but as Evan Halper explains in today’s LA Times it is becoming difficult to take the plan seriously:

Californians find the governor’s lottery strategy so distasteful, a recent state poll suggests, that they would rather have their taxes raised. Meanwhile, lawmakers are denouncing the plan as a gimmick, and analysts say it could prove far costlier to the state than Schwarzenegger is letting on.

Voters would have to approve the governor’s proposal. But Mark Baldassare, president of the Public Policy Institute of California, said they meant it when they approved the lottery by ballot measure two decades ago to raise funds solely for schools.

“They don’t see it as money to move around and use for other purposes,” he said.

Administration officials are adamant that schools, the beneficiary of the lottery, would not lose money. Still, the institute released a poll Wednesday showing that only 30% of likely voters support the lottery borrowing (with 8% undecided), while 57% back the 1-cent sales tax increase that Schwarzenegger is grudgingly proposing as a backup if the lottery plan falters.

Although it’s not clear to me whether the 1-cent sales tax increase requires a 2/3 vote, Democrats should take note of that poll result. 57% is a pretty clear majority of Californians, suggesting that concerns voters won’t support higher taxes are overblown at best.

Halper wants to argue this is a sign that voters love their lottery, but the stats suggest otherwise:

California’s lottery is one of the more outdated in the country. And last month lottery officials reported that sales were $275 million below projections for the fiscal year ending this month.

So I don’t think it’s that voters have a strong connection to the lottery. What this instead suggests to me is that voters can see right through gimmicky proposals to provide yet another short-term budget fix, and are instead demanding long-term, permanent solutions.

Combine the lottery bonds’ low poll numbers, the dim prospects that the lottery would ever attain the sales levels necessary for the bond plan to succeed (as the article notes, lotteries need video terminals to achieve high sales figured and the tribal casinos would surely never let that happen), and the lack of enthusiasm around Sacramento for the plan and it seems that Arnold’s budget is DOA.

Unfortunately nobody has yet stepped up in Sacramento to offer an alternative plan. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s administration is a clear failure, but that doesn’t absolve Democrats of their responsibility to provide a coherent alternative. Californians are seeking real solutions, permanent budget fixes that will solve the structural revenue shortfall, protect core services, and position California for success in the 21st century economy. If we don’t solve this now, this state is going to fall permanently behind the rest of the globe, and more and more Californians are beginning to grasp this.

Now would be a good time for Democrats to step up and offer a coherent, long-term budget solution. Propose it before July 1 and start mobilizing public support for it as soon as possible. We know that Republicans will maintain a ridiculous “no new taxes” stance, but that seems to be politically untenable in this climate and is setting them up for big losses in the 2008 elections. Californians deserve a clear choice, and they deserve a budget that is sound, stable, and structurally secure.

John Laird has always believed that Arnold Schwarzenegger’s reckless cut of $6 billion from the state budget by cutting the VLF was a bad idea. And representing the 27th Assembly district, with some of the most beautiful parkland in our state (really – ever been to Point Lobos?) he has long sought ways to improve parks funding and access.

Now Laird is proposing to address both concerns with a plan to raise vehicle registration fees by $10 to pay for parks – and to help offset the cost of eliminating day use fees.

The additional funds would be a huge boost to a parks system that has accumulated $1 billion in deferred maintenance and has struggled in recent years with ranger staffing and park security, Laird said.

“This will allow us to begin to return to the level of parks we used to know,” Laird said. “It’s in a process of dying over time. Unless we find a strong, stable source (of funding), we’re just going to fall farther behind in our maintenance and have trouble acquiring more land.”…

Because cars would be able to enter parks for free, the state would lose about $40 million in entry fees it collects every year. The net funding increase would actually be $242 million.

Also, the state parks system’s entire $150 million annual budget would be available to the state’s general fund in the first year of the registration fees. Every year after that, the state’s general fund will be allowed access to $50 million less from the state parks budget until the entire amount is designated for the parks.

At that point, state parks would have a $392 million annual budget, not including any variations in the total number of registered vehicles in California….

“We can negotiate things like that if people think it’s going to be an issue,” Laird said….

A recent poll of Californians showed 74 percent favor the registration increase, Laird said.

While I’m not sure I like the idea of leaving the parks budget available to the general fund – it’s time we stopped raiding other funds because the state isn’t willing to tackle the structural revenue shortfall – and though I’d prefer a full restoration of the pre-1998 VLF, the overall concept seems sound. California’s beaches and parks should be free for day visitors, and as they are part of the state’s natural heritage, everyone should pitch in to help keep them afloat.

Besides, at many parks, folks have already found workarounds to avoid paying the day use fee – including here in Monterey County, where folks can simply park along Highway 1 and walk into most parks and beaches rather than pay the fee. This provides a more sustainable parks budget, helps address the backlog, and all with new revenues. It’s a progressive solution.

Last fall I took the LA Times to task for framing the state budget crisis as a problem of “automatic” spending, and not being sufficiently attentive to the structural revenue shortfall that is the true cause of the budget problem.

While the LA Times has shown some improvement – George Skelton’s column today is mostly if not completely on target and the incomparable David Lazarus always has some good insights – the rest of the state’s media seems slower to follow.

Take, for example, Sunday’s SacBee column from Daniel Weintraub, California  Budget 101: What went wrong, when. Weintraub’s column purports to be a “a fuller explanation of the dimensions of the problem” – but winds up repeating the same discredited arguments, namely that this is primarily a spending problem:

But the economic issues only worsened a basic, structural problem in the state budget: Spending is programmed by law to grow each year at a rate that is generally faster than tax revenues can match. Current state law would push general fund spending to $113 billion next year if nothing is done to slow it, according to the Schwarzenegger administration. Revenues, meanwhile, are projected to decline further, to about $95 billion. The budget Schwarzenegger celebrated last summer would have bridged the gap for one year at best.

Weintraub then goes on to detail the education, health care, prisons and transportation spending that makes up that growth. But nowhere in his column would you see the following:

• Tom McClintock and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s $6 billion VLF cut
• Another $6 billion in tax cuts made to the state budget after 1993
• And of course, the start of the state’s budget problem: Prop 13.

In other words, Weintraub makes it sound like the state is in a budget crisis because it is overspending, instead of because it is undertaxing. This is especially important when we consider what the state has been spending on – education, health care, and transportation – the very things California needs to remain competitive in a globalized 21st century economy.

The aforementioned George Skelton column provides an excellent contrast, showing what a more accurate explanation of our budget problem would look like:

People, one place it [additional spending under Arnold’s administration] went was for Schwarzenegger’s car tax cut. Yes, that tax cut counts as spending — about $6 billion annually. It’s because revenue from the car tax — the vehicle license fee — had gone to local governments, not the state. The governor generously agreed to replace the locals’ lost revenue with money from the state general fund. But he never replaced the tax he grandiosely whacked. Big hole. Big mistake.

Even Dan Walters, the dean of California conservative columnists, has recognized the role tax cuts have played in the budget shortfall:

The 2000 decision to spend most of a one-time, $12 billion tax windfall on permanent spending and tax cuts that could not be sustained, leading to the state’s chronic budget deficits, is another [wrongheaded move].

And to his credit, Walters has argued for higher taxes, although as part of a holistic budget reform package that contains some problematic ideas.

The fact is that if we are to finally end 30 years of budget crisis, we have to find new revenues. The notion that any new taxes cripple economic growth is absurd – both California and the federal government hiked taxes between 1990 and 1993 and it didn’t prevent the 1990s economic boom. The investment in education and mass transit helps create more investment while saving commuters, students, and workers money; and universal health care (or even a modest expansion of government-provided care) creates significant savings for businesses and employees.

A focus on spending, however, blinds us to the structural revenue shortfall and leads Californians and their politicians to assume the only way out is to slash spending – which would make the cost of doing business in California, and the cost of living here, significantly higher.

Without solving the revenue problem, we will never cure this chronic budget crisis.