I spoke at the Republican Party Labor Day picnic and made
the following remarks:
“On the November ballot is Prop 6, Repeal the Gas Tax.
This new tax could honestly be called the Caltrans Corruption Tax. We have all witnessed
Caltrans in our local area. Projects are broken into smaller and smaller
pieces. I’ve gone to Pine Grove/Hwy 88 meetings for at least 20 years now.
Caltrans appears to organize their work to employ their staff and enrich their
consultant buddies. I would consider this as structural or institutional
corruption. But Caltrans employees handing out No on Prop 6 flyers to motorists
during their work day clearly illustrates a more fundamental corruption. Plus reliable
sources claim the existence of the more traditional types of corruption in
contracts and construction, but without details. However, I will relate two of
my direct experiences with Caltrans.
With an original estimate of a mere $64 million dollars
Caltrans wanted to build an HOV- high occupancy vehicle lane- on the Hwy 50
Freeway in Sacramento. They needed an endorsement from Sacramento Transit. This
landed on my desk, but I could not find any benefit from this project. The only
bus route this lane could possibly use, the one from Orangevale, required more
time to transition in and out of the HOV lane than if it stayed in the right
lane. I turned in my negative findings. I was later layed off with this project
having been given to someone else. Caltrans did receive their needed Sacramento
Transit project endorsement by promising them $7 million for a light rail
extension as mitigation money. So in their logic light rail mitigates a busway.
This imperial arrogance surfaced when Los Angeles decided
to reopen the LA-Long Beach for an initial cost of $400 million. Caltrans’s
transportation dominance was so threatened by this that they built a billion
dollar busway on the parallel Harbor Freeway. I’ve always been curious about
how and who made this decision.
We can temper their power by repealing the gas tax. Yes
on 6 yard signs are available to order right now. Please talk to your friends
and neighbors to vote for repeal. This should also help to bring out the
nonvoting Republicans.
And there is a thing we can do to improve our roads that
doesn’t involve Caltrans: Abolish the Bicycle/Pedestrian Fund. The sales tax on gasoline goes into the Local
Transportation Fund for roads and transit of which 2% goes into this bike/ped
fund. While some has been spent such as sidewalks in Ione, most of the funds
are banked for future matching grants from Washington to build a probable
million plus bike trail. Of course, this fosters the future vision of a select
few Amadorians. However, the flow of Federal dollars into our county is a valid
and seductive argument. But the reality is quite different. As slight as these
grants possibilities are, they have also hopefully diminished with President
Trump. But to get these grants you must have an updated Bike/Ped plan. So every
ten years or so tens of thousands of dollars flow to consultants as a subsidy
to the environmental left.
The bike/ped fund is not large, about $330,000 now plus
some uncalculated overhead. But it is our money sitting there rather than
filling potholes. This fund should be abolished for us and the other 14
counties in California with under 50,000 residents. Can we contact our
supervisors, state legislative representatives and RCRC, Rural County
Representatives of California, to bring this to a vote in Sacramento?”
