CALIFORNIA SUPREME COURT COULD STOP BULLET TRAIN

The California Supreme Court threw a giant obstacle on the California bullet train’s track, ruling that the state agencies cannot escape the state’s environmental laws by claiming federal laws supersede them.

The case from which the argument against the California High Speed Rail Authority derives, City of San Diego vs. Board of Trustees of the California State University, revolved around the board wanting to expand the campus of San Diego State University (SDSU) to accommodate more than 10,000 additional students in the next few years. The board argued that CSU “may not lawfully pay to mitigate the off-campus environmental effects of its projects unless the Legislature makes an appropriation for that specific purpose.”

As explained by The National Law Review:

The California Environmental Quality Act (“CEQA”) mandates that, before approving a project, a public agency must first identify the project’s significant adverse environmental impacts, and then mitigate those impacts by adopting feasible, enforceable mitigation measures or selecting feasible alternatives that avoid the impacts. If mitigation is infeasible, the agency may approve the project despite adverse impacts only by finding that unmitigated effects are outweighed by the project’s benefits.

The board attempted to use City of Marina v. Board of Trustees (2009) to buttress its argument, as the court had ruled, “[A] state agency’s power to mitigate its project’s effects through voluntary mitigation payments is ultimately subject to legislative control; if the Legislature does not appropriate the money, the power does not exist.” The board argued that the court’s statement prohibited it from funding off-site mitigation without express appropriation by the Legislature.

But the court called the Marina language overstated, and ruled against CSU, stating, “In mitigating the effects of its projects, a public agency has access to all of its discretionary powers and not just the power to spend appropriations.” The court added:

CEQA does not authorize an agency to proceed with a project that will have significant unmitigated effects on the environment, based simply on a weighing of those effects against the project’s benefits, unless the measures to mitigate those effects are truly infeasible. Such a rule, even were it not wholly inconsistent with the relevant statute would tend to displace the fundamental obligation of ̳[e]ach public agency [to] mitigate or avoid the significant effects on the environment of projects that it carries out or approves whenever it is feasible to do so.

Via: Breitbart

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Bullet train puts California’s future in the hole

The California High Speed Rail Authority is in damage-control mode in Southern California.

Planning is underway for the Palmdale-to-Burbank section of the $68-billion bullet train, and the rail authority is required to solicit community input on proposed routes. On Monday, Team Bullet Train was at the Santa Clarita Activities Center to comply with that legal mandate.

The strain was evident. “Santa Clarita has been very effective at vocalizing its concerns to the High Speed Rail Authority,” a rail official stated with cool irritation.

“I will lead the City Council to file a lawsuit if it goes through Santa Clarita,” Council member TimBen Boydston said later.

Public meetings usually feature members of the audience asking questions of a panel of officials and experts. Everyone can hear the answers.

Not this time. The rail authority’s meeting took place in two large rooms, with chairs set up in one room and computer displays in the other. Two officials gave a presentation in the room with the chairs but would not take questions from the people sitting in them.

“We prefer that people ask their questions individually of the experts at the open house,” an information officer said, referring to the room where engineering and environmental consultants stood near their displays like bored vendors at a trade show.

So none of the other people attending the presentation heard the experts tell me that the automobile was “a 50-year experiment that did not work out well,” or that “Ansel Adams opposed the Golden Gate Bridge, and one day opposition to high-speed rail will seem just as ridiculous,” or that “we will learn from the Europeans” how to safely evacuate train passengers from a tunnel 60 feet underground in the event of a fire or explosion.

Actually, automobile sales have been rising since 1892, Ansel Adams was a photographer of nature’s untouched beauty, and the CHSRA’s own literature on project pros and cons lists “Fire & Life Safety” as one of the “cons” of the “HSR deep tunnel.”

Via: California Political Review

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Another Funding Twist for the CA Bullet Train

LETS JUST DUMP MONEY INTO A WHOLE!!!

There’s been another funding twist for the California bullet-train project. The Federal Railroad Administration has agreed to delay the due date for $180 million in state matching funds for the project from April 1 to July 1,  according to a press release from Rep. Jeff Denham’s office.

This gives Gov. Jerry Brown and the California High-Speed Rail Authority breathing room to work with the Legislature and try to convince lawmakers to allocate $250 million in state cap-and-trade auction revenues for the rail project.

Denham, a Turlock Republican, considers the move risky.  This is from his Feb. 21 press release:

“The Federal Railroad Administration [FRA] is protecting the Authority yet again and putting California taxpayers at greater risk. It has long been clear that the Authority would be unable to provide the funds required in their grant agreement. In December 2012, the FRA changed their agreement to allow for a tapered match rather than the standard concurrent match. Now they’ve changed the agreement again. With billions in federal taxpayer dollars on the line, what changes are next from the FRA? The American people – and Californian taxpayers – deserve to see their money used responsibly.”

But there are also additional important changes in the federal funding agreement outlined in the letter that rail authority CEO Jeff Morales released Feb. 20. The new funding contribution plan shifts a large amount of funding responsibility in coming years to the federal government, with a significant decrease in California’s contribution compared with the original plan, according to bullet-train financial expert William Warren. (Along with William Grindley, Warren has co-authored numerous briefing papers regarding rail-authority data.)

U.S. taxpayers at risk for single-state project

These changes leave the U.S. taxpayers in all 50 states with more exposure while pushing a troubled, legally questionable California state project forward.

Via: California Political Review

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California: Coming Days Pivotal in Bullet-Train Fight

Friday — or sooner — will see a crucial development in the five-year fight over implementation of Proposition 1A, the 2008 ballot measure that provided $9.95 billion in bond seed money for a statewide bullet-train project while establishing a state law to ensure the funds are properly sent.

That is the deadline for the California High-Speed Rail Authority to respond to a landmark ruling by Sacramento Superior Court Judge Michael Kenny, who is hearing a series of related challenges to the rail authority’s project. On Aug. 16, Kenny released a decision related to a lawsuit filed by Kings County, Hanford farmer John Tos and homeowner Aaron Fukuda that agreed with their arguments that the rail authority would be breaking state law in two ways if it began construction of the project, as is now planned for 2014.

The judge held that the state had failed to identify the sources for the entire $31 billion needed to complete the bullet train’s “initial operating segment” from Merced to the San Fernando Valley and to obtain all necessary environmental approvals for that segment.

Instead of ordering the project be halted, however, Kenny scheduled a “remedies” hearing for Nov. 8 at which the state would discuss how it planned to address the deficiencies in its business plan and the inadequacies of its environmental reviews. The plaintiffs have already sent Kenny their proposed order. It argues that based on his Aug. 16 decision, the judge has no choice but to “permanently enjoin” the rail authority from proceeding with construction until it was in compliance with state law.

Set grounds for appeal — or accept likely long delays?

Observers of the Kings County lawsuit say rail authority officials — and Gov. Jerry Brown, who emerged as a vigorous project backer in late 2011 — have a starkly difficult decision to make in their remedies filing.

If they accept Kenny’s interpretation of Proposition 1A, their remedies would delay construction indefinitely and possibly permanently. It’s not just that full environmental reviews will take years, with project opponents having many opportunities to employ the NIMBY tactics long honed by California environmentalists. It’s the daunting task of finding more than $20 billion in firm new funding for the project. In the sequester era, the federal spigot that previously provided more than $3 billion in funds has been turned off. No private investors are interested without the sort of revenue or ridership guarantees that are forbidden under Proposition 1A.

Via: California Political Review

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California: Bullet Train Backers Defiant in the Face of the Law

Promoters of the California bullet train are behaving like a salesman who gets his foot in the door and won’t take “no” for an answer.

It was 2008 when voters approved $10 billion in bonds to kick start a high speed rail (HSR) building program. But they were promised a system whose total cost would be $45 billion, that additional money would be secured from sources including private investment and that the system would meet environmental concerns.

An expert study sponsored by the Reason Foundation and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Foundation showed the actual cost for this extravagant plan would approach $100 billion or more. “There are no genuine financial projections that indicate there will be sufficient funds,” the authors wrote.

However, the campaign for passage sponsored by special interest backers — including unions and contractors — focused on the promise that passengers could be whisked from Los Angeles to San Francisco in a little over two hours making the project look like a Ferrari at the cost of a used Ford Pinto.

Once the voters had given their approval and the actual costs of about $95 billion were revealed, with no private investment in sight, the voters started to catch on that they had been bilked. But Gov. Brown, who has taken ownership of the bullet train project with almost a boyish glee, responded to the public’s anger by pushing the High Speed Rail Authority to adjust the plan downward to one costing a more modest $65 billion. This reduction would be accomplished by using a “blended” approach, meaning that only part of the system would be high speed, while the rest would rely on conventional “low speed” rail facilities. As now envisioned, the plan is starting to look like a used Pinto at the cost of a Ferrari.

Needless to say, the failure to meet so many of the commitments contained within the ballot measure has generated numerous lawsuits. After Sacramento Superior Court Judge Michael Kenny deliberated on the merits of one such suit, he determined that the High Speed Rail authority “abused its discretion by approving a funding plan that did not comply with the requirements of the law.” Gov. Brown remained defiant. “It’s not a setback,” he told reporters, adding, that the ruling “didn’t stop our spending, so we’re continuing. As we speak we’re spending money, we’re moving ahead.”

Via: California Political Review

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