California Priorities: No Funding For School Buses, But Billions More For High Speed Rail

Rob Port  •  January 19, 2012

According to the LA Times, “Gov. Jerry Brown announced that lagging state revenue would require eliminating all school transportation funding for the rest of this fiscal year.”

Meanwhile, Governor Brown is also pushing full-speed-ahead with a $98.5 billion high speed rail project:

The bullet train is a $98.5-billion project that so far has generated only about $10 billion in state bond money to be repaid by all California taxpayers, plus $3.3 billion in federal dollars. Brown is still $85 billion short.

Just so we’re clear, no more money for busing kids for school, but billions more for a boondoggle high speed rail project that won’t ever be worth what the taxpayers will pay to build it.

And we wonder why California’s budget is a mess.

(via Bruce Oksol)

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  • Anonymous

    California should just close the public schools and impliment statewide home schooling via the internet. The private schools can educate the rich kids and the rest can make do with whatever comes off line.

    • I H8 GOPers

      I thoughtthat respoonse would be coming. Education is the antedote to conservatism.

      • JustRuss

        No, indoctrination is the antedote to conservatism. Give a man “facts” and he will believe anything you tell him. Teach a man to think for himself and he will question everything you tell him.

        • I H8 GOPers

          Don’t tell Glans Beck.

      • Jfisher17

        And logic is the antedote to Governor Moombeam. 

        • Jfisher17

          “moonbeam’

  • Jamermorrow

    Kids walking to school might end the obesity problem. More things like this are going to happen. The U.S. has been living above its means for many years. We have a phony economy and the country is not near as wealthy as people think.

    • JustRuss

      A block or two to school, let them walk. Any farther and you are endangering the children AND adding lots of transit time to the beginning and end of the day often in the dark. 

      In large cities like NY and Chicago where they have a good public transit system in place already I know they don’t run school buses in all districts. I don’t have a problem with giving an older kid (2nd or 3rd grade?) a bus pass.  I know there are things that can go wrong with that plan, but you work with what you’ve got.

      The real problem here is that the money that COULD be applied to school transportation is being used for useless trains. If there were no money available I’d have more sympathy for the city’s decision.

  • borborygmi

    Scrap the rail line and put the $ to the buses.

  • Jared Steffen

    I think these two projects have nothing to do with one-another. The state is not cutting money from schools so that they can fund this transportation project. Just because they’re happening at the same time means nothing. I voted for the rail project and plan to use the system they put in place on a regular basis. Our public transit desperately needs to be improved and doing so will improve the economy greatly. Construction projects always revive an economy as long as we use our own resources, which this project will.

    The funding for these school buses are being pulled to maintain other programs that really need not be in place. We’re talking about pensions for board members in certain political organizations. We’re talking about pulling money from essential programs to cover the hides of politicians who generate a staggering amount of financial entropy. You can blame transit projects until you’re blue in the face, but the real source of the issue will still remain.

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