Buh-Buh-Buh-Billions: CA High Speed Boondoggle Needs at Least Seven More

Is there anything in California that isn’t a money-munching Sarlaac hiding in a gravelpit?

Good Lord. It is amazing how it never seems to end with these people for one thing or another.

 The state’s one hand is repeatedly thrust out for charity, oddly enough in designated sums that always somehow seem to start with a ‘B.’ 

Following a one-day trip by a delegation of City Council members led by Mayor Karen Bass to Sacramento, state lawmakers requested nearly $2 billion in funding to aid Los Angeles amid a projected $1 billion budget deficit next fiscal year as a result of January’s wildfires and other challenges.

That would be buh-buh-buh-billions with a ‘B.’

California Gov. Gavin Newsom requested nearly $40 billion in wildfire recovery aid in a letter to members of Congress on Friday.

While crying poor mouth, they simultaneously blow millions and billions through the other hand on the most ludicrous, laughable, vanity project driven crap (Cow fart tracking satellite network, anyone?). Once committed, the state steadfastly refuses to cut back or, God forbid scrap entirely, any previous epically mismanaged and/or enormously expensive boondoggles that have gone nowhere, produced nothing of value, delivered nothing, and are sucking the lifeblood out of state coffers augmented by a fair amount of US taxpayer dollars.

Will there ever be a Bones moment for any project in California if there is one last, wretched dollar to be gleaned and wasted from somewhere?

Such is the conundrum at the moment, as the people with the adding machines and accountants’ certifications told the California State Assembly Wednesday morning. 

The CA Legislative’s Analyst’s Office delivered the dire news that, by the summer of 2026, it looked like the already truncated line of Gavin Newsom’s high speed railway to nowhere would be still nowhere if someone didn’t poop at least another seven BILLION dollars.

WE HAVE NO PLAN

Lawmakers on the Assembly’s budget subcommittee focusing on transportation learned about the budget gap in a hearing this morning.

That hearing happened hours after Gov. Newsom released his latest podcast episode, in which he spends a chunk of time defending the project.

— Ashley Zavala (@ZavalaA) March 27, 2025

The operative phrase is ‘at least.‘ The Boondoggle Deluxe Edition will most probably require more. Quelle surprise.

The California Legislative Analyst’s Office told lawmakers in an Assembly Transportation budget hearing Wednesday that California High-Speed Rail needs $7 billion in funding by June 2026 or else the first Bakersfield to Merced leg of the system could be delayed further into the 2030’s.

According to LAO Principal Fiscal & Policy Analyst Helen Kerstein, who delivered the $7 billion shortfall figure to the Assembly, that amount isn’t guaranteed either. She warned that they may need more than that amount in funding to shore up the gap, especially with $4 billion in federal funding for the project now on the line in Washington.

Classically, the people who are the ones ‘in charge’ of building this high speed rail – who would have answers pertinent to questions the people who are being asked for billions of additional dollars to flush might have – couldn’t be bothered to prepare a timely update report for the Assembly members at the hearing.

WHUT

…While the hearing was expected to be fairly long on Wednesday, the High-Speed Rail Authority (CHRSA) did not submit a complete project update for lawmakers to review, leading to a shortened meeting.

“We are diligently working to get that information respect to scope, schedule, ridership,” expressed CHRSA Chief of Staff Michael Tollefson.

I’m not sure what else Chief of Staff Tollefson is working on that could possibly interfere with gathering the data to continue having beaucoup amounts of cha-ching his little project needs shoveled his way. Whatever it is, it must be very important to blow these people off. I mean, he’s the head bubba on a project that’s been on the drawing board since 2008, only started laying track two months ago, and has the federal government threatening to pull their portion of the funding entirely, thanks to cost overruns and mismanagement.

WHAT – ME WORRY?

There’s nothing as stupidly self-defeating as reinforcing someone’s impression of a colossal waste of precious dollars, compounded by general incompetence. Particularly when the President of the United States has already announced you’ve got a target on your asterisk.

What a moo-ron.

…Originally estimated to cost $33 billion in 2008 with a San Francisco to Los Angeles line  to open by 2028, the California high speed rail system has since ballooned to $128 billion, and $135 billion+, with an estimated partial completion somewhere in the late 2030’s. And last year, CHRSA actually confirmed that the system still needed $100 billion to link up San Francisco and Los Angeles. The true cost may also be much higher than anticipated, with some estimates during the Governorship of Jerry Brown putting that figure at around $350 billion.

President Trump announced last month that he would be launching an investigation into CHSRA, fulfilling a promise his administration made to look into the system. Specifically, he noted that the high cost of the program was mind-boggling, echoing decades of criticisms within California that the project has been nothing more than a boondoggle. That promise came true a few weeks later, with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announcing a compliance review of funding for the California High-Speed Rail Authority, with $4 billion of federal funding currently at stake for California. The $7 billion shortfall announcement on Wednesday only worsens the prospects for the project, with both a longer delay and even higher costs likely to come as a result.

Now he’s got everyone pissed at him. Well done, dude.

The sad thing is, while apparently someone in Sacramento seems to know what the definition of insanity is, they are adept at that insane repetition.

They wrote the buh-buh-buh book on boondoggles.