How desperate is Governor Moonbeam to get his Bullet Train train? Enough to gets his hands into Cap and Trade funds to prove to a Superior Court Judge that the State can pay for it. Dan Walters had a good column in the $acBee today. In part,
While creating the new revenue stream might – emphasis, might – help persuade the court that there is a legally sufficient financial plan for the initial bullet train segment from the San Joaquin Valley into Southern California, as the law requires, the legality of such a shift is itself legally suspect. The cap-and-trade law says that proceeds are to be used specifically to lower California’s greenhouse-gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, but the Legislature’s budget analyst, Mac Taylor, says bullet train construction would actually increase emissions “for many years” and a decrease, if any, would not occur until decades later.