In his column from today’s Bee, Dan Walters shows us what really happened, and he nails it.
Here is an excerpt.
Dan Walters:
Governor scores win, but there's less there than meets the eye
By Dan Walters -- Bee ColumnistPublished 2:15 am PDT Sunday, May 7, 2006
True to form, the Capitol's politicians are congratulating themselves mightily for placing a $37 billion package of bonds for transportation, education, flood control and housing on the November ballot.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, not surprisingly, is playing the loudest trumpet. He seized on infrastructure improvements as a popular cause after taking a shellacking from voters on his "year of reform" ballot measures last November and proposed a $222 billion, 10-year plan in January, including more than $60 billion of new bonds. Infrastructure, he believed, would get him back in the good graces of voters as he sought a second term.
"Today is an important day for all California," Schwarzenegger said in a statement at 3:21 a.m. Friday, just moments after the Assembly gave final approval to the bond package. "For the first time in a generation, we are making a real investment in our state's future."
More important to Republican Schwarzenegger than his own words, however, were those of Democratic legislative leaders that gave him at least some of the credit for making it happen - just the sort of thing that the governor might use in a re-election campaign ad....
....Politics aside, a final word about the package itself. Like all such highly trumpeted political accomplishments, there's less there than meets the eye. Infrastructure has been sadly neglected, and this is a significant amount of money, but it's really just a fraction of what's needed - especially for transportation. It ignores such pressing needs as water storage while adding to the state's already immense general obligation debt without imposing much-needed revenues to offset the cost, such as higher gas taxes or flood control fees.
It is, in other words, a down payment with borrowed money, not the miraculous panacea that it will be depicted as being.
