Calif. Appeals Court Puts Contentious Bullet Train Back on Track

Previously on the lamest soap
opera ever made: A
judge would not authorize California to sell bonds to build the
first part of a leg of its boondoggle high-speed rail project and
ordered them to redo its business plan. Issues at hand included the
fact that the plan bore little resemblance any more to what voters
approved when they passed Proposition 1A back in 2008 and that the
state has not identified any sources of money to pay for the
estimated (as in, “the number that comes next is way too low”) $68
billion project beyond one short, unusable leg from Madera to
Fresno.

But late Thursday an appeals court overruled Kenny and gave the
state permission to sell bonds to start the project. From
The
Fresno Bee:

In ordering Kenny to vacate his ruling that the authority’s
preliminary financing was deficient, the appeals court said the
plan “was intended to provide guidance to the Legislature in acting
on the Authority’s appropriation request (in mid-2012). Because the
Legislature appropriated bond proceeds following receipt of the
preliminary funding plan approved by the Authority, the preliminary
funding plan has served its purpose.”

The ruling represents the second legal victory in a week for the
rail program at the appellate level. On July 24, a different
three-judge panel from the 3rd District ruled in the rail
authority’s favor and upheld Kenny’s approval of an environmental
impact report that selected the Pacheco Pass between Gilroy and Los
Banos as the preferred corridor for high-speed trains between the
Bay Area and the San Joaquin Valley. The San Francisco Peninsula
communities of Atherton and Palo Alto had challenged Kenny’s
approval of environmental work for the Bay Area-to-Central Valley
section of the rail line.

In the ruling (which can be read
here) the judges note that courts have previously upheld the
sale of bonds for public work projects that have changed
significantly from their initial proposals, which seems rather
disingenuous. The bullet train plan as it is now bears almost no
resemblance to what voters approved. The lawyer for the plaintiffs
fighting the train
takes note of what this means to the Associated Press:

Stuart Flashman, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said the ruling
“sends a really terrible message to Californians about whether they
can trust what’s on the ballot.” He had argued that the requirement
for a valid funding plan would not have been included in the ballot
measure if it was not paramount to protecting the
public interest.

“What this says, essentially, if I was your average voter and I
was looking at a ballot measure, I’m going to vote no,” he said. “I
don’t care what they promise me, I don’t believe it.”

That’s actually a pretty good lesson to learn, though it’s a
shame it required a giant, costly train system.

It’s still not over, though (it will never be over until Jerry
Brown dies). There is still a battle over whether the proposed
bullet train complies operationally within the criteria of
Proposition 1A, which mandates that the train make a full trip from
San Francisco to Los Angeles in under three hours and whether it
can operate without subsidies from the state. (Ha, ha! No.) Judge
Kenny will be tackling those claims probably later in the year.