California Bullet Train Officials Aim to Use Federal Funds to Facilitate the Start of Construction

In their response to a judge’s ruling that the California Bullet Train Project has failed to comply with spending controls put in place by California voters, California High Speed Rail Authority (“CHSA”) officials are contending that the state may use federal funds to start construction of the first operational portion of the train system.

In 2008, California voters chose to impose restrictions on the agency’s spending; one such restriction requires that the agency identify each source of funding necessary to complete the primary operational segment–CHSA has not met this requirement, thus groundbreaking is on hold.

Residents of Kings County and the Central Valley brought a suit against the CHSA arguing that the state has largely ignored the restrictions and protections put into place by the 2008 bond measure that, among other things, reduces the likelihood that the train project will run out of money leaving taxpayers to foot the bill for a partially-built, unusable transportation system.

The state of California has been attempting to pull together the $31 billion necessary to build the first operational segment that would go from Merced to the San Fernando Valley, but has come up short by a staggering amount.  The state now argues that the spending restrictions do not apply to federal grants. Even though the state was initially not allowed to access federal funds until it matched those with its own, the current presidential administration, in a showing of strong support for the project, has given California a “green light” to use the federal funds now, and match them at a later date.

Those in opposition argue that the state’s contention that it may use federal funds without matching them simultaneously is unfounded and remind the taxpayers that they could very well find themselves indebted to the federal government for billions of dollars, and only have an unusable segment of the California Bullet Train Project to show for it.

The next hearing is scheduled for November 8, 2013.

Read the original article by the Los Angeles Times, here.