Waste, Fraud, and Abuse

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Auditor: California $127 billion in the red

March 29, 2013 By John Seiler It’s official: California is broke. According to a new report by state Auditor Elaine Howle: “unrestricted net assets totaled a negative $127.2 billion. Restricted net assets are dedicated for specified uses and are not available

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Bond betrayal: Did college district dupe OC Tax on PLA?

March 29, 2013 By John Hrabe When Orange County voters approved $698 million in new borrowing for the Coast Community College District last fall, they received reassurances from the county’s preeminent taxpayer organization that the measure took a responsible approach

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Bullet train: Is L.A. Times’ beat reporter ashamed of edit page?

March 28, 2013 By Chris Reed There’s been quite a bit of good reporting done on the bullet-train fiasco. Mike Rosenberg of the San Jose Mercury-News and Lance Williams of California Watch jump to mind. But Ralph Vartabedian of the

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Sacramento arena: A ‘Field of Schemes’

March 27, 2013 By Katy Grimes Sacramento officials have lost all ability to reason, and instead are letting emotions and delusions of grandeur drive their decision over a downtown sports arena. Arenas are nothing more that fields of schemes, and the

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Stockton bankruptcy judge’s pedigree, history offer hope

March 27, 2013 By Chris Reed The stakes are immense in the four-day trial in Sacramento’s federal bankruptcy court this week. The New York Times frames the issue well: “Wall Street is taking America’s biggest pension fund to court this

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Alameda County ‘secretary’ will retire wealthy

March 26, 2013 By Katy Grimes Is anyone still buying the idea that government workers are “public servants,” and so valuable they must be paid so much more than their counterparts in the private sector? Or are some just better

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Attack of the artificial crises

March 25, 2013 By Steven Greenhut SACRAMENTO — Not many of my friends or neighbors are sitting on pins and needles, worrying that the world as we know it will end as the federal government “slashes” spending as part of the

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Sacramento jumps the shark on arena deal

March 24, 2013 By Katy Grimes Some people want something so badly, they’ll sell their souls to the devil, they’ll ignore facts, reason and important details.  A case in point is Sacramento politicians, and the ongoing arena obsession. Sacramento’s Mayor

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Good and bad news on bullet train(s) front

March 24, 2013 By Chris Reed As I wrote last week, the budget that Senate Democrats have embraced contains so little discretionary funding for California’s bullet-train project that it is impossible to see how the $68 billion project ever gets

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Even L.A. Times hints sequester cuts are theater

March 24, 2013 By Chris Reed The Federal Aviation Administration’s announcement that 11 air control towers in California will shut down on Sunday, April 7, because of sequestration cuts to the federal budget is offered up by the administration as

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