"SACRAMENTO, Calif. — State Treasurer Bill Lockyer is playing Scrooge, admonishing Capitol politicians that they can’t have everything they want — or even think they need."
It’s a sound message not just for the politicians but also for the California public.
The state’s credit card is about maxed out, the veteran Democratic warns. Payments on bond borrowing are becoming uncomfortably high, crowding out funds for universities, health care, parks — and all the other government services being slashed these days.
Or, as Assembly budget chairwoman Noreen Evans, D-Santa Rosa, told a committee hearing Monday, bond payments are “the Pac-Man eating up the general fund” — the state’s main checking account that again is running a deficit. The latest projection is a $21 billion hole for the next 18 months.
Lockyer’s lecture has broad implications for rebuilding California’s crumbling infrastructure.
One example: It could give many voters pause about an $11.1 billion water bond issue that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature recently placed on November’s ballot — especially if the politicians don’t strip out the pork, such as bike trails and “watershed education centers.”
Some of the bond’s goodies “seem only remotely water-related,” notes Lockyer, who hasn’t taken a position on the measure.
But the treasurer’s biggest concern about the water bond is that much of it would be financed by taxpayers. He would rather that more of it be paid off by water users through higher fees, as the original state water project was financed. Then the bond wouldn’t be gnawing away so much at the general fund.