The dream of a high speed rail between Los Angeles and San Francisco is very far from realization.
The Jim Patterson, a Republican State Assemblyman from Fresno, says the project has turned out to be a 119-mile “rump railroad.”
“This is utterly, I think, one of the most outrageous failures of a bureaucracy in the State of California.”
He says a recent state audit has shown that the Authority deliberately misspent federal funds allocated for the project.
“I don’t throw the word lie around willy-nilly, but from the very beginning, I think this High Speed Rail Authority has been making it up as it goes along. When it has been discovered that it is not telling the truth and lying, they make excuses. They try to blame it on some other circumstances. The long and short of this is, they are broke. The only money they have is to complete this little 119-mile section. And by their own admission in the hearing – I had to probe quite a bit to get them to tell the truth – but their intention is essentially to deed billions of dollars’ worth of this construction over to Amtrak.”
He says the only solution is to go back to the voters and tell them the truth and ask them if they want to invest more in the project, or end it.
Jim Patterson was a guest on McIntyre in the Morning.
By Sandy Wells
KABC News
