Over $15 billion has been spent on the pet project of California's impeccably coiffed Governor Gavin Newsom, the supposed high-speed rail project that has been under construction for years; it was approved by voters in 2008, and to date, for all those billions, not one passenger has been moved one inch. It's one of the bluntest examples of governmental incompetence and waste we've seen in years, and as you can imagine, the California rail project is up against stiff competition.
Now we are beginning to understand where some of that wasted money has gone, and it isn't into laying any actual rail.
California’s beleaguered high-speed rail project paid more than $680,000 in dubious travel expenses to consultants connected to the project — including premium plane tickets and rideshare trips to gyms, nightclubs and an “escape room,” according to a damning new audit.
A report released Tuesday by the inspector general of the California High Speed Rail Agency found the department paid some $2 million in travel payments to four consulting firms — financial, legal and track design contractors — but handed out a slew of questionable reimbursements in the process.
Consultants billed the state for premium flight upgrades, prohibited international travel and rideshare trips to gyms, restaurants, a cigar lounge and more, according to the report obtained by The California Post.
Maybe some of that international travel was to Morocco, to see how that little Third World dictatorship is wiping California's eye in the world of passenger rail construction?
A look at some of the specifics sheds a lot of light on why this rail is still going from nowhere to nowhere.
A nearly $40 Uber Black luxury car charge for a trip of less than 1 mile in downtown Sacramento;
Premium Uber and Lyft rides to and from a restaurant, bar and nightclub between 9:40 p.m. and 2:30 a.m. that “clearly appear to be for personal enjoyment rather than for the benefit of the state;”
Numerous meals in Folsom, where CEO Choudri has a home;
Repeated reimbursed ride-hailing trips to Planet Fitness gyms in and around Sacramento, even after a supervisor wrote that “the state does not cover ride share[s] to gyms”;
$118,000 in international travel despite the contracts explicitly barring international travel.
It's a safe bet that this isn't what California taxpayers voted for.
Now, full disclosure: When this ballot initiative passed, California's governor was Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Democrat Jerry Brown made high-speed rail a priority in his fourth term. Governor Newsom has also talked up this failing project, and now it's his name that's on the blame line. Of course, in the case of Gavin Newsom, there's a long list of things for which his name is on that blame line.
This is a case where, in a sane world, these consultants would be dragged in front of the state legislature and made to answer some very pointed questions about these expenses. Some are particularly egregious: an Uber Black trip of less than a mile? Sacramento's climate is pretty mild. They could have walked. Bars and nightclubs? Rideshare trips to the gym, which were expressly forbidden? International travel?
This is fraud. California's taxpayers are getting ripped off, and that's all there is to it. It's past time the high-speed rail project was abandoned, and the state should recover what it can from this debacle and call it a lesson learned: Never let Democrats oversee a major infrastructure project.