Two follow-ups on previous editorials; or, “Your state government at work.”
First, the California Department of Motor Vehicles. We had urged the Legislature order an audit of a maddening state bureaucracy, known for inflicting torturous delays on hapless motorists trying to register a vehicle or obtain a driver’s license.
Last week, legislators in two hearings raked the DMV and its director, Jean Shiomoto, over the coals for the long waits for service. Lawmakers reminded Shiomoto that the DMV is the most frequent contact Californians have with their state government, and its failures undermine public confidence in that government.
Shiomoto apologized and said, “The public deserves better.” She also noted the federal government is demanding secure “REAL ID” driver’s licenses, while the Legislature had previously ordered licenses for undocumented immigrants and made the DMV a voter registration agency.
The point is that the DMV’s workload has increased. All the more reason for legislators to authorize state Auditor Elaine Howle to examine DMV operations, and to report back on why service has deteriorated so dramatically — and to come up with ideas on how to fix it.
CALmatters columnist Dan Walters noted that the DMV fiasco is just “the latest example of embarrassing mismanagement by state officials in recent years.” These include fiscal irregularities in the state Parks and Recreation Department, failures of expensive information technology programs, cost overruns in bridge upgrades and the near-failure of Oroville Dam because of shoddy spillway design and construction. We’ll deal with another boondoggle in a moment.
But the legislative committee that oversees the auditor’s office refused to approve a DMV report. Walters reported that three Democratic state senators refused to vote for the DMV audit after Gov. Jerry Brown’s office intervened, saying they would address the DMV issues.
Walters said Brown clearly didn’t want an audit report that likely would be critical of his administration issued months after he leaves office in January and that “state senators, who are supposed to put the public’s interests first, put party loyalty first, caved in to the governor’s self-interest and demonstrated anew the politicization of the auditor’s office.”
Then there’s the high-speed rail project.
The Los Angeles-to-San Francisco bullet train was originally expected to cost as little as $33 billion. The most recent cost estimates are as high as $98 billion. Originally projected to be running by 2020, the new timetable says it’s more likely to be finished by 2033.
It’s time for state lawmakers to concede the escalating projected cost of the train will wipe out more pressing needs. That was the takeaway from a House of Representatives rail subcommittee oversight hearing on the project earlier this month, with members of the committee expressing skepticism of the proposal.
“It just continues to confound me why we would keep going on this. We can build 20 dams for the price of what they want to spend on high-speed rail,” said Rep. Doug LaMalfa, R-Richvale.
“It’s unfortunate that Sacramento doesn’t have the same political commitment to providing a reliable water supply to California as it does to funding a bullet train that has not, is not and will never deliver on the promises that were originally made to voters,” said Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Turlock, who a decade ago supported the bullet train. Even accepting that a high-speed rail project could be beneficial to the state, the current plan is not the way to go.
It is doubtful that if voters knew the project would drag out this long or cost as much as it’s expected to that they would still support it.
It’s time to scrap the bullet train and focus on more tangible and pressing needs.
And here’s another way to look at it: If the state can’t operate the Department of Motor Vehicles efficiently and conveniently, along with a host of other government failures, why should we believe the bullet train will be done right?
