A bullet train is hard to resist. But it's a luxurious toy compared with California's more pressing infrastructure needs: A dependable, clean, stable state water system. Expanded local commuter rail and transit. Even pothole filling, not only on local roads but interstates.
Sure, children's hospitals should be top-of-the-line. But $345 million remains from a 2004 bond measure. And nearly 800,000 California kids don't have health insurance, largely because the state can't afford it.
Then there's Prop. 10, the T. Boone Pickens boondoggle. It authorizes $5 billion in bond borrowing, mostly to finance rebates for buyers of vehicles that burn alternative fuels, such as the natural gas that Pickens' company supplies. The bonds would cost taxpayers $335 million annually for 30 years, long after the vehicles have been junked.
Schwarzenegger opposes the Pickens prop. He supports the Cal-Vet bond.
The best buy on the ballot, by far, is Prop. 12 for California veterans.
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george.skelton@latimes.com
