The voters agreed to increase gasoline taxes (already the highest in the nation) so that the monies can be used to fix their crumbling highways. Not so fast. From American Thinker:
California's Gavin Newsom decides state's big, voter-approved gas tax won't be for repairing highways after all
Last November, Democrats hailed California voters' rejection of Proposition 6, a law to scrap the state's 2017 massive gas taxes. They crowed that Californians were glad to pay five bucks at the pump when the rest of the U.S. average was half that. Big reason? Because $3 billion of those takings would save the state's tumbledown highways and go to repair roads and bridges. The rejection came after a voters showed strong signs of wanting to get rid of the tax until a barrage of television ads ran, warning that any vote to repeal the gas tax would mean the state's decrepit highways and bridges would go wanting for repair funds:
A vote to repeal the gas tax would leave our highways wastelands! Highway apocalypse if this gas-tax repeal went through! Saving the whales became saving the highways, and as shriller and shriller ads ran, voter sentiment shifted, and the tax was voted to remain.
Not so fast buster...
Welp. Turns out the tax wasn't about repairing roads and highways after all. On Sept. 20, in a little noted maneuver, Governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order to divert the tax cash away from crumbling highway repair to greenie political pet projects instead. To heck with the highways; it was time to save the Earth.
All the money is being put into rail projects. The voters got suckered. The 2020 elections should be interesting...
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