“State needs billions to fix highways despite gas tax,” was just one headline in reaction to a report issued by Caltrans last week. The response from California taxpayers was, “you’ve got to be kidding.” California has the highest gas tax in the nation and yet, if one believes the bureaucrats, it just isn’t enough to fix our roads and highways and $6 billion more is needed annually. But the truth is we have plenty of money to meet the need if the money were spent for its intended purposes.

The claim that billions more are needed was revealed in Caltrans’ draft State Highway System Management Plan (SHSMP) for 2021. Luckily, I’m fluent in Bureaucratese and in Taxpayer. Allow me to translate from one to the other:

“The SHSMP presents a fiscally constrained allocation of available funding (translation: not enough money) for the maintenance and rehabilitation of the SHS (translation: for road repair). The 2021 SHSMP identifies a $6.1 billion annual shortfall that imposes a constraint requiring transportation objectives to be prioritized (translation: Give us the money or we’ll kill the project in your district).”

The gross misspending, waste and diversion of gas tax revenues into projects having nothing to do with roads or highways. In fact, Caltrans admits that as it tries to focus “available funding on core system assets,” it is “simultaneously increasing our investment in bicycle and pedestrian transportation modes to help achieve climate goals and provide more equity in transportation system access.”

To read the entire column, please click here.