Ian Choudri, the CEO of California’s high-speed rail agency, resigned on Wednesday amid allegations of improper spending on travel for consultants. It’s hard to blame him for not understanding that he’s not supposed to waste money.
An inspector general’s report in September found that the agency covered about $600,000 in travel expenses for consultants that did not appear to be business-related. This included first-class airfares and premium ride-shares above the state’s reimbursement limits.
Choudri disputes the findings, and perhaps there are extenuating circumstances, but the report got one big thing wrong for sure. It said that these expenses constituted “behavior inconsistent with the Authority’s role as the steward of public resources.”
Sadly, there is nothing inconsistent about wasting money. The California High-Speed Rail Authority was established in 1996 and, 30 years later, oversees as many miles of operational railroad as The Post does, which is zero.
Voters approved bonds to construct a line connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles in 2008, with an estimated completion date in 2020. Many children born in the year the referendum passed will have graduated from college by the time a partial segment between Merced and Bakersfield is expected to open.
The entire project was initially supposed to cost $33 billion. The authority has already spent roughly half that amount and is nowhere near halfway done. It has laid no track and has not even begun construction anywhere near Los Angeles or San Francisco.
The latest cost estimate is $126 billion to $230 billion, which is bureaucratese for “we have no idea, but it’s going to cost a ton more.” Los Angeles and San Francisco aren’t projected to be connected until 2039, making the delay seven years longer than the whole project was initially supposed to take.
Building 61 disconnected “structures” is what the authority lists as an accomplishment on its website. At a cost of over $16 billion, these serve no passengers. That is a vastly more scandalous waste of money than expensing an upgrade to a first-class flight or Uber Black.
Every billion dollars poured into a railroad to nowhere is a billion dollars unavailable for infrastructure that Californians would actually use.
Choudri will be replaced on an interim basis by the state finance director under outgoing Gov. Gavin Newsom (D). Surely the new person will know how to waste the people of California’s money the right way.
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