![_Madonna's "highly psychotic" Stalker Wandered Off From State Hospital Last Week, Is Still At Large [UPDATED]](http://laist.com/assets_c/2012/02/robert-dewey-hoskins-thumb-250x250-693122.jpg)
Where Are Our Priorities?
Just when you thought the public transportation and traffic situation in Los Angeles couldn't possibly get any worse... it did. Yes, in a true stroke of brilliance, the State Assembly decided to cut close to $1.3 billion in funding from mass transit transportation in this year's budget bill. As Siel over at green LA girl notes, this means we can probably kiss that planned Expo line expansion from Culver City to Santa Monica good-bye.
In the wake of a recent report released by the state Department of Finance predicting California's population to balloon by almost 75% over the next half-century (close to 60 million people by 2050), it is inexplicable and indefensible for our lawmakers to decide to gut some much needed expansions to our already under-financed public transportation system. Not only will these cuts prompt a higher level of traffic congestion and air pollution, they will make future urban planning projects for the city that much harder to implement, as Matthew Yglesias explains:
"California faces a budget deficit so they cut $1 billion from mass transit funding. This kind of thing, of course, is crucial to understanding the urban/suburban/exurban balance in American life. We get sprawl because people want to move out to these far flung places. But by the same token, nobody would want to move out to them if roads didn't go there. A patch of affordable land near a well-maintained road that's connected to a network of other well-maintained roads is an attractive place to live. A patch of affordable land that's connected by a crude trail to a dirt road isn't.Similarly, if you never make building and maintaining the infrastructure of less car-dependent lifestyles a priority, people wind up not wanting to live those lifestyles. It's all perfectly understandably, but it'll ultimately be very, very, very hard to get climate emissions under control without some increase in the number of families living with fewer than one car per adult."
And while transportation inarguably appears to the bill's biggest loser, it is, by no means, its only one.
Other harsh setbacks in this plan — that our Governator has deemed "a budget the people of California can be proud of" — include cuts in spending for the treatment of drug offenders, the repealing of a tax break for teachers designed to let them write-off school supplies they paid for and the postponing of a small cost-of-living increase for many of the state's disabled residents. To get the Assembly Republicans to sign onto the bill, Speaker Fabian Nunez even decided to pass a series of rider bills that would've created a $600 million tax break — supposedly to encourage Hollywood to pump out more movies and to grant large corporations tax reductions.
Fortunately, Don Perata, President Pro Tem of the Senate (which has yet to approve the bill), has vowed to kill this last minute deal, blasting it as "an irresponsible action to take in the dark of night, without any debate or discussion." While he supports the rest of the bill, this impasse could result in the budget plan not being ratified until after the legislature's month-long recess unless Arnold successfully intercedes to twist a few more Republicans' arms (which he appears to have little chance of doing).
It's sad to see that legislators still can't seem to differentiate needless spending (which our national government has been doing to the tune of over $9 billion a month) from worthwhile investment.
Photo by svanes via flickr