Freddie Kruger Train back from the Dead!

Just when one though their pocketbook was safe from Irvine's greedy hands for its fantasy train. The Irvine city council in its usual infinite wisdom revives this fantasy train from the dead! Never mind that the voters of Irvine said no to the Centerline before in a previous vote,

The main motive may be so that they don't lose their $120 million dollar "state grant" for rail. But then Irvine would need to secure another matching $120 million in funds, plus $38 million in construction costs, and annual operating costs of $7 million. So The Irvine city council would spend a bare minimum of $200 million over a 10 year period to not lose their $120 million dollar state "grant". This comes out to a ratio of spending $5 to get back $3. But then again, it is only the taxpayers money they are squandering on such a frivolous project. The city council and The Irvine Co. should take an one way trip on a train out of town for good. Better yet, get them all in The Great Orange Gasbag, cut the cable loose and let them float away!

This editorial and letter appeared in the OC Register

Orange County Register
July 15, 2007

STEVEN GREENHUT

The Lure of other People's Money

sgreenhut@ocregister.com

Watching how my kids spend money, I'm constantly reminded of something rather obvious, but still instructive: They are far less profligate with their own cash than they are with mine. What's 40 bucks for a concert if it comes right out of Dad's wallet? But that same concert is far less of a must-see event if they've got to spring for it out of their own piggy banks. My kids would explain this economic principle with one word: "Duh."

People are much more careful with their own resources than with others' resources or with those resources that are publicly owned. Nevertheless, the general public, and politicians in particular, forget how this lesson applies to everyday life. Is it surprising that health care costs keep going up the more that people rely on third parties to pay for the bills? When someone else pays, we become far less concerned about what such a service might cost.

The Other People's Money syndrome is even more pronounced when it comes to government officials spending cash out of the vast pool of taxpayer-funded resources. Politicians have no disincentive to spending OPM. They buy votes from various well-organized constituencies (e.g., public-sector unions, farmers, benefit-seeking corporations, transit riders). H.L. Mencken said that every election is "an advance auction of stolen goods." And so government gets bigger and more free-wheeling in its spending. We've reached the point where even wastes of hundreds of millions of dollars induce more shrugs than outrage.

Here are examples, from just a few days' of newspaper reading.

• The Orange County Transportation Authority put the kibosh on its billion-dollar-plus CenterLine light-rail proposal after a political backlash took place. Rail isn't a horrible idea per se, but the enormous cost in no way could justify the handful of riders who would have used it, especially in a spread-out suburban county where there isn't much suburb-to-inner-city commuting. But the Irvine City Council still holds hopes that transit will one day push people out of their cars and off the freeways. Tuesday it approved its own system that is meant to jump-start the countywide rail proposal. Irvine Councilman Larry Agran gloated Tuesday that the five-mile-long rail line connecting the Great Pork– itself a massive boondoggle and waste of prime public assets – with the Irvine Spectrum and Irvine train station is "the backbone of a system we need to build upon." This tiny system, by the way, will cost $280 million in tax funds, plus another $7 million a year to operate. And these things always have cost overruns.

"They'd be better off not spending any of this money," Charles Lave, a UCI professor emeritus of economics, told a Register reporter before the vote. He accused the council of behaving "like teenagers" who are looking for ways to spend all their money. But, then again, the current political system is set up in a way that encourages every politician to behave, financially, like a teenager. (Irvine council members also are still giddy over a costly orange balloon that people can float in above the not-quite-park, which makes them more like schoolchildren than teenagers, but I digress.)

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Irvine's grandiose plans for taxpayers' dollars

The Irvine City Council approved a $280 million rapid-transit system ["Irvine votes on creating transit links," July 10]of only five miles, 3.4 miles of which will be streetcar track and the rest a road for buses. The cost is $56 million per mile today. Construction costs rise. And on top of the initial cost of building this boondoggle is the estimated $7 million per year to operate the system. If they get the estimated 5,000 riders per day the fare would have to be $3.83 per customer, just to break even.

The city of Irvine still has to re-acquire $121 million in taxpayers' money it had in 1990, locate a matching $121 million in taxpayers' money and find an additional $38 million in taxpayers' money before it can build the project.

Government officials should think long and hard about spending our tax dollars. All I see here is another grandiose waste of money. What would you, the taxpayer, spend $280 million on? Maybe helping the homeless, widening our roads or education? Heaven forbid that our local politicians would give us our money back or lower our taxes.

– Vern McGarry of Mission Viejo