SACRAMENTO BEE Newspaper 5/17/07

Dan Walters: A rathole swallows our money

One could devote a book -- a thick one -- to detailing how state and local governments defy reality and common sense and waste money on narrow, venal, petty and politically motivated projects and programs.

The North Coast Railroad Authority isn't, by any means, the biggest example of such foolishness, but it neatly encapsulates the pervasive syndrome.

The multicounty agency was created by the Legislature in 1989 to assume operation of the 316-mile-long railroad line linking Humboldt Bay with the San Francisco Bay Area. The Northwestern Pacific Railroad, a subsidiary of Southern Pacific, had operated the line for some 70 years before closing it down as uneconomical.

The NCRA actually ran a few trains for a few years until federal rail safety officials shut down service in the 1990s because of track deterioration. Ever since, it's been a paper railroad whose officials, local politicians for the most part, keep promising to resume service of some kind, but have never done so. It has evolved, by all appearances, into an entity that exists primarily to extract handouts from state and federal governments to finance its administrative and political superstructure so it can seek more handouts.

A landmark in NCRA's money-grubbing history occurred in 2000, when the state enjoyed a momentary, multibillion-dollar surge in its revenues and Capitol politicians were salivating to spend it. The NCRA's political enablers cranked up a fundraising drive that generated about $60,000 for then-Gov. Gray Davis' campaign treasury and petitioned for a chunk of the windfall. Davis' predecessor, Pete Wilson, had refused to give NCRA any more state money, labeling it a sinkhole. But Davis responded by designating $60 million in so-called "congestion relief" funds for the railroad.

The corporate consortium that the NCRA later designated to rebuild and operate the line is controlled by politicians and local businessmen adept at extracting money from the public treasury. They include former Congressman Doug Bosco, who was instrumental in persuading Davis to cough up the $60 million allocation.

One of the NCRA boondoggles was a $12 million federal loan that the local congressman, Mike Thompson, arranged to buy part of the rail line. One portion of the $60 million Davis granted to the NCRA was designated to repay about half the loan. Later, when Thompson arranged to have the federal loan forgiven, the $5.5 million set aside for repayment should logically have reverted to the state to finance real transportation projects. But, true to form, NCRA's political network cranked up again and began demanding that the paper railroad be allowed to keep the money anyway.

A bill to that effect, carried by the region's state senator, Wes Chesbro, reached Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's desk a couple of years ago and he rightfully vetoed it, saying the money should go to other, real transportation projects. And now Chesbro's successor, Patricia Wiggins, has reintroduced the bill, which cleared its first committee last week.

The NCRA is a rathole that has already swallowed millions of dollars in taxpayers' money. The rail line it purports to operate is a physical wreck and economically infeasible. Its operators -- political operatives, not real railroaders -- float dreamy visions of a rail renaissance to the public while politicians pander.

NCRA's boosters tout the railroad as a link for the isolated region with the Bay Area. But the money being squandered would be better spent to upgrade the North Coast's inadequate, antiquated highway network, such as the long-delayed bypass around Willits on Highway 101 and bottlenecks on Highway 299, which could become a real link between Humboldt Bay and Interstate 5 at Redding.