The legislature has been "borrowing" from transportation funds for years. Have you seen any repayments? Have you seen any extra money for maintenance? I haven't, and I *have* noticed more potholes to go along with the cuts that have actually happened. Railroads call this "deferred maintenance" and when the bill finally comes due they often go bankrupt. And now the latest scheme hatched by AS and gleefully continued under JB is to pay the "debt service" (essentially, interest payments) on general obligation bonds for anything even remotely related to transportation from transportation funds rather than the General Fund. Count on the HSR bonds being paid for the same way despite being General Obligation bonds.

GO bonds are General Obligations and under the law are supposed to be repaid from the General Fund - so paying them from special funds reduces the apparent General Fund deficit. I tend to vote against GO bonds unless there are clear criteria for what will be bought with the money (and it's clearly mostly a long-term investment not a pork barrel). If there's a specific long-term asset being created, I have no problem with bonds; most people don't pay cash for their house or vehicle either. But you have to look at what you're getting and decide if it's worth the interest we'll have to pay (through our taxes) to borrow the money -- and if it will last at least as long as it will take to pay off the bonds.

Now that the balances have been discovered the park-related trust funds will almost certainly be raided by "loans" to the General Fund the same way transportation and other special funds have been taken. However, in the great scheme of budget games the amounts in the park funds are fairly small so they won't help with the overall budget situation much, and maybe can be saved for their intended purposes to some degree. All the more reason, though, to fault management for not keeping on top of the fund balances and finding *something* useful to do with them in the park system.

BTW, I almost think we have to cut the Parks folks a teeny bit of slack. If those are "trust funds" then there are strict limits on what they can be used for. There may not be enough of those types of projects proposed every year to keep the balance from building up -- but eventually the money will be used. Part of management's job, though, is to keep track of the funds and have some kind of plan to use them appropriately -- that part of the job doesn't seem to have been done well if at all, if the news reports are to be believed (note: I take most Bee political reporting with some salt ...).