This blog will be closely watching the result of the race for California governor, a race which will play a decisive role in shaping the future of the HSR project. If Meg Whitman wins, she will kill the project’s funding, probably through line-item vetoes, and the project will exist only on paper until a new governor takes office.

However, most polls show Jerry Brown maintaining a clear lead over Whitman in his quest for a third term as governor. Brown is one of the strongest HSR supporters in the state, having created the first HSR project in the early 1980s and having campaigned for it during this year’s race.

Should Brown get elected governor today, we can expect the HSR project to have a very strong future. He will not go along with requests to delay the project, and his clearly demonstrated preference for austerity and “living within our means” indicates he will almost certainly not support more expensive vertical alignments unless localities foot the bill for them. Efforts by HSR critics and opponents to turn the legislature against the project will run into a brick wall, since it’s foolish to assume that a Democratic legislature would undermine a major priority of a Democratic governor, at least in 2011 or 2012.

However, that doesn’t mean the project will continue in exactly the same way it is today. We should expect some kind of reform to the California High Speed Rail Authority under Jerry Brown, should he win – it could be as minimal as appointing new board members, or it could be something much more substantial. Either way, Brown will want to put his own stamp on the project and on the Authority, and he will probably play the decisive role in shaping any reforms.

The other HSR-related news we’ll be watching, alongside gubernatorial campaigns in Wisconsin and Ohio where the Republican candidates have come out against their states’ respective HSR projects, is the battle for control of Congress. If Barbara Boxer and Patty Murray (in Washington State) get re-elected to the Senate, then it is highly likely Democrats will retain control of that chamber. Much more uncertain is who will control the House. HSR has quite a friend in Speaker Nancy Pelosi, but a Speaker John Boehner would not likely be someone who would help get a new Transportation Bill done, or help provide long-term federal funding for HSR.

Should be an eventful and dramatic night. Talk about it in the comments!

UPDATE: Follow our longtime friends at The Overhead Wire for coverage of mass transit initiatives across the country.

UPDATE 2: Looks like the Republicans will indeed take the House of Representatives. God I hope we can get a Transportation Bill done in the lame duck session.

UPDATE 3: Meg Whitman finally concedes to Jerry Brown, who will be inaugurated for his third term as California governor in January. It’s excellent news for high speed rail, tempered by the looming challenge posed by Republican control of the House.

The Legislature’s provision would have required the California High-Speed Rail Authority to address problems outlined in reports from the Legislative Analyst’s Office, the state auditor and UC Berkeley ridership experts. The authority would have lost funding under the provision if it failed to release specific financial plans by Feb. 1 and receive the approval of lawmakers.

HSR critics and opponents have been pushing this story hard, as it fits their overall effort of undermining the project by undermining the Authority. It’s a classic “fear, uncertainty, and doubt” campaign and while there are ways in which the Authority can improve, most of the people criticizing the Authority aren’t doing so in order to get the best HSR project possible built – they’re doing so in order to convince the legislature to pull the plug on the project.

Today HSR opponent Kathy Hamilton tries to add fuel to the fire, passing along a tip from passenger rail opponent Gary Patton that the governor’s veto might be illegal:

But the multi-billion dollar question is, are the actions of the Governor legal? Gary Patton, attorney and Executive Director for Community Coalition on High Speed Rail, doesn’t think so. Patton says, “The Governor has NO power to eliminate control language from the budget bill. He is restricted to actions in accordance with the Constitution.” Here’s what the Court says:

In the context of the constitutionally prescribed budget process, the power to appropriate public funds belongs exclusively to the Legislature. With respect to a bill containing appropriations, the Governor has three options: (1) to sign the bill, (2) to veto the measure in its entirety , or (3) to “reduce or eliminate one or more items of appropriation.

“The Court emphasizes that if the Governor doesn’t take option #1 or #2, he can ONLY do #3, and then spends a lot of time talking about what an “item of appropriation” means. It does NOT seem to mean budget control language.” In Patton’s opinion, “What he did is a Constitutional overreach.”

What’s less clear is how to challenge this overreach. Will a member of the legislature have the courage to challenge it? Is there a vote that can simply overturn the veto and what is the timing of that vote? Or does the public once again have step in to file suit, making the Governor and the Legislature, “do the right thing?”

This is a fairly technical point, but it’s highly doubtful much will be done about it. First, the state legislature most certainly will not override the veto. For bizarre reasons that make absolutely no sense to me, the Democratic leadership simply does not believe in holding veto override sessions – for nearly 30 years they have resisted challenging the governor’s vetoes by trying to gather the 2/3rds vote needed to override the veto of a bill or a line-item veto of a budget item, even when the governor vetoed popular legislation. I can guarantee that the legislature will not hold a veto override session for the high speed rail funding – especially when they won’t do it to challenge nearly $1 billion in line-item vetoes to health and human services that infuriated Democrats.

So that leaves another lawsuit, and I’m sure that Gary Patton will happily help file it. And perhaps he’ll win in court. But it would be a very hollow victory. The case would not go to trial anytime soon, not likely by the February 1 deadline originally laid out in the line-item that the governor vetoed. So a lawsuit would not restore the provision in time.

More fundamentally, the veto itself is rendered less relevant by the upcoming gubernatorial election, which is of far more importance to the future of the HSR project than any legislative accountability provision. If Meg Whitman wins, she will find a way to stop the project from being funded and it will die for at least as long as she is in office. If Jerry Brown wins, he is likely to pursue his own set of reforms to the Authority, in order to help ensure an HSR project he quite strongly supports gets built.

I’ve been confident that the Authority can address the issues the legislators raised, just as I have been confident that those issues – including the State Auditor’s report and the Berkeley ITS study – are deeply flawed in themselves and do not provide any basis for blocking the project. It’s not intellectually honest to set up false or flawed claims about a project, then make someone respond as if those claims are true, and judge them if you find their response lacking. It’s the equivalent of the “have you stopped beating your wife?” question. So while I could have lived with the legislative provisions, I’m not going to lament their demise.

Still, we can expect that HSR critics and opponents will spin this to suit their arguments that the project is flawed and shouldn’t go forward, even while Californians voters will once again make the more important decisions that affect the project’s very viability.

The Good Jobs Express (PDF link) will hit five locations along the route of the HSR project this week, with public events to show that Californians want the sustainable jobs that HSR will provide – and the sustainable mass transit that the jobs will build.

Here’s what the Labor Fed says on the flier:

High-speed rail would create hundreds of thousands of jobs statewide.

MEG WHITMAN wants to KILL construction of high-speed rail and all the jobs that come with it.

JERRY BROWN will bring high-speed rail to California and invest in our rebuilding our communities.

THAT’S WHY THIS ELECTION IS SO IMPORTANT!

Come out to show your support for high-speed rail and Jerry Brown for Governor!

The intent of the tour is to highlight the fact that Meg Whitman has pledged to stop the HSR project, even though California voters have already approved funding and even though it will create hundreds of thousands of desperately-needed jobs. The California Labor Federation has, of course, endorsed Jerry Brown for governor, so their goal here is to hit Whitman as being in opposition to economic recovery and innovation.

The tour stops:

Tuesday

Anaheim: 10AM, Amtrak Station, 2150 E. Katella Avenue (behind Angels Stadium)

Bakersfield: 3PM, Liberty Bell, Kern County offices, 1415 Truxtun Avenue

Wednesday

Fresno: 10AM, Amtrak Station, 2650 Tulare Street

Modesto: 3PM, Graceada Park, 401 Needham Street

Thursday

Sacramento: 11AM, Federal Building (5th and I, across from Sacramento Valley Station)

More info here.

I took a look at this back in August and concluded this was another example of how right-wingers are casting themselves as the defenders of a failed 20th century status quo, determined to prevent the infrastructure and prosperity of the 21st century from emerging no matter the damage it causes. And a few days later I took a closer look at HSR and the California governor’s race and concluded that Meg Whitman had little to gain from attacking HSR, would never attack the concept itself, but did plan to pull the project’s funding if she got elected. In contrast, Jerry Brown has everything to gain by promoting the project, and that we should expect him to do so (and he did in the Saturday gubernatorial debate in Fresno).

So why write about the subject again? Well, this time US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood pushed back hard against the right-wing HSR critics:

We’re talking about nothing short of transforming transportation much the same way the interstate highway system did under President Eisenhower. Can you imagine if Ohio or Wisconsin or any other state had said, “No, thanks–we don’t think that highway thing is going anywhere?”

This is an excellent criticism and comparison. In the 1950s, it was widely accepted that infrastructure improvements were necessary to provide economic prosperity. Memories of the Depression were still fresh, and politicians did not take prosperity for granted.

Here in the 2010s, we face a prolonged economic slump – yet some right-wingers believe, along with other HSR critics, that there’s no need whatsoever to deal with the economic crisis, especially if it involves passenger rail projects. LaHood slammed this thinking too:

The fact is that–as with much of the Recovery Act–I keep hearing objections being expressed in the media while at the same time my office phone is ringing off the hook with calls from elected officials of both parties competing feverishly for a rail corridor in their state! I’ve never heard from anyone saying, “Don’t put my constituents to work.”

Look, the people vowing to send this train back to the station are missing the boat, so to speak. High speed rail will offer states’ incredible economic opportunities. It means jobs for workers, it means manufacturing opportunities and it means economic development corridors.

LaHood went on to provide some backing for his arguments:

If you think the United States can afford not to compete with the European and Asian nations who have embraced high-speed rail and other innovative infrastructure, I urge you to read “Investing in our Economic Future,” by Dr. T. Peter Ruane, or “Well Within Reach: America’s New Transportation Agenda,” by the David R. Goode National Transportation Policy Conference. Both of these reports tell the same story: We cannot delay mustering the courage to build a 21st century foundation for our 21st century economy.

Neither President Obama nor I will be content to sit around and watch other countries maintain a transportation advantage over us.

That’s good to hear from the Obama Administration. However, I don’t quite think LaHood realizes, or wants to admit publicly, that the people he’s arguing against – right-wingers and other HSR critics – simply don’t care about economic recovery. Their argument is that anyone who is unemployed or suffering is basically a lost cause, deserves their fate, and should be abandoned lest the rest of society get dragged down trying to help. For the right-wing gubernatorial candidates it stems from a belief that their corporate allies are all that matter to the economy. For HSR critics, generally driven by a flawed and obsolete perception of how property values work, it stems from their belief that as long as their property values remain stable, it doesn’t matter how many people are unemployed.

LaHood continues to try and reason with the right-wing HSR opponents:

We know there are dozens of companies that want to build plants and hire American workers. We have already received commitments from over 30 companies in the rail business to create or expand US rail manufacturing should they be awarded contracts for portions of this money. These companies know high-speed rail, and they are ready to become partners to the states or regions awarded rail grants.

Will we say, “No,” to the future–to jobs and growth?

Just like the interstate highway system, the wired telephone has been a fantastic springboard to American economic strength. But that didn’t stop the communications companies from embracing the innovation offered by wireless. And look at what that investment has made possible.

These too are solid, strong arguments, backed by logic and evidence. But I fear it’s a lost cause. The right-wing and the HSR critics don’t care about any of this. They’re determined to preserve the 20th century and preserve their own privilege, everyone else be damned.

Still, it is good that LaHood is showing his willingness to fight on this. We need a strong champion like him leading the push for high speed rail. We’ll never convince the right-wingers and the other HSR critics. But most Americans can be convinced by this, just as a majority of Californians still support high speed rail.

The room was full , approximately 200 people attended, creating the need for folding chairs in the back of the room. When asked the question “where is the silent majority of High Speed Rail supporters,” Simitian responded, accompanied by laughs from the audience, “apparently not in this room today.”

One doesn’t get a sense whether Simitian said this with a straight face or not. Hamilton clearly is trying to mock HSR supporters here, but Senator Simitian has seen the poll showing 76% of those surveyed in an Assembly district that mostly overlaps his own Senate district support high speed rail. So if anything Simitian was probably playing this straight, with an anti-HSR audience making its own conclusion, refusing to admit they are a vocal minority.

Anyhow, on to the important stuff:

I support High Speed Rail done right and what does high speed rail done right look like?

1. Project has to be financially sound and viable on a statewide basis over the long term.
2. Must be a viable and complete transportation system statewide over the long haul.
3. The High Speed Rail Authority [must have] done a legitimate job of listening to and responding to legitimate concerns that are raised by folks that will be effected by the operation of the High Speed Rail, not just on the peninsula but up and down the state.

Let’s take these in turn.

1. There is a significant amount of evidence that HSR around the world is financially viable and sound for the state of California. One also hopes that Simitian understands that HSR saves California a LOT of money in the long term, in highway and airport construction costs and in savings on oil prices.

2. As we know, HSR fits this bill very well. There’s really no need for discussion on this point.

3. “Listening to and responding to” is a rather important point. Simitian did NOT say, not have I ever understood him to say, that he agrees with the “tunnel or nothing” view of some on the Peninsula. Instead he believes, as many of us HSR supporters believe, that the Authority can do a better job communicating with the local governments. This is a goal virtually everyone supports.

So all in all, Simitian didn’t really give the anti-HSR crowd the red meat they wanted.

Hamilton then reported on Q&A:

How does the Senator feel about the Governor’s trip to China and their interest in financing the HSR system?

He believes there is no shortage of interest on an international level because of the dollars on the table. China, Belgium, France, Germany, Japan and South Korea have shown interest. Simitian said he has an open mind since there are no formal proposals on the table. “There are those who say, we need to consider it if someone wants to put their money on the table rather than California taxpayers. On the other hand, you have to ask yourself whether or not a critical piece of infrastructure ought to be in the hands of a foreign government.”

First, it’s not at all the case that HSR would be “in the hands of a foreign government” – for example, China might pay to build it, or France might operate it, but the state of California would still own it.

Second, if Simitian thinks that this should be funded by US-based sources – and I would agree that would be preferable – then he should find ways to increase state funding for the project and work to help support more federal funding for it. I’m guessing he probably is not going to be interested in finding more state funding, given California’s budget problems. But he would do well to ensure that he doesn’t undermine the project’s ability to win federal funding.

Hamilton then proceeded to break some pretty interesting news:

What’s all this about the Conflict of Interest with Board Members?

Hot off the presses, Sen. Simitian told the audience that there was a last minute attempt to exempt board members of the High Speed Rail during the budget negotiations considering State law, Conflict of Interest code 1099. There was an audible gasp of disbelief from the audience. Simitian said it did not fly but encouraged people to keep an eye on this. He said emphatically he could not support the exemption, because it’s” inappropriate on merits” and “from a process standpoint, it would be impossible to justify.”

Simitian didn’t say where this “last minute attempt” came from, but I am guessing it came from the governor’s office. This is a very clear signal that there is indeed recognition that the charges that Curt Pringle and Richard Katz are holding “incompatible offices” might have merit. My guess is that this only increases Simitian’s resolve to push through some kind of reform of the California High Speed Rail Authority.

One other point on this: if people don’t want to see these kinds of deals happening in budget negotiations, you ought to vote yes on Prop 25 to restore majority rule to the state budget process.

Back to the HSR Q&A:

What about those Ridership Numbers?

Budget language that has been put forth and specifically calls for the High Speed Rail Authority to respond to the concerns of the projections. They have to demonstrate a more rigorous analysis on ridership than we’ve seen to date. There could be a transportation hearing set in November but it is not yet scheduled.

I’ve always predicted that the Legislature would probably order some kind of revision or update to the ridership numbers, so this isn’t exactly news. However, it must be noted that while anti-HSR forces want to claim the ridership numbers are flawed merely because they said they are flawed, there has been no evidence whatsoever that proves the numbers are unreliable.

What do you think of lawsuits against the Authority?

“I think if people think that if the Authority is not playing by the rules of the game, litigation is an entirely appropriate tool. We sometimes worry about people abusing or misusing the legal process and I think that’s a legitimate concern but I also think the courts are there for a reason, it’s to hold all of us to be honest so if you think someone isn’t following the rules of the game, that’s the place to go and have the argument.”

I don’t think a sitting State Senator is going to tell people they should never use the legal system if they feel compelled to do so. And it is worth noting he did not specifically endorse the frivolous and spiteful HSR lawsuit filed today by the usual gang of HSR opponents.

Who has the power to stop High Speed Rail Authority at this point, if anyone?

“After a long pause, Simitian offered this. “I’m going to ask you to give me some time to think about that because there are many different means by which a “do over” could be accomplished. It could be as simple or as challenging as a different group of folks on the High Speed Rail Authority. It could be as simple or as difficult as the peer review body that was up and running and really exercising an appropriate role. It could be action at the state ballot level to undo the vote that has already occurred.

But he cautioned the audience that the rest of the state does not share the same set of feelings that we do here on the peninsula and as some of the southern California communities do.

Simitian said he’d be working this fall, before the key date in February, and would think about how we “unring the bell,” if we come to that conclusion a “do over” is needed based on the performance of the High Speed Rail Authority.

Simitian’s point here is really important, though I am certain it was promptly ignored by the more rabid anti-HSR folks in the audience. Simitian is saying here that an effort to repeal Prop 1A is not a smart idea. I wish Simitian hadn’t defined the Peninsula as a whole as having concerns about HSR – he has the AD-21 poll, so he knows damn well what people really think – but he does recognize that HSR remains popular across the state. Spending millions to try and repeal Prop 1A is a futile effort. Just look at how the Texas oil companies have sparked a huge public backlash with their efforts to repeal AB 32 (via Prop 23). HSR critics seem to think they’d have the field to themselves if they got a repeal on the ballot, but they wouldn’t – it would cause a reaction among HSR backers that would overwhelm the underfunded critics. And if they lost a repeal vote, their cause would receive a major setback.

One thing I do expect to see is some sort of push to, at minimum, change the membership of the CHSRA board. One might see the charges of “incompatible offices” as a first step in that direction.

I might also add that for HSR supporters, such changes might not necessarily be such a bad thing. We’re going to see change anyway given that California swears in a new governor in January. If that new governor is Jerry Brown, and it’s increasingly looking like it will be, then we could see some very positive changes on the CHSRA board, from a governor who has been pushing for California HSR as long as I’ve been alive.

Hamilton included several more Q&A items, but I wanted to close with this one:

If you do not see demonstrative private equity investment in the plan presented February 1st, will that affect your views of the business plan?

“Yes. Here’s one of the things I worry about. I worry that 10 years from now, folks are going to show up and say we need another 10 billion dollars. And I don’t think that was the bargain that was struck with the voters of California when they voted for the plan. So where’s the money going to come from? What makes you think that money is forthcoming based on the ridership studies you’ve done to date? And are the ridership studies you’ve done to date, credible enough that they are going to generate private investment?”

Simitian is not quite accurate here – California voters knew full well that the Prop 1A bond money wasn’t enough to complete the system. That’s why AB 3034, which became Prop 1A, includes many safeguards to ensure that if other funds don’t come through, Californians aren’t on the hook for the remaining costs.

Further, Simitian should already know the answer to his rhetorical questions. The interest expressed in funding the HSR system by China, Korea and Japan shows that investors absolutely think the ridership numbers are credible – as SNCF has also concluded – and so private investment is already on the table.

Still, I have been hearing from a number of sources that the new business plan is going to be seen as a “make or break” moment for the Authority in the eyes of some legislators. So expect and be ready to respond against a likely attack on that business plan, even if it makes a solid case for the project, from HSR opponents who will have every reason to try and spin the legislature and media that the plan is somehow flawed.

Overall I wouldn’t say any of what Simitian said is a surprise. But some context is needed, and that context is the November election. If indeed Jerry Brown does become governor, then Simitian will have a fellow Democrat in the Horseshoe who is a very, very strong HSR supporter. Brown is not going to tolerate the legislature pulling the plug on the project just 1 month into his administration, and anyone who thinks he will is simply delusional. Instead Brown will come in with his own proposals for reform – keep in mind that he is the current Attorney General, after all, and so he’s quite familiar with all of these matters – and work with the legislature to implement these reforms while keeping the project moving forward.

And of course, if Meg Whitman gets elected governor, you can bet that she will pull a Chris Christie and suspend the HSR project. Whitman will not say she thinks HSR is a bad idea, just that the state somehow can’t afford it, and she’ll suspend the funding, leaving the project still in existence on paper but not actually able to do anything more than it already has.

So ultimately, this isn’t really in the hands of the state Legislature. It is in the hands of the voters, just as HSR was in November 2008. And even though Simitian believes he should be able to block the project if it is not proceeding according to his liking in 2011, I hope he does realize that the state government, the Legislature included, has a mandate from the voters and from his own constituents to see that the system does get built.

So far, it hasn’t become a major issue. I expect that to change, but it won’t play out the way it has in Wisconsin or Ohio. In those states, right-wing candidates have been portraying HSR as an unnecessary and wasteful project that diverts funds from freeways and other 20th century legacy projects.

Here in California, right-wing Republican candidate for governor Meg Whitman has indicated she thinks HSR funding should be delayed – but so far has not yet come out in opposition to the project itself:

Meg Whitman, the Republican gubernatorial candidate and former eBay CEO, said through a spokeswoman that she “believes the state cannot afford the costs associated with high-speed rail due to our current fiscal crisis.” She lives in the wealthy Peninsula town of Atherton, which is ground zero for the anti-bullet-train movement because of concerns about the tracks that would run through the community.

Whitman’s framing here is significant. She isn’t attacking the concept of high speed rail, isn’t saying it will be a flop or a boondoggle, and isn’t saying California doesn’t need it. Instead she claims that due to the fiscal crisis, we simply can’t afford even the $10 billion that voters already approved (the rest of the construction cost doesn’t come out of state funds).

She’s wrong there too – California not only can afford to pay it’s share of HSR, a view voters shared in November 2008 even after the recession had begun and after two successive years of budget deficit, but we cannot afford to NOT build it, unless we’d rather pay a lot more than $10 billion in higher fuel costs, lost jobs and income due to those costs, and tens of billions in freeway and airport expansion costs.

Whitman’s view is colored by her belief that state government is too large, even though the overall budget is at the lowest point in at least 15 years. She pledges to conduct mass layoffs of state workers and pursue privatization of other state services. Maybe that’s a good move and maybe it’s not, but it indicates Whitman is inherently hostile to public spending, not that she sees any particular problem with HSR.

That’s not to downplay the threat she might pose to the project if elected. Whitman would direct her Department of Finance to obstruct the bond sale, just as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s DOF obstructed the release of Prop 1B funds to buy new trainsets for Amtrak California.

What it does suggest is that Whitman, unlike her counterparts in Wisconsin and Ohio, is hesitant to attack HSR itself. Perhaps in the Midwest, sustainable mass transit technology is more easily demagogued as being unnecessary. Not here in California.

In fact, Californians pride themselves on innovation and leading the implementation of new technologies – or in this case, the successful application of existing technology to the California landscape.

Whitman is wary of getting on the wrong side of that belief. That’s why she is hedging on Prop 23, the initiative that would suspend the state’s global warming and carbon reduction law. Whitman supports the principle of suspending the law, but claims she is against Prop 23. That’s a hypocritical position, since her plan would have the same effect as Prop 23 and undermine the growing clean tech industry here in California. But Whitman is hedging precisely because she can read polls, and the polls show Californians like green, sustainable technology.

Jerry Brown can read polls too. And he is coming out strongly in favor of high speed rail, as seen in his jobs plan:

Accelerate planning and construction of high-speed rail in California

Like Whitman, Brown doesn’t go into detail here, but the implications are clear: Brown sees HSR as a key element of California’s economic recovery, and will not only refuse to delay HSR, but intends to accelerate its construction. How he’ll do that isn’t yet clear. But his commitment to HSR goes back 30 years, to his first stint as governor of California, when he created a high speed rail project for the state. The plan wasn’t nearly as advanced as is the current one, and it quickly fell apart after he left office, when a hostile state legislature killed it. But we can expect Brown to continue to fight for HSR, unlike Whitman.

This blog is not going to endorse a candidate for governor, and won’t tell you how to vote. I doubt any of you are single-issue voters anyway. But it is clear that Brown would be much better for HSR than Whitman. More importantly, it’s also clear that Whitman doesn’t want to make a big deal of her opposition to funding the project – after all, 76% of Californians and 77% of those surveyed in her own Assembly district still want HSR to happen.

As I explained it in the Mike Rosenberg article on the candidates and HSR, Brown has more to gain from HSR becoming a campaign issue than Whitman:

Robert Cruickshank, Californians for High-Speed Rail chairman, noted that former Palo Alto Mayor Yoriko Kishimoto, the most vocal bullet-train critic in the southern Peninsula’s 21st Assembly District race, lost to two candidates in the June Democratic primary who were more tempered on high-speed rail.

“If I’m Jerry Brown, I would strongly embrace high-speed rail in the Peninsula and the Bay Area. There’s still reason to believe that most voters there strongly support it,” Cruickshank said. “I would go up to Meg Whitman’s turf in Silicon Valley and say, ‘This is how we’re going to get California back to work.’ “

We’ll see if Brown does that. If he makes green jobs – including HSR – a campaign issue, he would likely benefit from it at Whitman’s expense.

Billionaire CEO Meg Whitman continued her hypocrisy on jobs this week, coming out in opposition to high-speed rail and the hundreds of thousands of jobs it would create. Whitman spokeswoman Sarah Pompei told the Sacramento Bee that Whitman opposes the project because the state can’t “afford” high-speed rail.

So let’s get this straight… the state can’t afford to create hundreds of thousands of good jobs with a project that’s already received significant federal funding and voter approval? This appears to be another example – a particularly egregious one – of Whitman showing her true colors on job creation. In her glossy TV ads, Whitman talks a big game about her compassion for the unemployed. But by opposing high-speed rail, Whitman is showing yet again that she doesn’t really care about the state’s jobless.

California Labor Federation Executive Secretary-Treasurer Art Pulaski:

Meg Whitman’s opposition to high-speed rail and the hundreds of thousands of jobs it would create shows how dangerously out of touch she is with the economic realities facing so many California families.

California’s high-speed rail project is precisely the kind of spark our state’s economy needs. Not only would it create good-paying jobs up and down the state, it has the potential to bring manufacturing back to California.

High-speed rail is a no-brainer for California: business, labor, local governments and environmentalists all support the construction of high-speed rail in California for its economic, environmental, business and revenue benefits.

The construction and operation of a high-speed rail system is projected to create 160,000 construction jobs and as many as 450,000 permanent jobs statewide, including in the economically depressed Central Valley.

High-speed rail will make California businesses more competitive, by speeding the movement of goods and people throughout the state, enabling businesses to attract workers, and propelling California tourism.

Voters have already declared their support for high-speed rail, approving Proposition 1A in 2008 for $9.95 billion in bonds to build high-speed rail in California, more than any other state has committed to high-speed rail, and the federal government has already committed more than $2 billion.

Pulaski:

It’s shocking that a candidate for Governor could be so detached from the economic hardships facing our state’s families. With one in eight Californians out of work, how can we afford not to invest in the creation of hundreds of thousands of permanent, good new jobs?

Whitman continues to talk about fiscal austerity, which might explain her opposition to high-speed rail, however unreasonable and uninformed her position is. The problem is, Whitman also touts huge tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations, which would bleed the state of billions of dollars every year. The bottom line: Whitman’s perfectly content giving her millionaire friends tax breaks, but when it comes to creating jobs for Californians, she’s staunchly opposed.

That sort of philosophy is not surprising coming from a career corporate executive with close ties to Wall Street. Job slashing to benefit the corporate elite has become the norm in Whitman’s Wall Street culture. But it’s an incredibly dangerous and damaging proposition for California.

At a time when we desperately need to create good jobs, Whitman has shown once again that she’s the absolute wrong choice for California.

“Meg believes the state cannot afford the costs associated with high-speed rail due to our current fiscal crisis,” said the Republican gubernatorial candidate’s spokeswoman Sarah Pompei in an e-mailed statement.

That’s the entire statement, so there’s not much else to analyze here, but I think it says all we need to know. Whitman is embracing a Hooverite approach to the state’s crisis, believing that we should spend less money now even though doing so would crush our hopes of economic recovery. Whitman apparently thinks we should not have built the bay bridges, Shasta Dam, or the Central Valley water project during the Depression.

Further, this statement indicates a lack of awareness on the part of the Whitman campaign about HSR and state finances. California voters already approved $10 billion in bonds for the project. We’re not going to sell all $10 billion tomorrow, and what we do sell will create economic activity and generate tax revenues that will help pay the borrowing costs (which are fairly low even with the state’s ongoing budget crisis). The rest of the construction cost will not be coming out of the state budget, and when we get the federal contribution – which we will get, this current fit of Hooverism by Congress notwithstanding – California will get a massive economic stimulus that adds revenue to our state budget without any additional cost.

Whitman also ignores the recent US Conference of Mayors report that indicated Los Angeles alone would receive an economist boost of nearly $10 billion from the construction and operation of high speed rail. Whitman, a billionaire, apparently believes that California doesn’t really need that kind of economic stimulus.

Whitman is a clever politician who is unlikely to come out and oppose HSR itself. She’s likely to stick to this kind of criticism, the same one made by her Republican primary opponent Steve Poizner, that somehow California cannot afford to build it right now. As we’ve been arguing on this blog for two years, the reverse is true: California cannot afford to not build high speed rail. Our economic recovery and future prosperity depend on it.

Look, this country need to rebuild itself. We are still living off the Eisenhower era and off the Roosevelt era when they built the thousands of bridges and the thousands of government buildings and the roads, the highway system and all of those things. What’s the new thing that we’re building? We haven’t built anything in decades. We need a high speed rail. We need new infrastructure. We need to think about it because we have countries like China and Europe that are very fast gaining on us and surpassing us. So we got to get our act together and really make this country kind of live in the 21st century, not be with the infrastructure in the 20th century.

And yet Arnold’s real legacy for HSR is much less golden. He continued to delay the vote for the $10 billion in HSR bonds well beyond the original 2004 date. That may have worked out to HSR’s benefit, since 2008 saw a gas price spike that proved the need for high speed trains and saw the election of a very pro-HSR president, but that wasn’t anything Arnold intended to happen. Instead he spent the intervening years attacking the CHSRA’s funding and putting the project in significant jeopardy.

Even today, with Prop 1A approved and the first federal funds having been awarded, it’s clear that Arnold Schwarzenegger has damaged HSR in some very important ways. The CHSRA’s lack of funding earlier on meant it never could do the kind of massive public outreach that could have ensured that some of the current problems over design and implementation were dealt with earlier on. While the claims of the NIMBYs that the CHSRA did no public outreach whatsoever on the project prior to 2009 are simply wrong, more ought to have been done, but without money the CHSRA couldn’t do it. Instead of fighting the governor and the legislature to keep the lights on in 2007, staff could have instead been out talking to residents, local governments, and potential HSR riders about the project.

Still, the CHSRA is working to overcome that handicap, and since 2008 Arnold has been more help than hindrance to the project. The question we now face here in 2010 is whether his successors will do the same.

Jerry Brown is likely to be the only Democrat running for governor in 2010, and as you all probably know, has been governor before (elected in 1974, reelected in 1978). Like all governors elected prior to 1990, he is exempt from term limits, so he can run for a third term. He has a history with high speed rail – during his governorship he was a strong supporter of HSR, despite opposition from some powerful state legislators. In 2003 Richard Trainor published an article on Brown’s HSR efforts, a fascinating if incomplete read. Brown, with the help of one Mehdi Morshed, rushed a bill through the legislature in late summer 1982 to create an HSR system with Japanese contractors, exempt from CEQA and Coastal Commission review.

1982 was Brown’s last year as governor. That year he ran for US Senate and lost to Pete Wilson. By 1983 anti-HSR forces, led by the Southern California Association of Governments, began attacking the HSR project. They tried to debunk the ridership studies using a “white paper” produced by the city of Tustin (my hometown – sorry!) and authored by Trainor. Soon thereafter, without support from Brown’s successor, Governor George Deukmejian, and with only weak support in the legislature, the HSR project collapsed.

Nearly 30 years later, California’s HSR project has not only been revived, but is stronger than ever. It has $10 billion in voter-approved bonds, over $2 billion in initial federal funding, and is very nearly finished with the full set of environmental reviews (when the CHSRA was created in 1996, the project was not exempted from CEQA). Initial construction is just two and a half years away.

Jerry Brown would be very well poised to come in and provide leadership and institutional support that the HSR project desperately needs. It’s likely that he would not only support it but would work to see it properly and effectively implemented. CHSRA might get new board members (Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed the majority of its present membership) or it could be folded into an executive branch department that Brown would oversee.

Brown isn’t an officially declared candidate yet, though he is definitely going to run for governor, so he hasn’t yet taken a position on the project. As Attorney General, his office has been supportive of the project, and backed the CHSRA’s controversial position on the Transbay Terminal project studies last September.

Brown is still espousing a vision of “elegant density” for California’s future, as he did 30 years ago, a vision that was never really implemented after the Reaganite turn politics took in the 1980s, but a vision that holds urban density and mass transit at its core. There is every reason to believe Brown will continue to support HSR today.

His likely November opponent is Meg Whitman, a Republican and a former eBay CEO. She appears to be a more openly right-wing version of Arnold Schwarzenegger, and seems to believe that advocating for higher unemployment is a winning campaign strategy. So far she has made no public statements on high speed rail, so guessing her position is going to be rather difficult. She wants to slash state spending, but then so did Arnold Schwarzenegger and he ultimately backed HSR. Whitman does not appear to be an anti-rail ideologue, but she does live in Atherton, and might well share some of the NIMBY attitudes of that city’s leadership. It’s possible she would continue Arnold’s support of the project, but it’s equally possible she wouldn’t. Definitely worth watching closely.

We have a clearer picture of where the other Republican candidate, Steve Poizner, stands: he opposes it:

Based on his remarks about our deficit and debt service I asked him for his opinion on the CHSRA High Speed bullet train especially in light of the fact that we have neglected our transportation infrastructure. Steve said he is a frequent flyer on Southwest Airlines and that all factors considered “he opposes the project.”

Thank god he isn’t likely to even make it out of the Republican primary – the last thing we need in government is someone who thinks that because Southwest has regular flights right now between SoCal and the Bay Area, we don’t need HSR. As we’ve repeatedly explained here, Southwest’s fares will rise along with everyone else’s in the coming years, and besides, door-to-door HSR is comparable in travel time to flying. In other heavily traveled air corridors, such as the Northeast Corridor or Madrid-Barcelona, HSR has been able to take as much as half the market share and generate profits in the process.

Poizner not only doesn’t understand that fact, he also is convinced that California has too much debt and that the answer is to delay the sale of authorized bonds, including Prop 1A. In short, he seems to be an HSR denier’s dream. Unfortunately for them, he isn’t likely to get anywhere near the governor’s office.

So the 2010 gubernatorial election will come down to Jerry Brown, a known and long-time HSR supporter, and Meg Whitman, whose views on the topic are totally unknown. I don’t know whether HSR will play a role in the campaign or not, but I believe it is to Brown’s benefit if it does. I’ll keep you all updated on how the gubernatorial race impacts HSR – and vice versa – between now and November.

Return of the HSR supporters. If 2009 was the year the status quo struck back, 2010 will be the year high speed rail supporters take their activism to a new level. Californians For High Speed Rail will relaunch early in the new year, providing a statewide organizing hub for project supporters. On the Peninsula, labor unions and business groups came together late this year to form the Alliance for Sustainable Transit and Jobs, in order to help mobilize the considerable yet so far overlooked support for HSR in San Mateo County. At the state level, three groups that are usually at each other’s throats – the California Chamber of Commerce, the California Labor Federation, and the Sierra Club of California – have joined forces to support HSR.

This activism is just getting underway. Coming into 2009 a lot of those groups knew that there would be continued support necessary for HSR, but may have underestimated the need for persistent advocacy and organizing work to ensure that a very small minority of people can’t overturn the will of the voters as determined by the passage of Prop 1A.

2010 will see public events, private lobbying, and ongoing organizing work to give voice to those voters and project supporters. It’s not going to be uncritical support of everything the CHSRA does, but it’s time that Californians were reminded of why they voted for HSR, and why it is a project that is absolutely necessary to our state’s economic, environmental, and energy future.

There’s work to be done in cities along the route, shoring up support in the state legislature, and ensuring long-term federal support from Congress. In 2010 HSR supporters will make their voices heard in all three locations.

Federal funding brings HSR to life. Prop 1A’s passage made the state, the nation, and even the world take notice that true HSR was finally coming to the United States, and that California’s long-planned project really was going to happen. But when the FRA announces its HSR stimulus funding awards in January, it will bring California HSR to life, showing state and local officials that yes, HSR will be built in California and yes, the federal government is committed to making it happen.

My own prediction is that California will get around $3.4 billion, to construct segments from Merced to Bakersfield and LA to Anaheim. I would be pleased but surprised if SF-San José was included.

The news will produce a new round of pro-HSR sentiment across the state, which will put wind in the sails of the renewed HSR support activism.

Project design decisions are made, and the real battles begin. Despite the intensity of some of the battles over HSR fought in 2009, those were moderated by the fact that all possibilities were still technically on the table. The Peninsula could still dream of a long tunnel serving every city in San Mateo County. In 2010, however, decisions will start being made about how exactly HSR will be built, and that’s when the truly contentious battles will begin. No matter route or grade separation method is chosen, someone will be upset, and some of them will take that anger to the courts to try and slow or stop the project, others will try and undermine the project in public.

It’s important that these decisions be made as transparently and as fairly as possible, with an eye to building an effective system that doesn’t break the budget. I’m sure I’ll personally disagree with some of these decisions myself, but I’ll act on those disagreements in a way that doesn’t undermine the project as a whole. Let’s hope others do as well.

The role of private investors will be a major issue. It only came up towards the end of the year in the new business plan, but Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s constant push to maximize private involvement in infrastructure will become a prominent issue in 2010 as it relates to high speed rail. Although the media framed the higher fares as a done deal, that’s more a function of most journalists in this state not really knowing what they’re talking about when it comes to high speed rail. HSR supporters will take issue with Schwarzenegger’s push to use a lot of private investment in the system, advocating for such investment to be capped at 25% of the overall construction cost and ensuring that any risk is borne by the investors and not by taxpayers (in other words, if California HSR somehow fails to generate revenue even though every single other HSR system has been able to do it, the investors shouldn’t get bailed out by you and me).

HSR becomes an issue in the gubernatorial race. California will finally get to wave goodbye to the Worst Governor Ever, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and elect his replacement. The Democratic Party will nominate former governor Jerry Brown (exempt from term limits, as are all governors still living who served before 1990), who in 1982 passed the state’s first high speed rail law, a project that was short-lived but included Quentin Kopp and Mehdi Morshed as important figures. Brown has become more centrist and even conservative in some ways over the last 30 years, but he should be a reliable supporter of the project.

It’s less clear where the Republican candidates – Meg Whitman, Steve Poizner, and Tom Campbell stand, but given their shared hostility to government spending, it seems likely that all of them will be HSR skeptics. Poizner, who is closest ideologically to the right-wingers at the Reason Foundation, is the most likely to embrace outright HSR denialism, and Whitman could embrace some of it as well if she felt it served her needs.

Jerry Brown would do well to show himself as a longtime champion of high speed rail, proving to a new generation of voters – people like myself who were born during his first time as our governor – that he has the vision to lead this state into a new era. In any case, I fully expect HSR to become an issue in the gubernatorial race, even if it’s not in the top 5.

The state legislature becomes more active on HSR. Whether this is a good thing remains to be seen, given how few legislators understand or care about HSR, and given that term limits have destroyed long-term thinking in the Capitol. But my guess is that the combination of the defenders of the status quo as well as HSR advocates will be putting enough pressure on legislators to ensure that the legislature takes a much closer look at the project.

Some of that will reveal itself in deeply hypocritical scolding from legislators – any legislator who chides the CHSRA about its finances should be laughed out of the room – but it will also reveal itself in legislation. I fully expect the concept of creating a “Department of Rail” to absorb the CHSRA to be revisited, along with other governance reforms.

It would be nice if legislators realized that they have a stake in helping ensure jobs come back to California and that HSR is one of the only things out there offering a large number of jobs, but I’m not yet holding my breath. Showing the legislature the stimulative value of HSR will be one of the main priorities of supporters in the new year.

Feel free to add your thoughts in the comments. Before you do, though, I want to thank all of you who read this blog, who comment on this blog, and who have helped make it a success for the second year in a row. Have a happy new year, everyone!