A bill by Assemblyman Scott Wilk that would stop the California High-Speed Rail Authority from taking advantage of a loophole that allows them to hold closed-door meetings without public involvement passed unanimously out of the Assembly Governmental Organization Committee.
“The California High-Speed Rail Authority has been exploiting this loophole and denying taxpayers entrance into their meetings,” said Wilk, R-Santa Clarita. “It is imperative for the public to be included in meetings that directly affect them. We must urge our government to conduct its business in a visible and transparent manner.”
Wilk’s AB 85 clarifies existing law and defines a “state body” as any multi-member committee.
Scott Wilk
Current law requires all standing committees of a local government entity or of the Legislature to hold meetings that are open to the public whether or not the standing committee takes action. However, existing law is slightly ambiguous for state bodies, which some state agencies are exploiting as a loophole.
Other state agencies others have misused this loophole to circumvent open meeting requirements. Agencies limit their standing committees to no more than two members for the explicit purpose of avoiding open meeting requirements and public scrutiny.
The 38th Assembly District encompasses Simi Valley, the northern section of the San Fernando Valley and most of the Santa Clarita Valley.
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6 Comments
We must show our concerns to these blind people or this HSR will go through!!! It’s time
Gov. Brown to take care of our water shortage instead of billions of dollars on a useless the HSR wanting to leave a so called Legacy under his terms of Govenor. Please please support AGAINST HSR by going to any and all meetings!! Thank you
While our reservoirs go empty and our school funds go into the red, the State seems to want to plow blindly forward, committing $68 billion for the project, money we don’t have to spend.
There are so many problems with this project it is hard to know where to start.
Security- Does anyone think there will be any less security on a 200 mile and hour train, than on boarding at an airport? Consider a train wreck at 200 miles per hour with 100 or more passengers. Along with stops far between, who is going to pay to ride this albatross and pay again to get to where they need to go?
Natural environment- There are problems with disturbing our aqua-firs when tunneling, but the state says they will fix any problems by piping in water from somewhere else. The Angeles National Forest is just getting back on its feet after the 2009 Station Fire burned from Los Angeles, to Sunland to Acton, a total of 251 square miles. Our forest friends need a rest after an arsonist burned their homes, and many of ours. They don’t need us blasting through the mountains from here to there. Maybe Gov. Brown hopes to discover gold in them thar hills?
The proposed tunnel which won’t bother anyone will go above ground, then tunnel, above ground, then tunnel repetitively from from Palmdale to Burbank. Did you know there is a high level of sound off a high speed train coming out of a tunnel? There is noise from wheels on steel at 200 mph, the high pitched noise from the moving electrical connection above the train, and there is a blast as the train leaves the tunnel you might liken to popping the cork on a bottle of champagne only much, much louder.
After you add time and cost overruns, unseen security costs, construction companies which do not have the skills and experience to build the HSR, this has become the High Speed Rail no one wanted, but got built anyway.
I am not worried about the safety of the high speed train; Europe and Asia have shown the way on the matter of safety. But has anyone considered that we could be spending the same dollars to begin building a pipeline to bring Columbia River waters to California? Which is more important?!
Well, without meaning to suggest that high-speed rail makes sense (it doesn’t), does it really make sense to spend even more money to bring Columbia River water here? We live in a desert. We import water and create English gardens with manicured grass lawns to fool would-be home buyers … but we live in a desert. Why would we pay to bring the water to us? Wouldn’t it make more sense for us to move to where the water is?
Of course, we already bring nearly all of our water in Southern California from up north or from the Colorado…all designed to make the desert bloom…and our lawns, too. THAT decision was made decades ago…along with the decision to take advantage of the state’s abundant sunshine to turn California into a major food supplier to the nation and the world. In short, IMNOHO we need to stabilize California’s sources of water…and that should be higher priority that building a high speed train.
Hey Leon,
Good point on moving water vs. moving people. Problem is, the people are already here. And they like it here. Just like you do. So they aren’t looking to be forcibly relocated to British Columbia (the nearest place where there is actually too much water).
Parsons (the engineering firm) with help from others put together a plan back in the 1950s-1960s to bring water all the way from BC down to Southern California (its’ a fascinating idea, and plans were drawn!). Other folks (really big dreamers) wanted to bring Arctic ice bergs down here for drinking water.
And guess what? No one wanted to spend the money. Probably because the idea of crossing multiple states and a national border was near impossible back then. Toss in the cost (and who would pay it) and it was considered as looney as putting a man on the Moon.
Guess what? We couldn’t pay the price for a new Lunar Expedition now if we wanted to. Even if the Moon was made of ice and we could drop chunks into the ocean with pinpoint accuracy.
$68 Billion is a drop in the bucket for a major California state project (in today’s dollars). It makes no sense to push for a Dizzyland People Mover that no one will use. It’s only possible benefit is for the small and poor counties/cities that have jumped on the band wagon for a few pennies of local cash.
A true cost-benefit analysis of this project would end it with a resounding crash. Spending the money to make major drought mitigation projects a reality won’t fix the weather. But it just might give us the time to find out if we all have to move back to Illinois in the nest 25 years or so.