California Proposition 91

[kandrathe]

I agree, and never vote for those kinds of propositions. There is a case like you explain where you just move funds around and don't really accomplish anything, and then there is all the recordkeeping that needs to be in place. Worst case, you tie legislature's hands where they may have critical bills to pay that cannot be paid because all the funds are tied up and are not allowed to be touched.

One of the fundamental flaws of Democracy is that voters have significant say on how to spend money and how much to spend, yet have very little idea of what the balance sheet of the state looks like.

We have many similar mandates which tie money to purposes whether they need them or not. Such as, the DNR gets a portion of the state gasoline taxes equivalent to the estimated portion of fuel used by recreational vehicles. It seems fair, but I believe we have some of the highest per capita funding of wildlife programs in the nation. I'm a huge outdoors guy, and I use the State parks and trails as much as I can, but when bridges are crashing down due to aging gusset plates it seems frivolous to spend millions on air conditioned nature centers and handicapped accessible wilderness hiking trails.

The latest fiasco in designated funds is the transportation bill they passed last year (before the bridge fell down). The language designates transportation funding to be allocated so that not less than 40% can be spent on mass transit systems, and not more than 60% can be spent on roads and bridges. So, transit will always get 40% to 100% of funding, but roads and bridges will only ever get 0% to 60% of funding. What is degraded, under built and falling apart? Roads and bridges. While the next minuscule transit project connecting downtown Minneapolis to downtown St. Paul will cost over a billion dollars to build, and suck more tax money out of the DOT funds to keep running every year since it will never be economically viable. After the bridge fell it took the MN DOT two months to retool the existing roads to add extra lanes and shift all the traffic from THE main artery onto other roads. So, it is very obvious that the MN DOT intentionally keeps road congestion high.