All wet

CALIFORNIANS WHO voted for Proposition 84 in November had every right to take the “Official Voter Information Guide” to heart. It said the measure would authorize the state to issue $5.3 billion in bonds to pay for crucial water safety, water quality, flood control and park improvements.

So why are politicians in Sacramento now spending that money on “water-accessible overnight accommodations” at Lake Tahoe, bike trails in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, unspecified improvements to the Huntington Botanical Gardens and a new aquarium -- er, make that oceanarium -- in Fresno? Why? Because they can.

Put the blame on shortsighted legislators and loose language in the proposition itself, which was written to accommodate hundreds of millions of dollars worth of creative interpretation. Proposition 84 allocates $100 million specifically for museums and $400 million specifically for parks. But hundreds of millions more are set aside for what amount to vague purposes: missions such as “wildlife habitat protection” ($225 million) and the always popular “other projects” ($189 million).

Joe Caves, the lobbyist who wrote Proposition 84, told The Times that the prospect of throwing some funds to museums, aquariums and hiking trails sweetened the deal for voters by giving them something more to like in the measure than just a litany of dull infrastructure repairs. That’s hogwash; more likely, it’s the other way around. Californians have, in fact, been skeptical of borrowing large sums of money to pay for cultural institutions. Just last year, voters rejected Proposition 81, which would have provided $600 million in bond money for libraries. Crumbling levees and threatened rivers, on the other hand, command considerable respect, and those threats gave Proposition 84 the urgency needed to move voters.

Legislators don’t have to engage in this unseemly spending spree. They don’t have to violate the spirit of a law intended to use bonds to clean up rivers and improve water management. Citizens take seriously the state’s massive bond debt -- $55.7 billion, with another $78.1 billion authorized but not issued. Lawmakers should too.

This paper applauded Proposition 84 last year, noting that its passage, along with the other infrastructure bonds, demonstrated that California voters were willing to put their faith in Sacramento when lawmakers acted responsibly. “That’s what we elect representatives for -- to iron out the details and reach a fair compromise,” we wrote then, full of confidence in our state’s leadership.

We imagined that such compromises would involve careful weighing of levee improvement and water supply projects, not bike paths and fish tanks. If legislators expect voters to trust them in the future, they need to demonstrate their resolve with this money and spend it as advertised.