PLATFORM : Wrong Use of Funds
Arguing that there is a need to spend more money to monitor pollution, some environmental advocates have decried the San Diego Port District’s expenditure of about $6.5 million to help finance the America’s Cup sailboat races. Sailing advocates counter that the races will stimulate the local economy. But these discussions miss the larger and much more important point--the Port District, like many other large bureaucracies in California, is imposing higher and higher costs on business.
The Port District has recently raised the rents on tenant businesses, which employ thousands and annually provide many times more to the local economy than the America’s Cup.
California’s fragile economy can ill afford government actions that would drive tax-paying, job-producing businesses elsewhere.
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