Opinion: When will anyone be held accountable for California’s bullet train boondoggle?

To the editor: For those who seek evidence that career politicians and bureaucrats are essentially professional liars, they need look no further than this boondoggle of a bullet train project. (“Subsidies at issue in train project,” June 20)

It appears that those who are driving this project, specifically California High Speed Rail Authority Chairman Dan Richard, are skewing data, rejiggering reports, deliberately and egregiously underestimating costs, directing contractors what to say and doing everything else they can think of to keep this sinking boat afloat.

Who will be accountable when the true costs come due? Will we allow these same people to argue things such as, “I was just going on the best information we had at the time;” “I was relying on the information supplied by others;” “I did due diligence to estimate the true cost to the taxpayer and it is unfortunate that my estimates were inaccurate;” and other drivel? When the day of reckoning does come, who among this group of professional liars will be held legally accountable to the taxpayers, who most assuredly will end up holding the bag?

Joel Anderson, Studio City

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To the editor: Thank you for reporting that the rail authority may have misled the public on needing subsidies to operate the train.

Why anybody would want this train project is a mystery to me. If not enough people ride it to make it economically feasible, is it just a “busy work” project for engineers? Or is it another sneaky way to have government control (because of the subsidies) of transportation?

We already have a train to the San Francisco Bay Area; it’s called Amtrak. Can’t the state find another use for all that money, like housing homeless people?

Jeanne Mount, Beverly Hills

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