California’s high-speed rail project has been cited for “persistent delays” in a new inspector general’s report that was published on the same day that the Trump administration launched an audit of the ailing, expensive project.
As Breitbart News reported, Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy announced an audit last week, focusing on the more than $4 billion in federal funding that has been spent on the project to connect San Francisco and Los Angeles via three-hour “bullet train,” which is a decade late and projected to be $100 billion over budget by the time it is done.
Now, Politico notes, an independent state auditor has added to criticism of the project with its latest findings.
The report by High-Speed Rail Inspector General Benjamin Belnap finds that the report has suffered additional delays due to disputes with third-party contractors over the construction of the first segment of the project, which will connect rural towns in the Central Valley. The inspector general urges changes in state law to speed the process.
President Joe Biden restored $1 billion in federal funding that Trump had canceled in his first term after Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) canceled the full route of the project, acknowledging that connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles would be too costly and time-consuming. Newsom still wants to build the Central Valley component of the project.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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