Friday, May 29, 2009

California Budget Cuts - A Train Wreck in the Making


According to breaking news articles that are hitting the wire, Governor Schwarzenegger is planning to close over 200 state parks and cut 2,000 park-related jobs as a result of the current budget fiasco.

As a native Californian, The General is asking the law-makers in Sacramento,”What have you done to my state?” In my opinion, this train wreck has been coming for a number of years. I believe this “worst case scenario” as described by State Park’s spokesman, Roy Stearns, in an AP article, is a result of gluttonous spending, zealous taxation, gleeful over-regulation, and enactment of politically-motivated wacky environmental proposals by wrong minded law-makers in Sacramento -- a clear example of politicians serving themselves instead of the people.

AP Article – Statement by Roy Stearns
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g93pjBNH32Pl10TKma8epVgR39XgD98FS1OO0


It’s no wonder that many of my friends have left California for greener pastures (e.g. states with lower or no taxes, less regulations, and more freedom). If politicians don’t “get it” soon… that number of tax payers leaving the state is only going to grow as they “get the heck out of Dodge.”

Time will tell just what sort of impact the state park budget cuts will have on the OHV program. In theory, the OHV program is user-pay/user-benefit and is “protected” as a Trust Fund, but in this day and age… that may not mean much… we will see.

As the sun shines down on California today, the golden glow it used to cast upon our beautiful state has been replaced with a dark shadow that is ugly.


# # #

No comments:

Post a Comment