By Orange County Register Editorial in The Orange County Register

February 7, 2016

The Assembly Budget Subcommittee No. 3 on Resources and Transportation recently held a 90-minute hearing on the California high-speed rail project that was intended to provide oversight, but seems to have been nothing more than another dog and pony show.

“Despite Assembly member Jim Patterson’s, R-Fresno, tenacious effort to make today’s ‘oversight’ hearing on high-speed rail a genuine review, the majority party rigged it so that it was just another pitiful whitewash,” state Sen. Andy Vidak, R-Hanford, protested in a statement. Sen. Vidak’s request for Assemblyman Richard Bloom, D-Santa Monica, who chairs the committee, to give opponents of the project equal time fell on deaf ears, and his request that the State Auditor conduct an independent review of the project was rejected by the Joint Legislative Audit Committee on a 7-3 party-line vote.

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