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California High Speed Rail to Nowhere Paid for Nightclub and Cigar Bar
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Dan Greenfield

The California High-Speed Rail to Nowhere started out with a $9.95 billion bond measure back in 2008 that was supposed to link up LA, San Francisco and the Central Coast by 2020, and is now up to… $231 billion.

Hopefully. At this rate, it’ll cost all the money in the world and still never exist.

So where is that money going? Here’s a hint.

Around the same time that the CEO of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, was arrested on suspicion of domestic battery after an appearance with Gov. Gavin Newsom celebrating the progress of the ‘train-to-nowhere’, Democrats were moving forward a bill to ban the public from getting crucial information about the project whose budget is more than 5 times that of NASA.

But at least someone’s been having fun.

California’s High Speed Rail Authority paid nearly $600,000 in unallowable travel expenses to “questionable locations that appear unrelated to state business,” including trips to gyms, a nightclub, an escape room, a tiki bar and a cigar lounge over a two-year period, according to an investigation released Tuesday by the inspector general that oversees the agency.

The report found that the agency routinely reimbursed consultants for trips that were unauthorized or poorly justified. Some consultants flew first-class and were reimbursed without questioning, in violation of contracts and state policies. One consultant flew his private plane from Washington, D.C. to California and was reimbursed for a premium fare.

Nothing to see here. Just business as usual.

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