Both Senator Yee and Assemblyman Hill propose legislation: SB 650 and AB 650, that “would allocate $10 million to the [Half Moon Bay] from a pool of $5.4 billion in Proposition 84 funds that state residents approved in 2006 to protect the quality of California’s water supply. That money would pay for more than half of the $18 million lawsuit settlement the city owes to developer Charles “Chop” Keenan and lay the groundwork for the creation of a community park.” There is no Chop Keenan “water supply” to protect! That bond money (our state taxpayer’s money) was not meant to bail out Half Moon Bay for their bad decisions. What are they thinking? This is more convoluted than Congressional thinking that using taxpayer payer to bail AIG and their ilk. In fact, Half Moon Bay should go the way of bankruptcy as should the Big 3 automakers and its suppliers…!

Our taxpayers need their income more now than they need more bonded indebtedness or wasted TARP funds, budgetary earmarks or trillion dollar deficits that are here or forthcoming at the national level. Yee and Hill need to stop circumventing and reinterpreting our laws and proportions and parsing the language (assuming they read their own bills unlike congress); nothing in the Proposition 84 was meant to bail out or prevent city bankruptcy for destructive political decisions.

And the City’s position isn’t that off the wall in the sense that this procedural shell game is attempted very frequently in federal land use cases.

Nice write up.

Robert