California evades balanced budget law by borrowing through agencies like BART (Bay Area Rapit Transit).

Photo above - the BART "Fremont" station which takes commuters on a 6-minute train ride to the nearby Tesla facility. Suppose we can't afford everything, and are forced choose between trains and EV subsidies?

Last week’s urban transit horror story was SEPTA. Massive service cuts and thousands of workers out of jobs. Deferred train/bus maintenance finally caught up to SEPTA.

This week, say hello to BART. San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit system. (Bart.gov). BART won't be able to meet its payroll this month unless it IMMEDIATELY gets a nearly $1 billion loan. (See link below).

How bad is it? Officials are warning of “a fiscal cliff . . . with 90% cuts to BART service”. (actual quote).

Of course, this should be taken with at least a small grain of salt. Whenever a public school system runs out of money, administrators release a list of beloved teachers could be fired and ignore less dramatic cost saving measures. This is a reliable tactic to stampede voters into another tax increase.

That appears to be what’s happening here. Inept BART officials claim they never saw the “fiscal cliff” looming ahead, and they can’t schedule a vote on tax increases until at least 2026. Hence, the huge loan needed this week to keep the trains running. Or else 90% of those trains will stop, and you’ll have to drive your EV to work - the one you got a $7,500 tax credit to buy.

The starting point of any government (or private employer) spending plan is . . . you can have anything you want, as long as you can pay for it. In the not-so-distant past, everyone in California thought they wanted EVs. As well as lower taxes courtesy of those $7,500 EV tax rebates. (Insert clip of cheering throngs here.) And government subsidized public EV charging stations. And subsidized solar roof panels to charge those cars, because there wasn’t enough electrical capacity in California.

That EV money had to come from somewhere. Now we know where – places like BART. So this month EVs are disfavored, and massive tax increases are on the table to make BART trains run on time.

Will the inept BART administrators who brought the system to the brink of fiscal ruin get their loan - AND next year’s massive tax increase? You shouldn’t bet against it. Because politicians will throw money at anything if it means getting re-elected. And voters have short attention spans.

I’m just sayin’ . . .

BART shutdown offers glimpse of Bay Area's future, if a key funding deal falls through next week