Separating water and politics isn’t easy in California
By Bettina Boxall, Los Angeles Times
The 2014 water bond included a novel funding approach designed to take at least some of the politicking out of deciding which projects get public money.
This week’s tortured deliberations by the California Water Commission showed just how tough it is to do that.
By applying a complex procedure for grading proposals, the bond restricted state taxpayer spending to the pieces of a project that would provide measurable benefits to the public.
