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Executive Order Aims to Ease Congestion Along I-5

Reprising his role in Kindergarten Cop, Governor Schwarzennegger issued an executive order today aimed at:

Encourage[ing] the maximum feasible and practicable use in the impacted Sacramento area of telecommute programs, alternative work schedules, public transit, and video and teleconferencing

This order comes ahead of planned construction to fix Interstate 5 through Sacremento.

This order is idiotic for several reasons.

First, the proposed alternatives are either ineffective, or should already be in place. If mass transit was an option, which in most of California, it isn’t, then you wouldn’t need to issue an order encouraging people to use it. They would figure it out for themselves. If alternative work schedules were realistic, we would already be using them. These aren’t solutions to anything.

Second, telecommuting is bogus. Telecommuting doesn’t work most of the time for government workers because they use systems that are designed to be secure and have no outside access. These people are also public servants who need to be in their offices when normal citizens show up to request the services they are supposed to provide. Telecommuting, when applied to these people, is code for “vacation,” which is exactly what happens when most of us work from home, and we all know it.

Third, these people don’t need to be given a break from traffic, these are exactly the people who should sit in it and see what kind of trouble their neglect has caused.

The notion that this will help is ridiculous. The order states:

WHEREAS State employees represent one of the largest commuter groups in the Sacramento area, totaling over 75,000 people; and

WHEREAS almost 200,000 daily commuters travel on Interstate 5 in Sacramento, where the freeway serves as the main crossing over the American River;

Looks like this will make a big difference, doesn’t it? Look more closely. What this doesn’t tell us is how many of these state employees actually have to travel through the chokepoint across the bridge. What if all 75,000 state employees live on the other side of the city and will never pass through the construction? Why should we allow them a taxpayer funded vacation?

But before it even gets to this point, the order gets to the real heart of the matter:

WHEREAS greenhouse gas emissions (”GHG”) pose a serious threat to the health of California’s citizens and the quality of the environment; and

WHEREAS California’s transportation sector is the leading source of GHG emissions in the State, contributing over 40 percent of the State’s annual GHG emissions; and

WHEREAS the State is committed to reducing the pollution that causes global warming; and

WHEREAS Assembly Bill 32 (Chapter 488, Statutes of 2006) requires a cap on global warming pollutants and authorizes market mechanisms to ensure this cap is met by 2020; and

WHEREAS collaboration and partnerships between California government, California companies, labor representatives, non-governmental organizations and California universities are essential for the development and implementation of policies needed to accomplish the goals of AB 32

You read that right – global warming is the real motivation for this, not alleviating congestion and burdens on state workers.

News flash to Governor Schwarzenegger and the rest of California – the earth hasn’t warmed in the past ten years despite increasing greenhouse gasses. There is also no scientific consensus about whether manmade emissions are having any effect on temperatures, and even if there was, there is no indication that warmer temperatures would be a bad thing.

This is simply a thinly veiled political ploy to engage in taxpayer funded social engineering in the capital of our most populous state. Unfortunately for Californians, the governor seems less like a learned leader and more like Conan the Barbarian when it comes to devising workable policies. “Get to da choppah!” Its’ time to get out of here.