Wyatt Buchanan reports in today's SF Comical that our new $11 billion water legislation is well larded with about $2 billion in fine salt pork, including:

. . .  $100 million for Lake Tahoe, which has perhaps the highest-quality water in the state, and $40 million for projects in Los Angeles and Orange counties to educate the public about California's water.

Backers of the bond say they hope that the earmarked projects will compel voters from those parts of the state that would benefit from them to support the ballot proposition next November.

In an earlier piece, also cited in this blog, Mr Buchanan estimated that this measure would saddle the state general fund with about $600 million in annual debt service obligations. That would be $600 million less to spend on education, state parks and so on.

Now it seems that less than a year ago, when our fine Republican Legislatures were preaching against new taxes and holding up the budget, the very idea of pork was anathema to all anti-tax, fiscally responsible folks in the state. But now:

"I think you can look at any bond that has been brought forward the last few years and probably find pork in it, but at the end of the day it really becomes a necessity in order to get something like this through the Legislature," said state Sen. Dave Cogdill, R-Modesto, who authored the bond bill, which was signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Tuesday. "You've got to be able to convince the majority of the people in the state that there's something in there for them."

Wonks Anonymous fully expects that Senator Cogdill will rediscover the evil of pork in time for the next budget crisis.

Now Wonks Anonymous would like to point out that he is a water user himself and that there is nothing wrong with water projects in his humble opinion. He notes that there is a simple, fiscally prudent solution for this issue:

If projects were financed with revenue bonds, paid for by increased fees for water users, the currently overburdened general fund would not suffer. At the same time increased costs of using water would encourage conservation efforts by farmers and city folks.