California (STOCA1)’s future hinges on spending billions of dollars to link its cities with bullet trains and to bolster its water supply, Governor Jerry Brown said, even as it confronts a $9.2 billion deficit. The largest U.S. state by population is “on the mend” after years of fiscal distress and needs the projects to keep growing, Brown told lawmakers yesterday in Sacramento. “Those who believe that California is in decline will naturally shrink back from such a strenuous undertaking,” Brown, 73, said of the proposed rail network to connect San Francisco with Los Angeles and San Diego. “I understand that feeling but I don’t share it, because I know this state and the spirit of the people who choose to live here.” Brown, a Democrat who returned last year to the office he occupied from 1975 to 1983, used his State of the State message to chide “declinists” who would retreat from big-ticket public-works projects. The California High-Speed Rail Authority has estimated the passenger service’s cost at $98.5 billion, while the Legislative Analyst’s Office said water improvements may top $12 billion. Brown will have to reconcile such projects with his call for voters to approve a temporary sales-tax increase and higher taxes on those with annual incomes of $250,000 or more, said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, senior fellow at the University of Southern California’s Price School of Public Policy in Los Angeles.
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