![\"\"](\"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Headshot-Gaines-C.jpg\")
<\/a> <\/p>\n\u201cThe Sacramento River is currently surging with enough water every day to supply the needs of 150,000 families for an entire year. But instead of capturing that water in reservoirs, it\u2019s being diverted into open fields or running uselessly out into the sea. I wish Governor Brown had called out the serious lack of water storage in this state and made a commitment to knock down any barrier to building more. We wouldn\u2019t have to cut off water to farmers or fine people for their personal water use if we built the water infrastructure we desperately need.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m glad that the state\u2019s revenues are still healthy, but that will mean nothing if we don\u2019t get our spending priorities straight and cut spending overall. Any bit of fiscal news that sounds promising for the state completely ignores the massive, looming catastrophe that is our public pension system. Our unfunded liability could be half a trillion dollars \u2013 trillion, not billion. That money we owe won\u2019t get us anything new \u2013 not another road or dam or officer patrolling the streets. It\u2019s for services we\u2019ve already consumed. This debt won\u2019t go away by ignoring it, and the Governor should develop a concrete plan to pay it down and rein in runaway pension benefits.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Governor discussed the state of the state, but what about the state of the taxpayer? California has some of the highest gas taxes and worst roads. That\u2019s not a winning combination for taxpayers, but it seems to be the new California way. I hoped to hear more about the Governor\u2019s vision for solving those massive problems without crushing taxpayers. How he can support the colossal waste of money that is High Speed Rail when our highways are falling apart?<\/p>\n
\u201cThe federal government is going to be cutting taxes and building infrastructure across the country. California is always raising taxes to build almost nothing. Maybe it\u2019s time the Golden State takes a lesson from the new Washington, D.C.\u201d<\/p>\n
Senator Ted Gaines represents the 1st Senate District, which includes all or parts of Alpine, El Dorado, Lassen, Modoc, Nevada, Placer, Plumas, Sacramento, Shasta, Sierra and Siskiyou counties.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sacramento, CA…Senator Ted Gaines (R-El Dorado) today reacted to Governor Jerry Brown\u2019s 2017 State of the State address, which he delivered to a joint session of the Legislature and the people of California this morning. \u201cThe Sacramento River is currently surging with enough water every day to supply the needs of 150,000 families for an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1599,"featured_media":9503,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_cbd_carousel_blocks":"[]","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,5,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-government","category-news","last_archivepost"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Headshot-Gaines-C.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1599"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}