The folks who find, clean and store your water are apparently confused over a directive that came last week from the Pooled Money Investment Board, whose members include California Treasurer Bill Lockyer. The board halted funding of public works projects across the state, including those already approved, under way and some even completed.
The State Water Resources Control Board shared the letter it received from the Department of Finance with local agencies whose projects are tied to funding under state ballot Propositions 13, 40, 50 and 84 and announced current funds are on hold and no new grants will be approved until further notice.
Besides water projects, highway work, school building and affordable-housing construction are frozen. But the order is already being met with confusion as some agencies are unsure whether they or their projects are/will be effected. Part of that confusion stems from the orders going out for projects that have already wrapped.
How is this for clarification?
“Everything is on hold for the moment,” says Sheryl Watson, California State Parks public information officer. “But some of the projects may qualify for exemption. That is still up in the air.”
As is everything apparently.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.