$30 Million in "Stimulus" for Coastal Critters

February 20, 2009 | By PACIFIC LEGAL FOUNDATION

Need to pay your mortgage?  Want to send your kids to college?  Desire that much-deserved vacation?  Well, the California Coastal Conservancy and the California Coastal Commission have better ideas about how you, as a taxpayer, should spend your money.

The California Coastal Conservancy is a state agency established in 1976 "to purchase, protect, restore, and enhance coastal resources, and to prove access to the shore."  A non-regulatory agency, it works alongside the California Coastal Commission, which is charged with the task of controlling development in the coastal zone. 

An Investor's Business Daily op-ed reports that the Coastal Conservancy, with help from Coastal Commission staff, succeeded in robbing millions of dollars from the taxpayers to pay for projects to save the habitats of the Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse and other species.  Thirty million dollars (!) were included in Obama's so-called "stimulus" package for these special-interest projects.  A Coastal Commission staff member who helped draft the proposal remarked that the projects mean "at least 100 new jobs."

It never crossed these bureaucrats' minds that (1) especially at a time like this, protecting critter habitats should be the last thing on the government spending list, or (2) stealing money from the private sector and transferring it to the public sector does nothing to "create" jobs and actually destroys jobs that otherwise would have been created by entrepreneurs.  Nor do the bureaucrats care that their extreme environmental agenda has caused the substantial loss of property and life, as Investor's Daily correctly points out.