As our steady readers know, we take a dim view of the California courts’ oft-expressed but unjustified and never retreated from assertion that if condemnees are paid “too liberally” — meaning for all their condemnation-caused, demonstrable economic losses — an “embargo” will have to be declared on public projects. This is demonstrable nonsense because, if nothing else, the holding of the eminent domain case in which the California Supreme Court uttered this shibboleth, was repealed by the legislature in 1976, and as you know, no “embargo” has descended on the Golden State in the ensuing 35 years, and public projects of all sorts have continued to be built.
But California sure has ample funds to waste. We offer without comment the following from Jack Dolan, Prison Doctor Gets Paid For Doing Little and Nothing, L.A. Times, Jul. 13, 2011, p. A1:
“The highest-paid state employee in California last year, a prison surgeon who
took home $777,423, has a history of mental illness, was fired once for alleged incompetence and has not been allowed to treat an inmate for six years because medical supervisors don’t trust his clinical skills.”
For that they have money — for compensating people fully for damages inflicted on them by eminent domain, they don’t.