Matt Mahan

I decided to run for city council, and I went out and knocked on 10,000 doors, got yelled at for a lot of things that

I wasn't necessarily responsible for it, but I got a real feel for the common sense of the residents of California who would ask questions like, if I'm paying $20,000 a year in property taxes, why haven't my local roads been paved in the last 15 years?

And I thought that made a lot of sense.

So I went to City Hall to try to find out.

Pretty bad.

I'm really worried, which is why I jumped in.

I think the state is heading toward an inflection point past which there may be no return.

We have increased spending in state government by 75%.

Put that in perspective, that's $150 billion more this year than six years ago.

And as far as I can tell, none of the outcomes have gotten better.

Nevermind 75% better, many of them are flat or down over the same time period.

So there is a...

real lack of accountability in government.

We don't have a money problem in Sacramento.

We have an incentives problem.

We have a structure that allows us to keep shoveling more money into things that aren't working.

Just take high-speed rail.

If a startup took 20 years, spent $14 billion and didn't deliver a product, people would have been fired a long time ago.

And we're just not seeing that level of accountability in our state government.

Is this theft?