A Southern California legislator wants to give car owners $100 rebates as a measure of relief from high gasoline prices — and he wants to siphon $3 billion from the state’s high-speed rail project to pay for them.
Assemblymember Tom Lackey , R-Palmdale, introduced the bill last week in Sacramento in a special session of the California Legislature. It’s a long shot, but if Assembly Bill 5 ultimately becomes law, it would direct that $3 billion in greenhouse gas-reduction funds now going to the California High-Speed Rail Authority to be diverted into a fund for gasoline rebates.
The owner of every registered gasoline-powered or gasoline-hybrid passenger vehicle would receive a $100 rebate.
Eight of Lackey’s fellow Republicans in the state Assembly — about half of the party’s caucus of 17 members — have signed on as co-authors of the bill.
“Californians are struggling to gas up and go to work,” Lackey said in a statement issued Wednesday. “State revenues are better spent on Californians than on a high-speed rail project that has been riddled with delays and mismanagement.”