Dan Walters: Misplaced budget priorities abound in California

The Save Mart supermarket chain unveiled a plan Tuesday to keep Sacramento's public swimming pools open this summer and thus provide recreation for thousands of youngsters whose families can't afford backyard pools.

The company will match donations from others with the goal of raising $1 million to save the pools, which were to be closed by the city government because of severe and continuous operating budget deficits.

Good for Save Mart. It's stepping up to fill an obvious void.

However, its benevolence merely underscores the chronically misplaced priorities among local and state governments in these days of financial constraints.

While Mayor Kevin Johnson and other city officials were declaring that swimming pools would be closed for a lack of funds, they were also working on a deal to build a new professional basketball arena by, in essence, hocking the city's parking garages to a private operator.

The plan, if it materializes, would give the city tens of millions of dollars in upfront cash for the arena, but also would eliminate the $9 million or so in garage profits that the city realizes each year – money that it evidently needs to keep the swimming pools open and perform other traditional and vital functions.

Implicitly, they are willing to sacrifice the interests of Sacramento's 400,000-plus residents to build an arena in which millionaire players run around in skimpy uniforms for the entertainment of a few thousand basketball fans – a tiny fraction of the region's population – affluent enough to afford admission tickets.

Misplaced priorities – but just one example.

A recent Sacramento Bee story provided another – a revelation that the state is, in effect, intending to abandon a stockpile of mobile emergency hospitals that it acquired just a few years ago to provide readiness for some catastrophe in a state that suffers them with some regularity.

Floods, earthquakes and wildfires occur in this state frequently and no one knows when the next will strike. Moderately severe earthquakes have hit both the northern and southern regions of the state in the last quarter-century, and authorities have been warning for years that "the big one" may be inevitable.

We've already purchased those three mobile hospitals, and maintaining them in ready-to-go condition costs just $1.7 million a year, which is less than pocket lint in a $90 billion state budget.

How do we justify letting those hospitals deteriorate or go to some other state while the Legislature is handing out raises to its already well-paid staff and hiring high-priced lawyers to unsuccessfully fight public records requests, or while lawmakers and Gov. Jerry Brown plan to spend billions of dollars on a bullet train that most Californians say they don't want?

Misplaced priorities.