California High-Speed Rail Finance & Audit Committee, February 16, 2023

1. Consider Approving the November 17, 2022, Finance and Audit Committee Meeting Minutes

2. F&A Committee Chairperson’s Remarks, Initiatives, and Updates

3. Audit Report by the Chief Auditor
- Contract Amendment Process

4. Executive Summary by Chief Financial Officer

- Financial Reports Executive Summary
- Accounts Payable Aging and Disputes Report
- Cash Management Report
- Administrative Budget and Expenditures Report
- Capital Outlay Budget and Expenditures Report
- Total Project Expenditures with Forecasts
- Contracts & Expenditures Report

5. Central Valley Update by Deputy Chief Operating Officer

- Central Valley Status Report

[DavidJamesHenry]

0:00 Call to Order - Introduction
0:25 Roll Call & Opening Business
1:04 Vote to Consider Approval of November 17, 2022 Finance and Audit Committee Meeting Minutes
1:37 Update on Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Taskforce by Chief of Strategic Communications Melissa Figueroa
12:00 Audit Report by Chief Auditor Paula Rivera - Contract Amendment Process
17:44 Executive Summary by Chief Financial Officer
• Financial Reports Executive Summary
• Accounts Payable Aging and Disputes Report
• Cash Management Report
• Administrative Budget and Expenditures Report
• Capital Outlay Budget and Expenditures Report
• Total Project Expenditures with Forecasts
• Contracts & Expenditures Report
36:14 Central Valley Update by Deputy Chief Operating Officer

[SplitScreamOFFICIAL]

Itemizing costs, removing micromanaging, and preventing bulking in the contract is a good way to prevent unnecessary loss of time and money

When you itemize costs, you can scrutinize costs
Example: $50, 000 for a single toilet stall? That's can be scrutinized, if it was a bulk contract, it would hide the total price of individual items and allow for exploitation

Micromanaging is people uninvolved in the stage changing individual components, let the experienced workers do their job. Micromanaging costs taxpayer Time and Money

Bulking is when a contractor asks for the payment of multiple things at once to obscure the price of individual items with labor and "over provisioning"
A good example is a scandal that asked for $15 million to install a single toilet in San Francisco because labor and item costs where obscured to the tax payer.

If anyone wants further explanation of these problems, RMTransit made a good video on "Why are Subways Expensive". Spoilers: they're not, it's bad policy

[JohnICGomes]

Instead of meetings, why don’t people just start digging and doing the work?

[bhuddy]

Is this more taxpayer funded propaganda by the CAHSRA? Do they try to use State funded propaganda expenditures as eligible Federal match for the project?

[davidjackson]

This will be fun to watch leaders of this system.

[LucidStew]

The snails pace of progress on this is astounding. They continue to spend very little and get very little done. Their big excuse is that it rained. Already warning that January will suck because it rained. Here were are with quite a bit of rain at the end of February, so I guess nothings getting done now either. I can't see how this can possibly not add up to a delay. 53:00 the chart basically shows that CP4 is now behind and will continue to be unless they start spending at a rate they never have managed. They discuss this briefly. Current rate of spending indicates they're roughly 10 months behind(mind you the current schedule is something like 2 years behind the old schedule) on CP4 unless something changes. Also, comparison of completion amount and spending amount to forecast indicates they're over budget. I have serious doubts about this "before 2030" objective for Bakersfield-Merced.