In a major shakeup that putsCalifornia’s beleaguered bullet trainfirmly under Gavin Newsom’s thumb, the governor has installed two of his closest allies to the High-Speed Rail Authority board.
Jason Elliott, a longtime political adviser and former deputy chief of staff in the Newsom administration, was appointed Friday to the board along with Steve Kawa, who’s also served as an adviser after working as Newsom’s chief of staff during his time as mayor of San Francisco.
The pair will replace outgoing board Chair Tom Richards and Vice Chair Nancy Miller.
Newsom’s appointments come as the high-speed rail project confronts ballooning costs — a new report found the original plan wouldcost as much as $231 billionto complete, leading the authority to make a number of changes that have raised eyebrows.
Before joining the governor’s office in 2019, Elliott served as chief of staff to former San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, where he worked closely on housing and homelessness issues that later became central to Newsom’s statewide agenda.
As one of Newsom’s top advisers in Sacramento,Elliott helped shape the administration’s homelessness and housing strategyduring a period when the crisis became one of California’s defining political issues.
In aNew Yorker profilepublished earlier this year, Elliott defended Newsom’s approach to homelessness, arguing the administration inherited a decades-old crisis. He described Newsom’s early homelessness policies as “an artifact of its era” while defending the governor’s efforts to expand supportive housing and state intervention.
Elliott also told the magazine that Newsom confided in him that he’d dreamed of being governor since he was young.
“He campaigned on bringing universal health care to California, having passed it in San Francisco as mayor,” the piece noted.
To date, Newsom has not delivered universal health care to California and his beloved bullet train has been dismissed by critics as equally unlikely to be completed as promised.
Source: California Post – Breaking California News, Photos & Videos
