It's no wonder California's struggling to stay afloat

In recent months, nearly all of the economic news in California has been bad - real bad.

We've heard about layoffs of state workers, teacher layoffs, the pending closure of some 200 state parks, a budget that's so far in the red it hurts your eyes ... the list goes on and on.

We all know there's likely a lot of waste and mismanagment going on. But most of us never really see it first-hand. Well, I didn't exactly see it - but I sure heard about it.

It started when I was bringing my daughter and her friend back from a church-related activity. Driving along, I noticed that the panel light on my radio/CD player was flickering. "That can't be good," I thought.

Turns out it wasn't.

My alternator was giving out on me. Luckily, I was able to get a jump and made it back home. But a couple days later, I faced the inevitable and took my car to the repair shop.

The new alternator, plus labor, set me back about $600, so I wasn't exactly in a good mood. But when I got to talking with the repair shop owner, my mood sank even lower.

"Caltrans will sometimes bring some of their vehicles in here for repairs," he said. "The other day a Caltrans worker brought in a pickup truck and said the engine wasn't working right. But I checked it out and it was fine, so I told him 'There's nothing wrong with this engine.' "

The Caltrans worker disagreed. And this was his response.

"My buddies and I race each other to got get coffee in the morning and I can't keep up with them," he said. "So I want a new engine."

When the repair shop owner said he wasn't going to put a new engine in a perfectly good truck, the Caltrans worker calmly walked out to his vehicle, climbed inside and gunned the engine at full blast for about two minutes. When he was finished, the engine was shot. And there was a large puddle of oil below the truck.

"There, now I need a new engine," he said.

Well, the repair shop owner got on the phone and eventually tracked down this guy's supervisor. The guy just trashed a perfectly good truck, he said, so what are you going to do about it?

As it turned out, this supervisor didn't do anything. Nada.

So that's how I know there's waste going on in California. And incidently, this same repair shop owner said he's often done repairs on Caltrans vehicles, only to find that they want him to hike his price.

"I'll do the work and give them a bill for $80, but they'll  say, 'No, we have a set fee for that. Our guys would charge $150 for that, so that's what you have to charge. If you don't it'll make our guys look bad.' "

Now I know that there are plenty of Caltrans employees out there who don't do this kind of stuff - probably most of them. But that doesn't make this kind of behavior any less heinous. 

Waste in California? I rest my case.