alt Hacker News> California cities could trivially fix their budget problems by satisfying the demand for housing by adding density, but it seems they are determined to do nothing until the wheels finally fall off, and the city's budget crisis spirals out of control.
The state of California already mandated certain density improvements:
https://calmatters.org/housing/2025/10/newsom-signs-massive-...
There is another law that mandated local communities plan to manage housing to accommodate population growth or the local community loses it's ability to deny permits. Struggling to find that but it was well before 2025 I believe.
The more likely reasons is corruption and paying off rising CalPERS costs:
https://californiapolicycenter.org/repeat-pension-history/ https://www.ppic.org/publication/public-pensions-in-californ...
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Those policies will take decades to make a difference in road costs, though—if they do at all (infill is often very hard to get financed).
I live in CA. My state senator is Scott Wiener. We are making some progress.
Your argument might be plausible if it weren't for the fact that this issue is happening -- predictably -- in every major sprawling city in America. Strong Towns has literally built a tool to effectively convert cities' cash-accounting budgets into accrual-accounting budgets. You can see it happening over time... you just need to account for the future liabilities in the way you look at your budget instead of ignoring them until it's time to replace the infrastructure.
https://www.strongtowns.org/decoder