California’s infamous high-speed rail boondoggle just got worse — over $1 million in taxpayer dollars blown on private jets, premium airfare, cigar lounge rides, and escape room adventures for contractors, according to an Inspector General report.
The findings represent the latest in a long series of financial and management scandals that have plagued the ambitious transportation project since its inception. What was once promoted as a world-class system connecting San Francisco to Los Angeles in under three hours has become a cautionary tale of cost overruns, delays, and questionable spending decisions that continue to erode public confidence.
The High-Speed Rail Authority paid $680,500 to contractors for travel expenses without prior approval between fiscal years 2024-25 and 2025-26. Another $543,400 violated contract terms outright — including international flights, rideshares to gyms, and multiple trips to cigar lounges and private residences in California and Washington, D.C.
These unauthorized expenditures raise serious questions about the oversight mechanisms in place at the Authority, particularly given the project’s already troubled financial history and intense scrutiny from legislators and taxpayer watchdog groups. The lack of proper approval processes suggests systemic weaknesses in financial controls that may extend beyond the contractors examined in this report.
“Paying for travel when it is not necessary or when it exceeds what is allowed by state regulations or the contract terms is a waste of public funds.”
The Office of the Inspector General found that contractors often provided vague or no justification for travel — listing generic reasons like “meeting with executives” or explanations completely unrelated to the work they were contracted to perform.
This pattern of inadequate documentation points to a culture of lax accountability that has allowed contractors to treat taxpayer funds as a blank check for personal convenience and luxury. The absence of detailed justifications makes it nearly impossible to determine whether any of the questioned travel expenses served legitimate project purposes, undermining the public’s ability to trust how their money is being spent.
Among the waste: a contractor flying a private jet between Washington and California on the public dime.
Four contractors were investigated — covering financial advisory services, legal services, program delivery support, and track design. Overall, those four received more than $2 million in travel payments. The IG investigated $1.15 million of that total.
The fact that more than half of the travel payments to just four contractors warranted investigation suggests the problem may be even more widespread than this report indicates. With dozens of contractors working on various aspects of the rail project, the total scope of improper spending across the entire program remains unknown and could be substantially higher.
Sen. Dave Cortese, D-San Jose and chair of the Senate Transportation Committee, said he will formally request reimbursement.
“I will not tolerate unauthorized travel expenses by professional consultants,” Cortese said. “Consultants should expect that when they make an executive decision to travel without authorization, that they’re taking on the expense themselves.”
Sen. Tony Strickland, R-Huntington Beach and vice chair of the Senate Transportation Committee, went further — calling for the entire project to be defunded.
“This will go down in history as the worst public project in world history. The mismanagement has been dramatic over a long period of time. It’s not shocking that now they’ve uncovered wasteful, unaccountable spending.”
The bipartisan criticism reflects growing frustration in Sacramento with the project’s trajectory. While Cortese’s measured response seeks to address the immediate spending violations, Strickland’s call for defunding signals that patience among some lawmakers has run out entirely. The political divide over the project’s future is likely to intensify as the cost-benefit calculation becomes increasingly difficult to justify.
The High-Speed Rail Authority acknowledged the findings and said it would strengthen internal controls, implement stricter approval requirements, and recover improper costs.
Spokesperson Matt Rocco said the agency “takes these findings seriously” and remains “committed to transparency and continuous improvements.”
However, promises of reform ring hollow to critics who have heard similar assurances repeatedly over the years as problems have mounted. The Authority’s credibility has been severely damaged by the cumulative weight of cost escalations, timeline failures, and now contractor spending abuses, making it unclear whether institutional reforms alone can salvage public trust in the project.
The High-Speed Rail project now carries a projected price tag of $126.2 billion — far beyond the $9.95 billion bond California voters approved in November 2008. Costs so far have hit $15.7 billion.
The staggering cost inflation represents more than a twelve-fold increase from the original voter-approved budget, a level of financial overrun that is virtually unprecedented in American infrastructure projects. Each new revelation of wasteful spending adds fuel to the argument that the project has become financially unsustainable and divorced from the promises made to California voters nearly two decades ago.
The project was supposed to be completed in 2020. As of June 2025, no track had been laid.
