It’s not just California. It’s been going on all over for years. Politicians sell a tax as paying for roads or repairs and once approved siphon off big bucks for their pet projects.
Fortunately the dems in control here in Washington state haven’t pulled those tricks yet. However, after the last increase, the state funded a new floating bridge across Lake Washington that the DOT had been designing for years. Within 1 month of this billion dollar project, the contractor proved to the state that the design for the floating pontoons was severely flawed and the state wrote a $400,000,000 million change order. But at least this time the state bridge engineer got fired.