Wow. Just wow. I guess I’ll be spending this Halloween evening leaving a fairly rant-y voicemail for my state representative to hear on Monday.

For those not familiar, CARB is the California Air Resources Board and they have authority and budget from the state to devise ways to keep air quality in check. CARB is known for regulations directly targeting machinery, such as gas-powered generators and lawn tools, plus defining automobile emission standards. That latter power is unique because it comes from an exception made in the federal Clean Air Act, that California is unique and must be allowed to set their own stricter standards than the rest of the country.

How CARB achieves their objectives is for their governor-appointed and state senate-confirmed board members to decide. As a result, the Board can decide to change their policy direction on a dime, reallocating budget for other programs. Phrased another way, the California Legislature appropriates to CARB an at-large budget amount but doesn’t micromanage that budget.

So here, CARB decided to wind down the remaining $17 million that was meant for this ebike voucher program of theirs. That’s extremely disheartening, and directing the money to automobile welfare is a particular slap in the face for micromobility. But that simply means that the Legislature should – either by reopening the 25-26 budget, or for next year’s budget – explicitly appropriate funding for a statewide ebike voucher program.

It was a raving success and the rug has been pulled out from underneath. It behooves the lawmakers to put the rug back in, and secure it with screws this time. As a reminder, the $13 million that was already spent on vouchers amounts to just 33 cents per Californian, and likely gave thousands a form of clean, cheap mobility. I hope someone in the 120 member Legislature will carry a bill to explicitly fund this program again, whether it’s administered through CARB or another agency. $13 million or even $30 million is hardly an amount that creates bitter budget fights, and no one can argue in good faith that the program wouldn’t work again.

As I said, I’m disappointed. But the path forward is quite clear and I intend to do what I can to get this program restarted.

Pathetic, California.

The e-bike market will continue to grow. This was a good program to make it more accessible to people who might not consider getting one.

But limiting it to specific shops and models made it too restrictive and made little sense. A $1000 voucher would be given to someone at the low end of the income qualifier. But then the e-bikes available at the local bike shop were $1500-$5000. The $1000 and under e-bikes are mostly online or at large retailers that aren’t on the dealer list.

That meant any lottery winner would still need to come up with a non-trivial chunk of cash. An alternative might be to bulk purchase some bikes and dole them out to lottery winners. But it’s likely many of those would end up on eBay.