The California state legislature mostly exists to pass new regulations, but does very little for the public they claim to serve. Anything important instead has to go around government by way of voter referendum.

That is what happened in 2014 with Proposition 1. Northern California hasn't had a major water infrastructure program since the 1960s but the population has tripled.(1)  During yet another predictable drought, voters had enough and voted to force government to add more water storage. The reasoning was sound and we supported it; if politicians are going to mandate river flow levels that are so high they're dangerous for humans during the next drought, and they are, to supposedly protect critters that survived millions of years of droughts before people arrived, then at least we'd have reservoirs to even out the booms and busts that occur when your state is mostly a desert with water coming from an annual mountain snowpack.

Yet another predictable drought is happening, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California has slashed the allocation to each of its 26 agencies, but the government is blaming everyone else - in government. Though the referendum was passed to go around bureaucratic roadblocks, its implementation still uses the California Water Commission. The same agency that has been the problem for decades. They blame policies, procedures, and regulations created by other parts of government while other parts of government blame them. 

So it ended up that eight years later the only thing done is some "feasibility" studies - no water storage at all, despite natives who lived their lives without ever learning to read or write knowing how to store water. Yet government claims they are on schedule because the schedule they chose for themselves is 'whenever.' When voters approved Prop 1, they did not know that after 8 years only four feasibility studies would even be able to survive the environmental buzzsaw that politicians turned into the law of the state. Yet somehow the $1.5 billion in Prop 1 funding that had to be allocated for more environmental whatever has progressed nicely. It is classic porkbarrel legislation to benefit its largest donors.

Yet because they are all to blame, no one is. That is just good politics.

(1) Only the official population, the homeless numbers that have grown so high after Governor Newsom invited the whole homeless population of the world to the state are not included - even though Los Angeles just declared a state of emergency over them. And illegal immigrants are not included, though the Governor says they have ballooned so high that President Biden can't undo the Trump illegal immigrant restrictions or we'll be in peril.