Another painful casualty of budget cuts

For all the talk about painful budget cuts, Sacramento's neglect of state highways proved literally painful for core walker Irene Gonzalez.

Irene, a Los Angeles juvenile probation officer and Central Vally émigré who is marching the entire 260 miles from Bakersfield to Sacramento, sprained her ankle Saturday two miles outside of Tulare.

The accident occurred on a severely cracked and pock-marked road along Highway 99 that is surrounded on either side by a wasteland of empty fields contaminated by agricultural runoff.

"I remember that there was a really bad smell along that road,² said Gonzalez, an executive board member of the American Federation of State County & Municipal Employees (AFSCME) local 685. "There was this green, smelly, mossy water coming out of pipes and going right into these fields we were walking next to. Then I took a wrong step on the street, because it's really messed up, and I just kept going and didn't think about it, and I just pushed myself to the limit, but once I stopped, I felt some really sharp pain, and I couldn't go forward. When I took off my shoe, the whole inside of my left foot was swollen."

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