SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) – After years of prep work, California’s $64 billion high-speed rail project is ready to lay some track. Gov. Jerry Brown’s finance department on Friday approved the rail authority’s request to spend $2.6 billion on work in the Central Valley. The decision lets the authority ask the state treasurer’s office to sell a portion of the nearly $10 billion in bonds voters approved in 2008 for a bullet train. Some of the bond money has previously gone for administration and on work to connect the new system to existing tracks. The bullet train’s long-term prospects remain clouded because of uncertainty over funding. Significant federal help is required, and the Republican-controlled Congress does not support the project. Private money also is needed but none has been secured yet.