Local officials are urging residents to vote yes next month on
Proposition 1A, a relatively new initiative that would make it
harder for the state to take money from local governments
throughout California.
Hollister – Local officials are urging residents to vote yes next month on Proposition 1A, a relatively new initiative that would make it harder for the state to take money from local governments throughout California.
If passed, Proposition 1A would authorize the state to take $2.6 billion – $1.3 billion this year and $1.3 billion next year – from local governments. The state would not have to pay the money back, but would be required to pay back the $1.2 billion it borrowed from local governments last year for Vehicle Licensing Fees, according to the League of California Cities’ Megan Taylor.
The $1.2 billion included $1.2 million from San Benito County and $621,000 from Hollister, said the California League of Cities’ Deanna Sessums. By 2006, the state would not be allowed to borrow money from local governments unless the governor declared a fiscal emergency and the Legislature approved the action by a two-thirds vote. The state would then have three years to pay the local governments back.
Hollister Mayor Tony Bruscia said the passing of Proposition 1A is very important to San Benito County.
“We need stability and consistency in our dollars. That’s why it’s really imperative that we get this passed,” Bruscia said.
San Benito County Marshal and Hollister City Councilman Robert Scattini said he certainly endorsed the proposition, saying “It’s time to keep Sacramento from taking money from the cities and the counties. Hopefully every citizen in California will vote for it (1A).”
As far as San Benito County is concerned, there have been a significant amount of dollars taken by the state in the past.
“The state began shifting a significant amount of property taxes away from local governments 12 years ago,” said Sessums. She also said during the first ten years, San Benito County lost about $20.5 million, while the city of Hollister lost just under $2.5 million.
“The initiative would protect essential local services and local taxpayers while allowing the state the flexibility needed to deal with true financial crisis,” said Sessums.
Those “essential local services” would include “Any kind of general funding program,” said San Benito County Supervisors Pat Loe. She said that means police, firefighters, the library, recreation, and 4-H programs could be cut back if 1A isn’t passed.
Scattini said it was hard to say what might be cut in the future if 1A doesn’t pass, but that it wouldn’t look good based on recent history.
“We’ve had to lay off a lot of people in the past,” he said.
Hopefully, with 1A, the city would be able to keep enough money that that wouldn’t have to happen again, he said.
“Not only is the governor chairing the campaign in support of 1A, but every legislator, Democrat and Republican, in the Monterey Bay has also endorsed it,” Sessums said.
Ironically, one of the obstacles in getting Proposition 1A passed might be its precursor, Proposition 65. Proposition 1A was “born of” proposition 65, which had been authored by the same organizations, according to California State Association of Counties (CSAC) legislative representative Pat Leary. However, backers have withdrawn their support of 65 in favor of 1A, which is essentially proposition 65 reworked with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s support, Leary said. But if both 65 and 1A are passed, the one with more votes will trump the other, according to Taylor.
“A lot of things have changed since we started working on 65,” said Leary. “For example, when we started writing it, we had a different governor (Gray Davis).”
Leary said CSAC and other local government organizations started collecting signatures in support of Proposition 65 in January, and had about 1.1 million signatures to turn in to Schwarzenegger by April. But, when they went to hand over the signatures, Leary said, “The governor said ‘I can’t support that, but I’ll work with you. I agree with long-term protection for the local governments, but I need financial help for the state this year.'”
“In a perfect world, we would have withdrawn 65 from the ballot,” said Leary, “but by law we couldn’t. So what we’ve done is just withdraw our support from 65. The supporters have become the opposition, but we’re just saying ‘Look, here’s something better.'”
Because of “poison pill” language used in 1A, if the proposition gets more votes than 65, the latter will not go into effect, even if it passes. However, because authoring organizations didn’t know they would be writing 1A later on, there is no poison pill language in 65 to say that 1A is the better of the two, said Leary.
If 65 gets more votes, a court will decide how to proceed.
“If 65 gets more votes, to us that’s our worst nightmare – for a court to decide what we really meant when we wrote the proposition (65),” Taylor said.
Jessica Quandt is a staff writer for the Free Lance. Reach her at 831-637-5566 ext. 330 or at [email protected].
