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By Billie Jo Jannen
For East County Magazine
September 11, 2011 (San Diego’s East County)--As the state legislative session came to a close with the usual last minute hustle to get bills passed before midnight Friday, rural residents narrowly escaped a rewritten state fire fee that would have increased many property owners’ bills by hundreds – or even thousands – of dollars per year.
The bill, dubbed SB1X7 in the senate and ABX 1 24 in the assembly is far from dead, however, and could be reintroduced in the new session, which starts Jan. 4, 2012. Meanwhile the Dept. of Finance plans to begin sending bills to property tax owners this fall under the plan originally approved.
“Neither bill can come up again until we come back into regular session unless the Governor calls a special session before then,” said Jim Kjol, an aide to District 36 Senator Joel Anderson. “Once we are in session, either bill can be withdrawn by a motion from the respective budget committees and brought to the floor for a vote.”
The newest bill, which was drafted by the California Department of Finance at Gov. Jerry Brown’s request, would impose a minimum of $175 annually for the first structure on a parcel, $25 for each structure after that on the same parcel and $1 per contiguous acre of land owned up 100 acres. It goes on to add $.50 an acre for 101 to 900 acres and $.25 per acre over 900 acres. The total fee is capped at $3,000 per parcel. A credit of $25 is extended to properties located within an established fire district.
The new bill also makes an appropriation of just under $10 million for implementation and would extinguish the up to $60 in deductions that the forestry board placed in its regulations for property owners who maintain good clearance and pay to support a local department.
The bill was introduced Friday, Sept. 2, and heard Tuesday, Sept. 6 in the Senate Committee on Budget and Finance, where both committee members and members of the public were skeptical of potential problems with the bill.
“Our rural communities aren’t starting the fires,” said District 36 Senator Joel Anderson (R-El Cajon), who represents East County. “They should not be punished for being the first line of big city fire protection any more than high crime inner cities should be surcharged for prison cells. I believe public safety is for everyone and the cost should be shared.”
District 5 Senator Michael Rubio was among the lawmakers who voted in favor of the original bill, but now has reservations about the increased costs and the impact it will have on farmers and ranchers. Among his concerns was the acreage fee, which the prior bill did not have, and the new broader definition of buildings that are subject to the fee.
The previous fire fee bill, passed with the state budget package in July, was written to charge a maximum fee of $150 per “habitable structure,” while the new bill includes any structure on a parcel.
Department of Finance Deputy Director H.D. Palmer said the purpose of the language was to make all parcels subject to some level of payment, whether they contain buildings or not, and that property owners wouldn’t be charged for every outbuilding, despite the bill language:
“The charge isn’t going to apply to barns and sheds. That wasn’t the intent,” Palmer said, adding that finance department staff felt the prior bill’s language prevented the fee from being applied to commercial and industrial buildings.
However, the bill says what it says, regardless of intent, a point Rubio and other senators found unpleasantly sticky. The acreage fee, Rubio said, would be a great burden to farmers, who are already operating on a very tight margin.
A serious issue raised by speakers is the likelihood that local districts will not be able to get benefit fees approved by voters who are already paying hundreds or thousands of dollars to the state. The result, they said, is that local districts would decline financially and impair the strong set of mutual aid agreements the state currently enjoys, placing even more of a burden on CalFire’s budget.
A series of committee member comments similar to Rubio’s ensued, followed by equally negative comments from spokesmen for the Cattleman’s Association, California Farm Bureau, Association of California Counties, Association of Rural Counties, California Professional Firefighters Association, California Association of Fire Districts, the Manufactured Housing Association and a smattering of counties, including San Diego.
At one point, Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, chairman of the committee, asked rather plaintively, “Is there anyone here today who is in favor of this bill?”
When the chuckles died down, Leno called the bill "a work in progress," adding, "Rather than take this up for a vote today I think we probably should keep working on it and see what we can't come up with in the next three days," Leno said.
The Senate’s rejection prompted the Assembly Committee on Budget to also put off hearing the bill. “There’s going to be a lot of additional work on it,” said committee Chairman Bob Blumenfield when he announced that the bill would be put aside for later. The Assembly committee, he added, will wait to see what the Senate committee does with it.
That work was not done in time to get the bill to both floors for a full vote, so the original bill will be implemented as planned, according to Palmer. Property owners can expect to see bills by late fall.
The Howard Jarvis Taxpayer Association has already announced that it will sue on state constitutional grounds as soon as bills are issued to affected property owners.
ABx 45 seeks repeal of fire fee
Also introduced Friday was a bill to repeal the original fire fee. Co-sponsored by Assemblymen Jim Nielson, District 2, and Brian Jones, District 77, ABX 45 would repeal the original bill in its entirety, but would do nothing with the new bill because it isn’t law yet.
That bill failed to get out of the rules committee, however, and did not make it to the floor in time to be voted on before the session ended. If the new fee passes at some point, “We would amend the bill,” Nielson said.
Nielsen also proposed an amendment to the assembly budget committee to repeal the original fire fee, but the motion was tabled on a party-line vote.
District 2 Supervisor Dianne Jacob has been a staunch opponent of the fire fee since it was first introduced in June and partnered with District 3 Supervisor Pam Slater-Price in getting the San Diego County Board of Supervisors to approve action against it, including repeal.
“This desperate, last-minute legislation proves that the tax has nothing to do with better fire protection,” Jacob said. “Our broke and broken state is finding new ways to tax people for services they already pay for. Anyone who believes for a moment the state is getting its financial house in order should look no further than the mess surrounding this triple tax.”
The fire fee levies are being presented as fees that can be approved by a simple majority, instead of the two-thirds majority required in the California Constitution to pass a tax. For this, there has to be a finding of “disproportionate benefit” that accrues to the parties being charged the fee.
When asked, Palmer was unable to cite any studies or statistics to support the finding that rural residents benefit more from CalFire than other residents of the state, finally ceding that this is simply “a longstanding issue” about which lawmakers can make a legislative finding if they so choose.
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