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Hard-won money from state is set aside for road repairs
by Robb Fulcher
The city has just thrown an additional $79,000 into the pot for ongoing road repairs. That may not be much money, but boy was that stuff hard to get.
The money is the city's portion of a larger sum, $212 million, which the Legislature and Gov. Gray Davis split up among cities and other local governments across California, following intense lobbying by the League of California Cities.
The money represents a portion of the property taxes that local governments have been forced to send to the state to help offset the state budget deficit of the past decade. Now, with the state books showing a surplus, cities across California want that money back for their own use.
The governor on Sept. 29 signed a bill to return $212 million of the property tax money the state received this year, an amount the League of California Cities places at roughly $4.5 billion.
Earlier this month the governor vetoed a separate bill that would have phased in a cap on the amount of property tax money that the state can take in coming years. That veto drew a bitter rebuke from the League of California Cities.
"When this tax shift was instituted during the recession of the mid-1990s the state said it was only temporary, yet the state continues to take billions in property taxes each year from local government budgets, despite its $14 billion surplus," said league President David Fleming, who is also mayor of Vacaville.
"Cities need this revenue to provide vital community services," Fleming said.
The property tax shift has cost local governments almost $30 billion since 1992, league officials said.
The governor argued that the property tax shift has been offset by nearly $3 billion in state funding for items including local trial courts.
"In addition, the Budget Act of 2000 provides significant assistance to local governments including $75 million in technology funding for law enforcement, $115 million in housing grants, $2 billion for transportation projects, and hundreds of millions more in the areas of health and human services, juvenile justice, social services and environmental protection," Davis said in his veto message.
He also said that a lawsuit by the city of Sonoma could cost the state $15 billion. ER