Posted on 03/17/2002 10:22:10 AM PST by Euro-American Scum
A San Francisco assemblywoman wants California motorists to help east the state’s $17.5 billion budget deficit by tripling vehicle registration fees for the next two years.
Democrat Carole Midgen said her Assembly Bill 1753 would raise the $9 billion that the state owes local governments, sparing the beleaguered state budget from shouldering an additional burden.
“When the state Legislature enacted the VLF rebates, we were giving back (to the local governments) surpluses that we had,” said Alan LoFaso, Midgen’s chief of staff. “But now we have a deficit.”
LoFaso blamed the state’s current budget crisis on a 1998 law that slashed the annual car registration fee vehicle owners pay by two-thirds. California collects vehicle registration fees from vehicle owners and distributes a share of the revenue to each city and county, known as VLF backfill payments... When the stat passed a law in 1998 cutting registration fees, it agreed to maintain the old level of funding by paying local governments the difference out of the general fund.
But Senator Tom McClintock, R-Thousand Oakes, author of the bill that reduced vehicle licensing, said blaming his legislation for the state’s budget deficit is ridiculous.
“The state is having a problem with its spending. Spending has grown 36% (in the last three years) while the population has grown 5%,” McClintock said.
Now a candidate for state controller, McClintock said any effort to raise vehicle registration fees will “breathe new life” into his desire to abolish them, and added that prior to his law “the car tax was the most abusive and outdated tax on Californians, and not a penny of it went to our roads.”
LoFaso contends that according to the language of the 1998 statute the reduced vehicle registration fees are to remain in effect only in years when the state’s budget can afford to make up the difference in lost revenue to cities and counties. However, the law does not state who has the authority to make that decision.
AB 1753 would put that authority into the hands of the Legislature, said LoFaso.
The bill has yet to receive a committee hearing. Its chances of making it through the legislature’s Tax and Revenue Committee and advancing to the Assembly floor depends largely on whether lawmakers believe it’s worth the political risk in an election year.
Any legislation similar to a tax increase – which applies to Midgen’s bill, according to a spokesman for Governor Gray Davis – tends to be a political liability in an election year.
Because of that, Midgen’s proposal could be amended to drop the increase in vehicle registration fees and instead just eliminate the VLF backfill payments owed to municipalities.
Sen. Dede Alpert, D-San Diego, most recently chaired the Senate Appropriations Committee and in the past has considered authoring a bill similar to AB 1753.
She does not believe Midgen’s bill is politically viable in its present form. But Alpert said she could envision a final budget that included cutting VLF backfill payments.
“I feel we’ll have to wait until the May (budget) revision to see if the deficit is worse (than projected) to see if the political will is still there,” Alpert said.
Elizabeth Hill, an analyst with the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office, whose $17.5 billion deficit projection is accepted over Davis’ $12.5 billion estimate, said whether or not AB 1753 is embraced is a “priority question that only (legislators) can address.”
A number of legislators with the power to determine legislative priorities – while refusing to comment on any specific bill until it reaches the floor in its final form – say they are not opposed to what the law proposes.
A spokesman for Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson, Jr., D-Culver City, said every option available to deal with California’s budget crisis will be examined.
“The (LAO) let us know that our budget problem is $5 billion greater than it was in January,” said Patricia Soto, Wesson’s communications director. “That fact alone forces us to consider AB 1753 as well as all other options.”
Assembly Appropriations Committee Chairmen Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, will need to support AB 1753 if the bill is to have a chance of getting a floor vote in the Democrat-dominated statehouse.
Steinberg Chief of Staff Andrea Jackson echoed the feelings Wesson’s staff and those of many other Sacramento Democrats.
“My boss is looking at everything,” Jackson said. “He’s not shutting the door on fee increases or tax increases, because we have a $17 billion deficit to deal with.”
Assemblyman Ed Chavez, D-Pa Puente, recently assumed the chairmanship of the Tax and Revenue Committee. Midgen’s bill is currently awaiting a hearing in his committee.
Keri Bailey, senior consultant on Chavez’s Assembly staff, said Chavez was hesitant to comment on Midgen’s bill.
Even if the Legislature passed the bill, Gov. Davis would still have to sign it. Davis, in the midst of a re-election campaign, declined to comment on the bill.
But Russ Lopez, his spokesman who tracks legislation, reiterated Davis’ previous pledge to the California League of Cities not to eliminate VLF backfill payments from the 2002-2003 budget.
Furthermore, AB 1753 would be considered a tax increase, and “the governor has said time and time again that he would not support a tax increase,” said Lopez.
However, he did not rule out the governor’s support for a different form of the bill.
Senator Minority Leader Jim Brulte, R-Rancho Cucamonga, considered the most powerful Republican in Sacramento, said many Democrats will raise taxes any way they can.
“It sounds to me like (AB 1753) is a sneaky way of getting around the two-thirds majority needed to raise taxes,” Brulte said.
Brulte, whose term expires in 2004, said he finds it unconscionable that his Democratic colleagues want to punish California drivers for their party’s mismanagement of state funds.
Brulte was skeptical of Davis’ opposition to tax increases and said that, based on the Democratic majority in Sacramento, the bill’s passage cannot be discounted even in an election year.
The Inland Valley Democratic contingent said in recent weeks that it would oppose AB 1753 or any version of it. But the opposition is not unanimous.
“At some point, the pot of gold dries up,” said Gloria N. McLeod, D-Chino, in reference to the budget surpluses that let to McClintock’s vehicle license fee reduction law. “I think everything should be looked at.”
McLeod said she does not want to raise taxes and is against taking VLF backfill payments, but said she would have to see the law in its final form to make a definite decision.
Sen. Nell Soto, D-Pomona, said immediately after Davis’ State of the State address in January that she did not see how California could afford to make the VLF payments as the governor proposed.
But Soto has since modified her view, saying recently that while she would consider eliminating the payments, she “doesn’t think it’s very smart.”
Even after hearing the LAO’s report, which added $5 billion to Davis’ projected $12.5 billion deficit, Soto said she “wouldn’t eliminate any money going to the cities, they are having a hard enough time as it is,” and added that she will not support a tax increase that affects her constituents.
“Not on my watch,” Soto said.
Some of her fellow Inland Valley Democrats were also adamant against VLF increases and removing money from local governments, to the point where they sound like Inland Valley Republican lawmakers – all five of which scoffed at the idea that cities should pay for problems that were caused by state mismanagement. “I don’t see one Republican supporting the bill,” said Assemblyman Dennis Mountjoy, R-Monrovia.
Local city officials continue to say that any reduction in VLF backfill payments, such as Alpert suggested, could cause chaos for their budgets.
“It would be “catastrophic” for Upland, which would lose $5 million over the next two years, said City Manager G. Michael Milhiser.
Gosh, what do the libs care. So long as the illegals keep voting up to five times per person, they can continue to shaft the drivers of California and blame at all on the mean-spirited Republican Congress, greedy Enron executives and George W. Bush.
But I have a better idea. Just abolish all license fees and stick with the sales tax on gasoline to pay for the roads. Nahhhh....too simple.
I just sent the CA DMV a check for $165 (after the VLF offset of $248).
In New York I used to pay $60.
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