Posted on 07/31/2004 5:55:06 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
SACRAMENTO (AP) - California is set to spend more than $14 million on new river parkways and open land in the Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountain ranges under the budget signed Saturday by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
But Schwarzenegger sliced the nearly $50 million sought by Senate leader John Burton, D-San Francisco, because the two new programs will start halfway through the budget year. It was unrealistic to expect to spend all the money in just six months, budget officials said.
The now-$4.15 million mountain program is contingent on legislative approval of a new Sierra Nevada Conservancy, a sweeping new government body that would coordinate natural resource protection efforts in the mountains along California's eastern flank.
The proposal has been opposed by some rural lawmakers, local governments and agriculture organizations that fear the new entity would strip some decision-making from existing governments and take more private land off the property tax rolls.
But Schwarzenegger supports the conservancy and expects the Legislature to send him a compromise version in the next few weeks, Department of Finance spokesman H.D. Palmer said Saturday.
The money would be spent starting in January through a new Sierra Nevada Cascade Program within the boundaries of the conservancy to promote tourism and recreation; protect water quality; cut the risk of natural disasters; enhance the use of public land; preserve the environment; and support local government efforts to increase open space and habitat protection lands.
Conservancies already cover portions of the Lake Tahoe Basin, San Francisco Bay shoreline, Santa Monica Mountains, Coachella Valley, San Gabriel Mountains, Baldwin Hills, along the San Joaquin, San Gabriel, San Diego and lower Los Angeles rivers.
The budget also allocates $10 million in voter-approved bond money for a new River Parkways Program.
It requires the state's Resources secretary to give the money to public agencies and nonprofit organizations that meet at least two of five criteria, said Resources Agency spokesman Mike Wintemute.
Projects must be compatible with recreation; restore habitat or water quality; maintain or restore open space to help with periodic flooding; convert developed areas to open space; or support river restoration or conservation.
Cities including Sacramento and Redding already have extensive river parkway programs, with bike trails, wildlife areas and parks strung for miles through Sacramento and American river floodways.
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On the Net:
Read SB1107 and AB2600 at www.leginfo.ca.gov
fyi
Projects must be compatible with recreation; restore habitat or water quality; maintain or restore open space to help with periodic flooding; convert developed areas to open space; or support river restoration or conservation.
You can be absolutely certain this will be used for COMMERCIAL WHITEWATER RAFTING "Put-In & Take-Out" sites by organizations like The American River Conservancy which has already been doing so with Proposition 111 funds anytime CalTrans uses that gas tax money to do any road/bridge improvements with in a mile or two of any river!!!
The reason they want this new Conservancy Money is probably because that old Prop 111 gas tax money has probably been stolen for general purposes after their friend Gray Davis ran CA into the damn ditch!!!
PLEASE NOTE THE SIERRA-NEVADA CONSERVACANCY HAS ALREADY EXPANDED INTO THE CASCADE RANGE TO THE OREGONE BORDER (including the southern part of the Klamath Falls Region)Klamath Falls farmers BOHICA!!!
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"convert developed areas to open space"
I am surprised you didn't highlight this one.
I think this is a real danger, pushing people out of their own land.
They're doing this at this very moment along the South Fork of the American just above Folsom Reservoir. This is tremendously valuable to their "C" Corporations which in turn support the 501(c)3 corporations with tax deductible contributions in an incestuous circular cycle of self-stimulation that profits only THEM!!! (at taxpayer expense)
They have poisoned the waters of local politics non-stop since Clinton/Gore came to power and have severely hampered the economic progress of all industry other than their Eco-Tourism industry. Now Arnold is going to help them do more and more of this liberal/Socialist/Commonist Crappola all up and down the Sierra and even the Cascades!!!
I'm going to link the Sierra Business Council's site after I have some ice cream, so everyone can look around and download a few of their pdf files and see what they're like. You won't be able to tell that 90% of their business members are Commercial White-Water Rafting Corportations!!!
Well... (grin) I was workin up to it! See the reply just above and understand they are pist that people had the gall to build retirement dream homes along the banks of the South Fork of the American River and that those people had the unmitigated gall to complain to authorities about their drunken behavior and trespass to be pooping on people's front yards... Yes, HELL YES THEY WANT TO CONVERT THESE PEOPLE (and their houses made out of holy trees) RIGHT OFFA "THEIR" RIVER!!!
They gave Pete Wilson a complimentary rafting trip and fawned over him so much that he gave them everything they wanted, now Arnold is doing it without even getting a trip from them!!! Now maybe you're beginning to understand some of my underlying hostility toward these two "Repub" Governors in particular and especially since they're in cahoots...
Especially when you couple it with AB 2631, using invasive and native species to make all those willing sellers they will need.
In this Conservancy issue and general government land grab, I am totally in agreement with the two of you.
If anything, the exisitng Conservancies should be re-examined and reduced and committees such as the Coastal Committee exercising Nazi-like control over the coastal areas dismantled.
While I certainly disagree with Arnold's approval of any conservancy, to his credit, he wanted to dismantle the CA Coastal Commission, until liberals screeched, and he gave in, because he had to focus on higher priority items, like saving CA.
I think the Sierra Conservancy is far from being a done deal.
I hope you are right, but Leslie insists that it is a done deal and he has even said it will go to suspense then be amended before going to the floor. This would be consistent with the article that states Arnold says they will be sending him a compromise bill.
He's undoubtedly getting information overload from some pretty crappy advisors, both formal and informal. When that happens, he undoubtedly falls back on "running government more like a business." Well, government is NOT as business and can't possibly be run like one. Every business boardroom is private as is each board meeting. Government has "sunshine laws" that with few exceptions, forbids privacy.
Arnold's new plan to "blow up the boxes" and eliminate stuff was put together in private and just like they went after Cheney for meetings about energy policies in private, they'll bash and sue AS the same way.
The point is, I understand why you and others here support him overall and hope he succeeds in saving CA from it's own Liberal fiscal indulgences, but I hope you understand that it isn't that I don't like the man that I refuse to support him, it's that he's leading and allowing some totally unconstitutional things to happen, which makes them clearly illegal as well as immoral in my view. Plus, they don't solve problems, they just defer the solutions.
I used to be a Republican activist and was a member of our County Central Committee but I resigned in disgust at all the illegal, immoral and fatening stuff that goes on. I know it's even worse in the Dem Party by a power of 10! But the Party's wheels are coming off and electing inexperienced celebritys ain't gonna correct a dang thing!!!
The Party is adrift by abandoning it's conservative roots and trying to become more "moderate" and electable which means less principled. It's a damn shame!!! It doesn't have to be this way if we only wouldn't scare off better leaders and support the good ones we have that are worth supporting.
The people pushing him to do this CONservancy are everybit as obsessed with their "principle" behind it as the Bin Laden followers are obsessed by their belief system. The difference is the CONservancy pushers aren't trying to slaughter us, but they still hate individual freedom to own and control private property just as intensely and instead of using our own airplanes to attack us, they use our own government and GOVERNOR!!!
Arnold doesn't understand any of this as in Austria, it's already done much differently from the great American tradition and he thinks we're foolish to object to such a thing in the first place... so we have to let him know, but Even Assemblyman Leslie is so intimidated and so afraid of Arnold's momentum that he's more afraid of offending a Republican Governor that the damned people he's supposed to represent!
It's hopeless, unless his stauchest supporters confront him with what will turn into a very hurtful action that will be next to impossible to reverse, like the Coastal Commission!!!
I did read both the trailer grant funding bill SB 1107 (which also, by the way, has a provision to foist minimum instream flow requirements established by the DFG on water users as a function of "water quality,") and Laird's AB 2600 Conservancy Bill. (AB 2600 is scheduled for hearing on the 4th, Leslie's bill has been withdrawn from hearing.)
The Conservancy Bill, so far, states "Sierra Nevada" region, as far as I can tell. The funding bill does include the term "Cascade." A definition of the Cascade Range includes the Shasta Cascade - Lava beds in Klamath Falls Area, Mt. Shasta area and the Trinity Alps. In short, Siskiyou County. Nasty.
In effect, the Conservancy would wrest land and water use planning control on purchased or project lands from local government and place it with this new regional conservancy, just like conservation easements do. Although money for large watershed projects would be welcome, these projects should be the ones worked up by local watershed councils and then presented to County government for their endorsement.If the Governor wishes to block grant money to the County's to disburse on projects, that's ok with me as long as the "strings" are acceptable to the County.
I see lobbiests (PCCFA, CalTrout and environmental) written all over this latest move. They don't like that our local projects respect property rights and local water adjudications. They don't loke that the County has declined to enter into a NCCP or pass ordinances dictated by DFG or NOAA Fisheries through the "5 County Plan." They do not like that we retain our jurisdiction and ability to serve as a firewall for local landowners. This Conservancy would undercut local control and place control in a body over which local people have no control or leverage. Seems to subvert the entire constitutional principal of government, which vests land use planning in local government. http://www.sisqtel.net/~armstrng/cntyjurisd.htm
As I said, nasty, but not unexpected. They are trying to do the same thing on the federal level by attempting to centralize planning and resource allocation in a central regional Klamath River body similar to the CVPIA called the CIP. When we exerted our local jurisdiction and challenged the limits of theirs (Federal and State,) they started talking about a renegotiation of the Klamath Compact, which involves both States and the feds.
This is giving me a headache. I am exhausted. I feel like I am at the archade in Santa Cruz hammering down the mechanical groundhogs that pop up through the holes. If things are this bad with Arnold and Bush, imagine what they will be like with Kerry.
I call it corruption personally.
I think they have already usurped that with the latest LAFCO (Local Area Formation Commission... for the uninitiated) legislation, by and large. Local control in local hands is a concept that is under attack, not only by Liberal centralized government lovers, but by far too many claiming to be Conservatives!!!
Of course, what is required of one claiming to be a "Conservative?" It's about the same requirement as those claiming to be an "EnvironMentalist," right? These labels are self-assigned when people wake up of a morning and hear someone say something they agree with, then ask what that person's political leanings are, then adopt their label for their own, until they hear something else they agree with even more... Then they change again!!!
Your replies are looked forward to and are always so very illuminating!!! You should win an award for being among the most cogent of FR's contributors. Siskayou County is fortunate to have you on their board as one of the five highest elected officials a rural population can elect to office.
Trying to divert land use authority from you and your four colleagues is a crime, IMO, because it's trying to divert that power away from "the people" and their elected representative!!!
Kindly rethink this statement. Why should "the people" decide how I live? What is their "stake" in what I do with my land?
When a County has no respect for property rights, local control just as easily turns into a local nightmare. You decry HOAs yet they are as local as it gets. Indeed, it is because they are so close that their powers of enforcement can be so oppressive.
This bill would establish the Sierra Nevada-Cascade Conservation Grant Program, which the secretary would administer, to accomplish various purposes in the Sierra Nevada-Cascade Mountain Region. The bill would authorize the secretary to undertake various projects and activities, including providing grants and loans to public agencies and nonprofit organizations, to meet the goals of the program.
The bill, as a part of that program, would authorize the secretary to provide grants to local public agencies, local water districts, and nonprofit organizations, consistent with the requirements of Proposition 50, for the acquisition of specified land and water rights, related to protecting water quality in the region. The bill would appropriate $9,150,000 that is available pursuant to Proposition 50 for protecting water quality in the region, to the secretary, to make those grants. The bill would require any acquisition made pursuant to the program to be from a willing seller.
As we have seen in the Upper Klamath Basin, the term "willing seller" is relative. When a regulation reallocates your property to use (or nonuse) by another interest and you lose the ability to derive economic value from that property, you can become a "willing seller" pretty quick.
Here is an illustration of my point on local control. Siskiyou RCD has completed phase I of a study on how a Water Trust could be initiated in the Scott River system that is consistent with the complex, long standing adjudication and will respect underlying water use rights: http://www.sisqtel.net/~armstrng/opinion072304.htm It is anticipated that the Conservancy will rush in, buy land and water and most likely try to assert their right against lower diverters. This will cause a chain of litigation and enormous costs. The result will inevitably be an assault on ag use, not preservation.
My objections to Conservation easements are articulated here:
http://www.sisqtel.net/~armstrng/opinion032504.htm
WaterThe acquisition of water use rights wou underlying problem with Conservation Eas
That's the way it was and at least I had a smidgeon of representation at the state level for my taxation, but not anymore. Any semblance of taxation with representation for the rights of myself and my property and local control of it were totally erased with the "One Man, One Vote" ruling!
To object to Reagan's philosophy of at least "Local Control in Local Hands," with devolution of power and revenue streams that create it away from the centralized state capitol at least appeals to me more than the unintended consequences of Prop 13 that have in reality shifted even more revenue directly to Sacramento's control thanks to creeps like Steve Peace and Pete Wilson.
Yes, I realize that local electeds can become as tyrannical and despotic as dictatorial Presidents of HOA's, but I've proven to myself at least that it's possible to run against these little local creeps and defeat them. It's much harder and more expensive to do so against a state legislator and almost impossible in this media driven age against a state governor!!!
If some local turkey gets way too big for his/her britches, it gets fairly easy to mount a successful campaign to remove and replace them. They usually behave so badly when challenged, that they help you do it, themselves!!!
What system, praytell, would you replace our Representative Republic, utilizing a Democratic Process, with??? It ain't perfect, but it's way ahead of whatever's in second place around the planet. IMHO
I'll bet. Your prediction of the negative effects of the Conservancy using the example of water use rights sounds very plausible.
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