If it boils down to Berryhill, we hope he ends negative bailout
Politics can be an ugly, nasty, infuriating business. Take the 30-year effort to relieve Stanislaus County of the odious “negative bailout.”
It began in the late 1970s after the passage of Proposition 13, which limited how much counties could collect in property taxes. Some counties were left in a lurch so bad the state had to bail them out under a complicated formula. But five counties – including Stanislaus – had not counted on property taxes to the same extent. Instead of being bailed out by the state, they were actually required to pay the state.
Fast forward 30 years, Stanislaus has paid out nearly $72 million. Everyone recognizes that as a legislative injustice, but no one has been able to fix it.
Perhaps until now. The governor included negative-bailout relief in his revised budget, giving the county hope it would soon have roughly $3 million per year more at its disposal.
Unfortunately, this is where the really ugly, infuriating, frustrating part about politics comes in. The money was removed during budget negotiations, then transferred into a trailer bill along with a whole bunch of other items that other counties and cities desired. Then, something the governor wanted – but many cities hated – was also lumped into the trailer bill. Gov. Brown wants to relieve the state of its obligations for the city Redevelopment District Agency dissolution that he forced four years ago.
Creatures of the cities themselves, cities had loaned their redevelopment agencies money at 6 or 8 or even 10 percent. Though the agencies are gone, the loans remain on the cities’ books and they’re counting the interest on those loans as debt owed to them. The problem is the interest rate. The state wants to pay it all back at 3 percent, while the cities insist it should be repaid at the higher rates.
There’s a reason Gov. Brown is considered a brilliant tactician. To get all the goodies many legislators want, they have to help push the cities into accepting the lower interest rate.
The vote on the trailer bill is expected to take place Monday or Thursday and is said to be very, very close. It could come down to a single senator. His name, many say, is Tom Berryhill.
That should mean hooray for Stanislaus County; he is, after all, a native of Ceres. But Berryhill’s district is enormous and includes Fresno. The city believes it will lose $76 million if forced to accept the governor’s 3 percent interest rate. The way we see it, Fresno loaned itself the money at a high interest rate and should have renegotiated with itself long, long ago. If it has to accept a more reasonable 3 percent, Fresno should take it.
Our case is different. The state has been taking money from us that it doesn’t take from anyone else. It’s time to end this injustice. If Sen. Berryhill can help set things right, he should. Vote for the trailer bill and end the negative bailout.
No, we’re not going dry
We truly appreciate all the advice, sympathy and concern being shown across the nation for our drought. But while our drought is very, very serious, we’re not about to go thirsty.
The website 24/7 released a story, quoted on MSNBC, that Modesto was one of seven cities most in danger of running out of water. Apparently, it based its alarming report on reservoir levels. That betrays an East Coast bias. Many of the east-coast cities get water from reservoirs or rivers, so the study looked at Modesto Reservoir. In actuality, Modesto has never gotten more than 40 percent of its water from the reservoir. Modesto relies on conjunctive use – a combination of groundwater and surface water. This year, about 70 percent will come from groundwater, 30 percent from surface. A clue that the report lacks credibility is its population figures. It put Modesto at 358,172 people; we actually have about 200,000. Maybe the missing 158,000 residents are really thirsty.
This story was originally published June 27, 2015 at 11:32 AM with the headline "If it boils down to Berryhill, we hope he ends negative bailout."