Our View: Cortopassi’s initiative gets in Brown’s way

The same day we learned that Dean Cortopassi’s No Blank Checks initiative has advanced to the November 2016 ballot, we got a perfect example of why many people believe it is needed.

In Tuesday morning’s print version of The Bee were two side-by-side stories on Page 12A. One detailed Cortopassi’s initiative to require certain types of state project bonds to be approved by a vote of the public before being issued.

Cortopassi lives near Stockton and owns Modesto’s Stanislaus Food Products; he is also one of the more vocal, and wealthy, opponents of Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan to siphon much of the Sacramento River under the Delta and send it south to large water buyers.

If that sounds familiar, you might be recalling Brown’s 1982 plan to build a “peripheral canal” to do the same thing. That was emphatically rejected by voters.

This time, Brown and the big water users have hatched a scheme they’ve labeled “California WaterFix,” which they insist doesn’t require voter approval. Their coequal objectives are to make water deliveries more reliable while also saving the Delta.

Our greatest fear is that once the tunnels are sucking the Sacramento River south, the only way to “save” the Delta will be to take more water from the Tuolumne, Stanislaus and Merced rivers. That would mean our farmers and cities would get less.

Perhaps figuring “the fix” is in on such a plan, Cortopassi essentially said, “Not so fast.” He put $4 million into gathering signatures for an initiative requiring any state project exceeding $2 billion to be approved by voters.

Since the tunnels are supposed to cost $15 billion (and more likely $30 billion), they qualify. Before that money could be spent by the state, voters would get a say.

Now we get to the other story. It detailed the under-the-radar efforts of big water users to buy four Delta islands so that they can be turned into reservoirs. In times of drought, these shallow reservoirs would be drained and the water shipped south to Metropolitan Water District and water agencies in Kern County.

That at least two of these islands are perfectly positioned to facilitate the building of the tunnels could be mere coincidence. Could be.

Having been rebuked by the voters 33 years ago, the governor has been trying to remove the public from any decision regarding the Delta – leaving it up big water users instead. Cortopassi’s initiative has the potential to block this sneak attack on Northern California’s water.

We’ll need to learn more about the No Blank Checks initiative before we take a position on whether it’s good for California’s future. Opponents include labor unions and others, and some of their arguments appear valid, while others are perhaps overstated; reading the Legislative Analyst’s review left it unclear. But we will say this much now: Brown deserves what he got.

This story was originally published November 6, 2015 at 11:33 AM with the headline "Our View: Cortopassi’s initiative gets in Brown’s way."