What Is Justifiable Budget

State budget includes annual foothill fire fee

The fee applies to property in the "state responsibility areas," which are the lands outside of town or city jurisdictions that are served by Cal Fire units.

The fee is assessed on a per "residential unit" basis, said Daniel Berlant, public information officer for Cal Fire at its Sacramento headquarters.

In Butte County, there are 19,589 dwellings in the state responsibility areas, he said.

The state coverage area in Butte County runs east from Highway 99 north of Oroville, and east from Lower Wyandotte Road, Upper Palermo Road and the Palermo-Honcut Highway south of the county seat. Areas with city limits and lands in the Plumas and Lassen National Forests are exempted.

Money generated by the fee is not in addition to the agency's usual funding, Berlant said. The fee money is to replace an equivalent amount of state general fund money diverted to other uses.

The advantage to the fire agency is the fee revenue would be dedicated to Cal Fire.

Paul McIntosh, the former Butte County chief administrator officer who is now executive director of the California State Association of Counties, said the fee may be justifiable, but it doesn't seem to be a good way to go about it.

"We thought it is fraught with problems from the first suggestion," McIntosh said. His association thought the idea was a dead issue until the most recent incarnation of the state budget was revealed.

County assessors would be tasked to identify the number of dwellings on a given parcel and then the State Franchise Tax Board would be called upon to actually collect the money, McIntosh said.

The concept surfaced again late in the process when budget crafters were "grasping at straws and this is one of the straws that stuck."

The plan is expected to generate $120 million statewide, but against the backdrop of an $85.9 billion total budget, this is "budget dust," McIntosh said.

While some people have said the assessment for fire service is a tax and should have required a two-thirds vote of the Legislature, McIntosh says he has no doubt that it meets the standards of a fee.

He explained that increasingly California's population has moved into areas that put homes and people in danger of wildfires.

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It has to do with the impact one could have made on the citizens of this country, particularly working with others to arrange oneself to find a way of curing the ills of the society. At the same time, more importantly, the crucial aspect of rallying round to eradicate the ills of the society is one of the things I’m going to miss. Apart from that, one had colleagues in the Senate, the experiences you gain are enormous because you meet with people and you belong to some kind of profession.   I think the National Assembly particularly the Senate is doing its job. People are entitled to their own opinion. At the same time, I think that the activities of the Senate are given to them in trust. If you should x-ray all senators as to how they lived up to expectation in serving their constituents, materially speaking, some of them may have left the Senate far worse than they came.  I would have loved to chair a Senate committee. It doesn’t really matter to me which committee. What matters is your ability to research. In some countries, people are made ministers of health without necessarily being medical practitioners or pharmacists. But they still manage the portfolio as if they have all the knowledge. In chairing a committee, I would have brought my personal diligence to bear on the committee.  Consideration of the annual budget of the country is a very important function of the National Assembly that should be done timely to turn the appropriation bill into an Act. I will like to see a situation where the executive will turn in the budget as early as August so that the National Assembly can have all the time in the world to do justice to the budget. Whether you add or you subtract, it is all in the interest of the people because we believe that certain areas of the budget should be adjusted. On the revenue side, oil is the largest revenue earner for the country. We predicate our revenue on a benchmark and we do our home work before we arrive at a benchmark that will be justifiable. There was never a time throughout my life in the Senate that the National Assembly was wrong. Using a benchmark that is lower than expectation, you create a situation for deficit budget. That means that you have to borrow to finance the deficit in the budget. The Senate has always set a justifiable budget based on the revenue profiles when they are provided.

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