Lawmakers approve $4B ballot measure for projects
Brown expected to give the go-ahead to fund park and water projects across state
Immigration and housing dominated the headlines from Sacramento this year. But with little fanfare, state lawmakers working with Gov. Jerry Brown also approved a sweeping measure to provide $4.1 billion in new funding for parks and water projects — everything from building Bay Area hiking trails to expanding Lake Tahoe beaches to constructing new inner city parks in Los Angeles.
The bill, SB 5, passed near midnight Friday and now sits on Brown’s desk. If he signs it, as expected, it would be placed on the June 5 statewide ballot. It also would represent the first statewide parks and water bond to appear on a state ballot in 12 years, since Proposition 84 in 2006, which won approval of 54 percent of voters and provided $5.4 billion.
Unlike other parks bonds in the past — all the way back to California’s first parks bond, which voters approved in 1928 to preserve areas like Mount Diablo, Mount Tamalpais and Del Norte Redwoods state parks — this one is heavily tilted toward urban parks and Southern California, along with water improvements in low-income communities.
“Over 1 million Californians still lack access to safe drinking water, and too many children lack access
to healthy outdoor spaces,” said Senate leader Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles, who wrote the bill.
Overall, $2.83 billion would go to parks, and $1.27 billion to water projects, including flood protection, levee upgrades on rivers and in the Delta, water recycling, and groundwater pollution cleanups. No money in the bond would fund new dams or Brown’s proposed Delta tunnels.
In many ways, the bill reflects California’s shifting demographics.
Where once Bay Area leaders like Willie Brown, John Burton and Don Perata dominated the Legislature and steered huge amounts of funding to the north, today, both de Leon and the Assembly speaker, Anthony Rendon, D-South Gate, are from Southern California. And while Latinos were 19 percent of California’s population in 1980, today they make up 40 percent.
As a result, there is only $200 million in this bond specifically directed for upgrades to existing state parks, and almost no money for acquisition of new state parks — something the governor has resisted. There is $725 million in grants for “parks-poor” areas that will be doled out using a formula that evaluates household income and the number of parks nearby. That means if voters approve the bond, much of the money will end up going to the LA Basin, Central Valley, Inland Empire and desert communities, all places that historically have been on the short end of state parks funding.
During negotiations, Northern California environmental groups pushed for more money for Bay Area projects. In the final bill, $61 million was specifically earmarked for Bay Area projects, including $3 million to restore Los Gatos Creek and the Guadalupe River in San Jose, $3 million to restore the Russian River in Sonoma County, and $20 million for the Coastal Conservancy to help fund Bay Area wetlands restoration.
By comparison, restoration of the Salton Sea in the Southern California desert received $170 million, and the Lower Los Angeles River Conservancy got $67.5 million.
Still, Northern California environmental groups endorsed the bill and are urging voters to approve it.
“There is no doubt that Los Angeles and Southern California desperately need more parks, and need more access. Those are highly, highly important investments,” said Deb Callahan, executive director of the Bay Area Open Space Council, in Berkeley.
“We want to see this pass,” she said. “There’s good money in there and we need it. This is not the last park bond that will ever be.”
Callahan noted that the measure contains $1 billion in competitive grants that are open to all regions of the state and that the Bay Area historically has done well in applying for them.
“As we invest, it’s important that we are responsive to how people engage with the outdoors. Let’s roll out the green carpet,” she said. “It’s also about building new coalitions. If we don’t recognize the diversity of user experience, then we will fall behind.”
Exit polls have shown that Latino voters support parks bonds in larger numbers than voters of most other ethnic groups. When the Los Angeles Times did exit polling after voters approved Proposition 40, a $2.6 billion parks bond in 2002, they found that 77 percent of black voters, 74 percent of Latino voters, 60 percent of Asian voters and 56 percent of white voters approved the measure.
Critics said the bond spends too much on maintenance at parks that should be spent from the state’s general fund.
“If you are using bond money to fill potholes, you are paying the interest off for 30 years,” said David Wolfe, legislative director of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association in Sacramento.
Wolfe said the state should cut government employee pensions, raise state parks entry fees or sell state parks to private corporations to run to find funding.
He noted that the bill was roughly 10 votes short of the two-thirds majority needed to pass in the Assembly on the final night as so-called “mod Democrats,” or business-friendly moderates, balked.
“It was pretty clear that this could have some problems,” he said. “Most of the money is tied up in LA. If you are a rural or Central Valley or a Bay Area lawmaker, there wasn’t much in here for you. I’m surprised it got 54 votes.”
Sources familiar with the horse-trading said that with Republicans opposed, the Democratic holdouts, many from Southern California and the Central Valley, were brought on board when Democratic leaders agreed to kill SB 606. That bill by Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner, DOakland, and Sen. Robert Hertzberg, D-San Fernando Valley, would have imposed strict new water conservation standards over the next decade on water districts. Many water districts have balked at statewide conservation mandates, saying they cost them millions of dollars in lost revenue and fail to recognize local supply differences.
Environmental groups had already filed paperwork to put their own $7.9 billion parks bond on the 2018 ballot. That put some pressure on Brown and state lawmakers. Brown had told lawmakers he would not agree to any more than $8 billion in total bond spending for parks, water and housing this year. In the end, a $4 billion housing bond also passed.
“I think this is one of the most significant pieces of legislation passed this year,” said Joe Caves, a lobbyist for the Nature Conservancy and other environmental groups that were pushing the larger bond. “We’re going to see the payoff over the next 5 to 10 years.”
Caves said if Brown signs the bill, he won’t start signature-gathering for the other ballot measure, although another group, led by Central Valley farm interests, is considering another bond for water projects for the November 2018 ballot.
“The things that are the big ugly fights always generate the headlines,” said Caves. “This bill is more about allocation between priorities. Just about everybody thinks it would be a good idea.”