Disaster declaration for San Joaquin County

STOCKTON — Gov. Jerry Brown has declared a state of emergency in San Joaquin County and most of California, hours after county leaders publicly questioned why notoriously flood-prone San Joaquin had not been included in other declarations.

The governor’s latest move focuses on the February storms that have caused an estimated $9.8 million in damage in the county, a number that will likely go up as more information becomes available.

Property owners will now be eligible for state disaster assistance, and potentially federal help as well if President Donald Trump declares a federal disaster as the governor has requested.

San Joaquin is not included, however, in two other emergency declarations for storms in early January and late January, a fact which has not gone unnoticed here.

“I think it’s great that we’re on (the latest declaration), but it begs the question: Why weren’t we on it before?” county Supervisor Kathy Miller said Wednesday.

One day earlier, at a Board of Supervisors meeting, she said publicly that she had recently met with business leaders who questioned why San Joaquin was not among the 49 counties (there are 58 in the state) that were declared a disaster under Brown’s first state of emergency in January.

“(Local business leaders) have the perception that we’re being picked on unfairly at the state level,” Miller said at Tuesday’s meeting. She did not speculate why.

Hours later, the governor included San Joaquin in his third declaration.

The situation has been complicated by the separation of the 2017 storms into three different events, each requiring counties to report damage in order to qualify for aid, said Michael Cockrell, head of San Joaquin County’s Office of Emergency Services.

The three sequences of storms span Jan. 3-10, Jan. 18-23, and the month of February, Cockrell said.

“I’ve never seen the state and feds break up an emergency so much into little bitty pieces,” he said Wednesday. “You’ve got all these levee agencies and cities who are going to have to have three separate documentation processes. There are so many forms you have to submit to request for assistance. You’re tripling it.”

State and federal damage assessment teams have also used a “stronger approach” than in the past, Cockrell told supervisors this week, seeking past levee inspection reports and payroll records among other things. The levee agencies that keep those records, meanwhile, have been busy fighting the floods.

Most have hired engineering firms who also represent districts in other counties that were included in the governor’s previous disaster declarations. “They feel they compiled their documents the same way” as those other counties, Cockrell told supervisors on Tuesday.

Asked about the perception of unequal treatment, Brad Alexander, a spokesman for the state Office of Emergency Services, wrote in an email: “All local jurisdictions are part of the same documentation process for disaster recovery.” No one answered the phone late Wednesday at the governor’s press office.

The good news is that the county can still submit the more detailed information to the state in an effort to get added to the two previous declarations, Cockrell said. He told supervisors this week that the most recent meeting with a damage assessment team was “very, very positive.”

And the inclusion in the governor’s most recent declaration for the February storms is “a big relief,” Cockrell said.

“It does show our jurisdictions are trying to comply,” he said.