Some thoughts on the county layoffs

As a county resident and taxpayer, I'd like to share some thoughts and questions I have about the county budget and recent layoffs of 25 county employees. I asked some of these questions and made some of these remarks at the board of supervisors' special meeting Monday, June 4. The only answer, from Supervisor Forster, was "We've been talking about all this at three budget hearings." 

As I pointed out at the meeting, there are there no draft FY 2012-13 budget documents online. There are no meeting packets or recordings online for any of the budget hearings. So unless one attended the hearings, it's impossible to actually get any information about the county's financial condition.

I can't help but wonder why the county is laying off workers before meeting with all of the workers' unions to discuss how to address any budget shortfall. I also wonder why the county is budgeting for a return to a 40-hour workweek when the county workers were willing to take furloughs and work 36 hours a week this current fiscal year. The county could work up two alternatives -- staffing levels and salary costs with and without the 40-hour week -- and discuss that with the unions.

If the county wants to keep offices open 5 days a week, it could do that and still have workers on a 36-hour week: they just wouldn't all be furloughed on the same day of the week. Many state offices are staffed by workers who work fewer than five days a week, yet the offices stay open during core business hours M-F. It's a little more complicated for managers and may require more cross-training, but in most offices, it can be done (been there).

Speaking of 40-hour weeks -- has anyone done an analysis of the demand for county services on Fridays? It may be that some offices have very little demand for services on Fridays while others have more.

As Supervisor Novelli acknowledged June 4, laying off an employee has a ripple effect in the community that hurts businesses, schools and more. A 2010 CalPERS study using a widely accepted econometric model (IMPLAN) showed that every dollar CalPERS pays in benefits creates $1.55 in direct, indirect and induced economic and revenue benefit in Amador County. It's pretty safe to assume that county worker pay does much the same thing. Workers use their income to buy goods and services (and pay taxes), and the businesses who receive those funds then buy goods and services, pay employees who then spend money -- and pay taxes.

So in the long run, county layoffs hurt our local economy and reduce county tax income. And they reduce the level of services available to the public (that is, after all, why the workers are there in the first place).   

The laid-off workers have been given the option of working the next three weeks or taking severance pay. If the county gets the ERAF money and restores some or all of the positions, those who take the pay may not come back. If they don't, the county will then lose the investment it has made in their training as well as their institutional knowledge.

At Monday's meeting, I couldn't figure out why the county is not including in the budget the $1.1 million it expects to get in ERAF funds so it can keep its trained and experienced people working and maintain current levels of public service. If the money doesn't come through, the county could adjust the budget and if necessary, lay people off then. They'll know early in the fiscal year.

Since there are no budget documents online, it's impossible to see where else the county may be making cuts. Are the supervisors cutting the funds they budget for discretionary spending? (They didn't cut any of their own staff.) Are they cutting services that benefit small groups of people as well as large groups? Are we still paying $56,000 a year to kill coyotes and other predators while we close our branch libraries? Is there fair geographic distribution of cuts -- or is the Upcountry, which is losing its librarians in Pine Grove and Buckhorn -- suffering more than other areas?

There's just no way to know. And the more I think about this, the more questions I have. If you too have questions, please join me in asking for greater transparency and more public consultation about the county budget. 

A few words about local forests

I haven't been writing much here lately. Too much else to do. But I did write a recent blog about the local SPI clearcutting that turned into an op-ed published in the Bee on Sunday, November 20. To read more about the clearcutting, see Ebbetts Pass Forest Watch's website.

As SPI massacres local forests, other people are working together to find ways to make the forests more resilient, reduce fire danger and create local value-added products and jobs. To read about that, see the blog of the Amador-Calaveras Consensus Group.

Dr. Malcolm North's presentation there last week was especially informative.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Amador supervisors' funding for economic development

In case you missed the news, the Amador Business Council has approached the Amador County Board of Supervisors about contributing funds to a new economic development corporation. Never mind there's already an EDC in the county. The supervisors have asked the groups to try to resolve their differences and come back to discuss the funding request.

Meanwhile, I decided to weigh in on the subject with the supervisors, for what little my opinion is worth. We'll see how many of them respond to me or even acknowledge receiving my note. Want to make bets?

Here's what I e-mailed them yesterday:

Dear Chairman Plasse and Members of the Board:

I am writing as a private citizen and a county taxpayer, not as a representative of any group.

I strongly support community and government investment in local economic development. However, I do not support the County of Amador simply giving money to groups that come and ask for it without an objective, criteria-based look at their accomplishments and qualifications. The process should be open to any organization or economic development firm that is interested and able to provide the needed service so that the public is assured its money will be well spent.

Consequently, I would suggest that rather than give money to the Amador Business Council for a new economic development corporation, the county should take the more usual, professional governmental approach: Issue a Request for Proposals or Request for Qualifications and see who applies. The ABC, if interested, can then compete with others who may be as well or better qualified to spend taxpayer dollars in a productive, accountable way.

Before you issue the RFP or RFQ, CAO Chuck Iley, who I gather has extensive experience in contracting, could then work with the appropriate committee and then the full board to develop a set of criteria that would be used to review the submittals and choose the most qualified applicant with the best proposal. I would suggest that those criteria include a demonstrated record of success in economic development, as measured by jobs created, taxable sales increased, increased value of commodities produced, increased value of nonresidential construction, decreased unemployment, wages increased, percentage of new businesses surviving more than two years, poverty levels declining, percentage of employees in family wage jobs increasing, and other objective measures. The proposal should clearly lay out the expected results from the funding, using similar benchmarks so that you can hold the recipient accountable for the funds invested.

If you use an RFP rather than an RFQ, one of the scoring criteria should be the demonstrated success of the applicant.

Using a process of this type, you can select the most qualified applicant and best proposal, and the public can be better assured of getting results for our tax dollars. If the recipient doesn't perform, you can choose not to fund them in the future.

You might also consider setting up an economic development ad hoc committee that includes members of the public to assist with this process. If you do, I recommend that you include people from the full range of local economic sectors to ensure a balanced view. The committee could also benefit from the perspective of agencies like A-TCAA and Job Connection.

If local business owners want to contribute money toward economic development, they would still be free to pledge their funds as they have done with the ABC proposal.

Thank you for this opportunity to comment.

Best regards,
Katherine K. Evatt
Volcano

Protecting water and property rights

The Amador County Board of Supervisors routinely takes positions to protect the county's water rights and individual property rights, including landowners' right to use water from streams running through or along their property ("riparian rights"). The supervisors generally oppose anything they believe could adversely affect water or property rights, even if that belief is misguided (as in their position on the proposed National Wild and Scenic designation for the Mokelumne River).

So I am wondering whether they will take a position on HR 1837. That pending federal legislation will subvert California's water rights system and allow junior water rights holders (Westlands Water District and Kern County interests) to jump the line for water ahead of senior water rights holders, including farmers and ranchers with riparian rights to the Sacramento River and Delta. The bill is the worst kind of federal intrusion into state affairs, the kind our supervisors generally decry with great vehemence -- at least when they deal with it in theory. (Note to the board: This time it's for real.)

The bill will also effectively eliminate the county of origin priorities that are a critical part of California's water system. That county of origin doctrine is intended to ensure that no one can take north state water from the places it originates (the Siskyous, Sierra and Sierra foothills) to the detriment of those areas.

So will the supervisors stand up for county of origin water rights and private property? I hope so, but that remains to be seen. You see, HR 1837 is sponsored by a Central Valley Republican, Devin Nunes. Nunes has picked up the highly effective but grossly inaccurate publicity from Westlands Water District that blamed environmentalists and the Endangered Species Act for high levels of unemployment and poverty in the Valley that are actually a long-standing problem made much worse by the Great Recession building bust. Westland farmers actually did fine last year. (The economic truths are detailed in a recently released study.) But Nunes's "save agriculture from the enviros and the ESA" trope fits very nicely with some of our supervisors' political ideology and personal beliefs.

So who's fighting to protect the counties of origin and property rights against this water grab? Democratic Congressmen John Garamendi and George Miller and Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer have expressed strong concerns about HR 1837. They've recently been joined by conservative Northern California Republican Rep. Wally Herger.

Here's a quote from our senators' joint letter on HR 1837:

Another troubling aspect of this bill is its attack on states’ rights and state control of its water resources. The bill’s explicit preemption of California law runs contrary to the long established tradition of Congressional and court deference to states on water resource decisions. Consequently, this bill sets a very dangerous precedent of Congressional intervention into state water rights, which could have far reaching consequences not only for California, but for other states as well.

This is a bill our county should strongly oppose, in no uncertain terms. It will destroy county of origin rights for foothill counties. It will violate private property rights and take riparian water rights away from their rightful owners. And it is a terrible federal intrusion into states' rights.

What will the supervisors do? Stand with Nunes, or join the bipartisan defenders of the state's water system and mountain county water rights?

Will the general plan focus on our common ground?

The Amador County supervisors and planning commissioners are going to discuss the latest draft of the county general plan this week. The courts have called the state-required general plan the "constitution" of a county, so it's an important document.

The plan shapes how and where the county will grow over the next 20 years. It also defines which resources will be protected and lays out programs to implement land development and resource protection.

Back when the county started on this plan update in 2005, the county board of supervisors talked about developing a "consensus" plan that most people in the county could live with. The idea was to avoid the kind of conflict that often leads to costly and time-consuming litigation, which El Dorado County faced when it last updated its plan.

The supervisors established a General Plan Advisory Committee made up of diverse interests to help develop the plan. The GPAC met 27 times in public meetings, from July 2006 to April 2008. Then the supervisors and planning commissioners took a scalpel, or maybe a hatchet, to what they had done (depending on your point of view). Over the last year or so, county staff and hired consultant EDAW have been revising the plan so that it is consistent with the county officials' direction.

So now, we find ourselves with yet another draft to review, and an apparent move by Motherlode Tea Party members and friends to rewrite the plan entirely. With that background and this latest twist, I thought it might be instructive to look back to the supervisors' original intention and ask, "What would a consensus plan look like?"

So this morning I took a look at two different surveys I have handy, a telephone survey done by a professional polling company for the Amador Association of Realtors in June 2010 and an online survey conducted by the Foothill Conservancy and some co-sponsors in April 2008. Considering that the "Great Recession" intervened during the gap between the two surveys, any consistency in the results is probably pretty telling. I also tried to find the results of a electronic-voting workshop conducted by the county in September 2008, but didn't find its new location until after I had started this post.

The two surveys reviewed had some similar questions and also some different areas of focus. For purposes of this exercise, I had to focus on the similarities. With that in mind, what do the results show about Amador County residents' common ground regarding growth and development? They show that local residents want to:

• Focus new development in already developed areas rather than promote sprawl
• Protect working landscapes (forests, ranches and farms)
• Protect the natural environment
• Protect cultural and historical resources
• Promote economic development that will create more jobs
• Make parks and recreation sites part of the county mix

Both surveys also show that local residents think the county has been growing at about the right rate in recent years (that is, rather slowly). And locals value good planning as well as personal property rights.

So what should that mean for the general plan? If the county wants to develop a plan most people can support, it needs to address all of these things. There should be reasonable assurances that the areas of community common ground will be promoted and protected by good planning rather than left to luck or the vagaries of the real estate market and twists and turns of the economy. There should be assurance that the county will be taking positive steps to promote real local economic development. And of course, the plan should protect private property rights, but the fact is, the county can't approve a plan that violates anyone's property rights and expect it to hold up to legal challenge.

Will the plan embody and protect our community common ground? Or will the supervisors cave to those who want the plan to be as weak as possible?

It's too soon to say, but if you want to help shape the plan, you can attend the meeting on May 25 and later, comment in the related EIR and plan review process.

It's your county, after all, and unless you speak up, you may not like what happens to it over the next 20 years.

A new look at county government

Former county employee Art McClellan has a new blog, Amador County Government Issues. Art's taking on some of the interesting goings-on in county government, asking hard questions, and shining light on actions that might otherwise go unnoticed.

His recent posts include one on the public health doctor controversy and another on the county's hiring of a new community development director. Earlier posts address micromanagement by the board of supervisors and public employee unions.

As a former county insider, Art understands the arcana of county budgeting, fund transfers, and all the myriad ways our county spends taxpayer money on what the public needs, and maybe what they don't. And since he's a former independent businessman, Art has a valuable outsider perspective, too.

Take a look at Art's blog. In taking time to write it, he's performing a valuable public service.

Want a little tea with your conspiracy?

I recently learned that I am part of a vast, left-wing conspiracy. That came as surprise to me. But it appears that smart growth and sustainable development are the new face of socialism in America.

According to Tea Party groups across the country, land use planning and zoning -- and especially smart growth -- are part of a huge conspiracy to rob people of their property rights, driven by something called UN Agenda 21. Last November, Mother Jones magazine published an excellent article about this aspect of the Tea Party movement.

Our own local Tea Party focused on Agenda 21 at its last meeting and now has a related action group. That group's next meeting will tell people what to expect at the April 4 meeting on the Amador County General Plan general plan update. People who attended last week's board of supervisors meeting got a little preview of that, as Tea Partiers pointed to "trick" words to watch out for in the general plan language.

Considering that our general plan update isn't yet very smart or sustainable, I'm not sure what these folks have to worry about. After all, their very own supervisor, Brian Oneto, had the words "sustainable" and "sustain" removed from nearly all of the plan's draft policies a good while back. (Speaking of Oneto and the UN, I can't recall whether it was Brian or one of his brothers who brought up the UN in the 1990s during a Jackson presentation on the Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project report.)

What the Tea Party folks have in mind nationally, it appears, is the destruction of modern zoning and land use planning as we know it. They might take a look at Oregon to see just how well that works.

Back in 2004, Oregon voters rebelled against the state's land use laws and passed Measure 37, which was sold as a way to restore Oregonians' lost property rights. Things went so wrong, however, that a mere three years later voters approved another initiative that stopped the wholesale development of farming, forest and groundwater-limited lands that loomed following Measure 37's passage.

Apparently, zoning and planning start to look pretty good when your ranch is threatened by a big subdivision down the road or your next-door neighbor plans to open a gravel mine.

Tea Partiers who care about land use planning would do well to read Republican real estate and economic development consultant Donovan Rypkema's excellent 2008 speech, "Property Rights and Public Values." Here's one of its concluding quotes (emphasis added):

"Land use controls are, in fact, a capitalist plot to optimize the property values of the majority of owners, not some communist conspiracy to deprive individuals of some imaginary 'property rights.'”

Maybe I'm part of a conspiracy after all. A capitalist one. I think I can live with that.