The Plight of the Counties

The voter turnout in the March 1 special election in Shasta County was a phenomenal 55%, even though only one issue was on the ballot. The big turnout was not good news for Shasta County officials, however, for this energized electorate quashed by 2 to 1 a proposed half-cent sales-tax increase. The additional revenue, $4.5 million, was designed to extract the northern Sacramento Valley county from the fiscal hole that forced officials to close the county library and the hospital last fall.

The situation in neighboring Tehama County may be even worse. Officials in the county seat of Red Bluff say that they are prepared to let the county shut down when it runs out of money by June. Over in Butte County, administrative officer Martin Nichols compared his government to the Titanic in explaining the situation to a national news magazine: “We’ve hit the iceberg, our decks are awash and there is no help on the horizon.”

The plight of the counties is not limited to what they used to call the “cow counties” in California. The large urban counties face similar problems.

The Legislature made a worthy effort last year to help the counties, passing bills to take over local court costs and to provide more help for programs like welfare in which costs soar as the caseloads increase. Still, county government in California is in a vise that began closing with the passage of Proposition 13, the property-tax-limit measure, in 1978. The counties lost $250 million in federal revenue sharing, and now the Gann spending limit threatens to inhibit the state’s ability to help.

In spite of the state help in 1987, Larry Naake, the executive director of the County Supervisors Assn., said that the counties will be forced to beg for year-to-year handouts until there is a more fundamental restructuring of the state-county relationship.

State-mandated programs now eat up 95% of some county budgets, leaving virtually no money for the so-called discretionary programs like libraries, hospitals and sheriffs’ patrols. The situation is so desperate that Assembly Speaker Willie Brown has proposed a study of local government in California, raising the question of whether city and county governments should be replaced by regional entities. That is a radical solution, but Brown is correct when he says that California has “a haphazard, random assortment of governing bodies all fighting over the same dollars.” There must be a more efficient way.

For now, however, the plight of the counties deserves priority attention from both the Legislature and Gov. George Deukmejian. The role of the county in California government is an integral part of the broad debate over planning, transportation needs, air pollution, waste disposal and the other offshoots of growth.

In Shasta County, one reading of the failed election is that county residents are fed up with absorbing programs from Sacramento without the means to finance them. In Sacramento, another reading could be that if Shasta County will not pay another half-penny sales tax for libraries and the like, why should the Legislature do any more? The proper reading would be that both Proposition 13 and the Gann limit have destroyed any concept of sensible financing of government in California. Band-Aids will not fix it.