Passage of a past-due state budget may still be a month away,
but legislators in Sacramento believe they have once again saved a
farmland-preservation subsidy that has become a perennial pawn in
state budget fights.
Gilroy – Passage of a past-due state budget may still be a month away, but legislators in Sacramento believe they have once again saved a farmland-preservation subsidy that has become a perennial pawn in state budget fights.
Assembly members in July passed a budget that restored $39 million for the farmland-conservation program known as the Williamson Act, after money for the program was eliminated in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s May budget proposal. Funding for the program was also included in a Senate budget proposal that fell one vote shy passage on Wednesday, and legislators expect it will remain when senators vote again later this month.
The 1965 Williamson Act provides more than $300,000 in yearly tax breaks for county farmers and ranchers. The loss of the funding could spell the end of the program in a county with a $227-million budget deficit, Santa Clara County Assessor Larry Stone has said.
But to those closest to the state budget process, Williamson Act funding was never truly endangered.
“In the world of budget politics, Republicans usually want to dismantle government,” said Assemblyman John Laird, D – Santa Cruz, on Thursday. “There aren’t many things they truly support and this is one, so it’s a way for somebody like the governor to gain leverage with the Republicans. I’m optimistic that he’ll back off.”
If the governor uses a line-item veto to cut the program’s funds, Laird said that he and other legislators are prepared to pass a budget amendment restoring funding. And it’s not only Democrats who feel strongly about Williamson.
“Given the level of opposition, much of it bipartisan, I’m confident that the governor recognizes that it’s an important issue to many Republicans as well as rural Democrats,” said Evan Oneto, spokesman for Assemblyman Rick Keene (R – Chico).
The end of Williamson funding could mean years of wasted effort reforming the county’s management of the act. A 2002 audit by the California Department of Conservation found that roughly 1,000 of the county’s 3,000 Williamson Act properties failed to meet the law’s requirements: Either they had no agriculture or they fell short of the minimum lot sizes of 10 acres for prime land, which supports most row crops and orchards, and 40 acres for non-prime land, typically used for ranching.
In response, county officials worked with farmers and other regional stakeholders to develop new guidelines for the program. Property owners who failed to qualify under the new guidelines began receiving notices last year letting them know they no longer qualified for program funding and that their Williamson contracts would not be renewed by the county planning department, would administers the program.
More than 500 “non-renewal” notices were sent out by early summer, mainly to people with parcels less than five acres in size and those living in residential subdivisions. The county plans to send more than 390 non-renewal notices this month to property owners who fall short of the 40-acre requirement for ranch land.
The proposed state funding cuts for the Williamson Act have been widely perceived as a strong-arm tactic by the governor against Senate Republicans, who are insisting on nearly $1 billion in additional cuts in other state programs before signing off on the state’s fiscal year 2007-2008 budget of $103.8 billion.
The political wrangling over the Williamson Act never genuinely worried Jenny Derry, executive director of the Santa Clara County Farm Bureau and a lead voice in revising local requirements for the program.
“I think it’s been used as a political football for many years,” she said, “and I don’t believe any time in the past three years that it’s been up for cuts, that it was really intended to be cut. I think it’s a very sympathetic pawn and certainly it’s being used by politicians as a bargaining chip.”
WHAT IS THE WILLIAMSON ACT?
Also known as the California Land Conservation Act, the Williamson Act is a 1965 state law that provides a property tax break for farmers. Today, more than three years after a state audit found that Santa Clara County has never properly administered the law, county officials are enforcing new guidelines to ensure that only legitimate farmers are covered. Of the county’s 3,000 Williamson parcels, nearly 1,200 either have no agriculture or do not meet the law’s minimum size requirements of 10 acres for prime land, which supports most row crops and orchards, and 40 for non-prime land, typically used for ranching.
