Assemblywoman Alyson Huber’s Bill to reverse the loss of $1.5 million in property taxes and Vehicle License Fees in Amador County and its five cities will be subject of a California Assembly Committee hearing Wednesday, Jan. 11, with a contingent of locals expected to attend.
Supervisor Richard Forster announced Tuesday during the Board of Supervisors hearing that Huber’s Assembly Bill 1191 is scheduled to be heard at 1:30 p.m. today (that is Wednesday, Jan. 11), and “there will be quite a few of us going down” to Sacramento for the hearing. Forster said the bill would try to recover “Triple Flip” and Vehicle License Fee funds lost with an Educational Augmentation Revenue Fund snafu that took about $1 million from Amador County, and another $500,000 from the cities, when the Amador County Unified School District declared itself a “basic aid” school district.
Forster said “this is affecting our county to the tune of $1 million dollars,” and “we need some assistance on this. We need as many people as possible to attend.”
Last week, the Sutter Creek City Council joined Jackson, Plymouth and Ione in approving a resolution of support for AB 1191. City Manager Sean Rabe said it “resolves the property tax situation that is unique to Amador and Mono counties.” Rabe said Sutter Creek “likely faces an ongoing loss of about $58,000 in property tax revenue if AB 1191 is not passed.”
Sutter Creek Mayor Linda Rianda (REE-ANDA) was planning to attend the hearing before the Assembly Committee on Local Government, as was .
Jackson City Manager Mike Daly. Daly said AB 1191 was among eight bills on the committee’s agenda and testimony will be limited based on signups, but he will be on hand to describe impacts if needed. The website includes an audio feed for live listening of the committee hearing.
Daly said AB 1191 is a structural fix to legislative code but it would not take effect until 2013, but he said the “good news is that the state budget included backfilling the money lost in 2010-2011,” according to the California State Association of Counties. Daly said the Department of Finance put the funding fix into budget, “after considerable lobbying by CSAC.” He said it shows that AB 1191 takes care of something that never should have happen in the first place.
He expected Ione to be represented at the hearing because Ione proportionally was hit harder than the other cities in Amador County, due to loss of Vehicle License Fees totaling $190,000. Ione gets credit for prison population, in the per capita way the state gives out the fees. Ione gets license fees based on 7,000 population though more than 4,000 of the people are incarcerated.
Jackson lost $96,000 in funding last fiscal year, Plymouth lost $25,000 and Amador City lost $5,000.
Story by Jim Reece. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
