State debate rekindled over added rural firefighting fees
State debate rekindled over added rural firefighting fees
19 February 2013
published by www.dailydemocrat.com
USA — SACRAMENTO (AP) — An annual fire-prevention fee that is unpopular with some rural property owners is headed back before the state Legislature, as Gov. Jerry Brown proposes to expand its use and opponents try to kill it.
The fee was imposed for the first time last year and helps fund the state’s firefighting agency. It has run into two new hurdles in recent weeks that are feeding criticism and uncertainty about its future.
First came a disclosure that the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection funneled money from wildfire damage settlements into a special account instead of the state treasury.
That revelation was followed by an opinion from the Legislature’s legal counsel that the department is improperly using some of the new fire fee revenue to collect damages from those who maliciously or accidentally start fires, instead of its intended purpose.
The news prompted a state audit, led Republican lawmakers to call for a federal investigation and bolstered the hopes of an anti-tax organization that is suing over the way the fee was enacted.
Department spokesman Daniel Berlant said there was no intent to hide $3.6 million in wildfire settlement money that was placed in an account kept by the California District Attorneys Association. Most of the money was used to buy digital cameras, radio scanners and other equipment, and for conferences to train county prosecutors and fire investigators.
The department provided documents it said show that state
officials were told about the fund, unlike the parks department where officials deliberately hid $20 million from lawmakers and the governor.
A February 2010 email to the Department of Finance, state Assembly and Bureau of State Audits has an attached memo outlining 10 financial and management issues facing the firefighting agency. The Wildland Fire Investigation Training and Equipment Fund at the center of the dispute is addressed in four paragraphs on page seven of the 10-page memo.
A 26-page internal audit of the account also was posted on a public website in 2009, four years after the fund was created.
Finance Department spokesman H.D. Palmer said the existence of the fund was not widely known, and officials are now auditing the account.
Putting money from wildfire settlements into an account overseen by the district attorneys association is like playing “shell games with the public’s money,” said Assemblyman Adam Gray, D-Merced.
