Millions in CalFire prevention funds not spent
By Jim Miller, Sacramento Bee
Amid a drought that has created bone-dry conditions across much of California’s wildland area, a state fire prevention account has ended recent fiscal years with tens of millions of dollars unspent.
The money has been generated by a contentious, 4-year-old fee pushed through by Gov. Jerry Brown and legislative Democrats over the objections of Republicans and rural property owners. The state collected more than $300 million through June and spent about $260 million, including roughly $228 million on administration and statewide prevention activities, vegetation clearing, defensible space inspections and other programs. About $22 million went to a state tax agency to cover collection costs.
But as fires burned hundreds of thousands of acres this year, the state ended the fiscal year in June with an estimated $43 million in fee money left over.
More than 800,000 property owners pay the fee, most of them $117.33 a year for each habitable structure.
This ILLEGAL, extortion TAX has had BS written all over it from the beginning. One more time the senile old goat in Sacto has been careless with our money. 22 million to some agency to collect the fees???!!!! Who are you kidding?!! Of course, this type of Brown dribble is typical of all politicians.
If you read the article and see what the money is being spent on, it’s clearly a tax, not a fee. And therefore, clearly illegal.
Another unwanted, unwarranted, unnecessary, imprudent tax levied by ignorant tax and spend legislators who think money simply grows on trees.
Tyrrany.
Maybe they could use the money to pay me, other contractors and all the fire agency’s the money that the Nv Fire Safe owes us and get it out of bankruptcy court from the last defensible space program.
Liberals being liberals. They love to do nothing but pretend and collect and extort money for campaigns or fake fire prevention programs as a tax while saying it isn’t. The people who lost their houses should be paid for their losses for this negligence. Looks like 90% collected is going to “administrative” costs.
Aren’t these the same folks who were discovered a couple of years back to have a huge secret fund hidden from the state financial and accounting offices (as well as the taxpayers, etc.)? Sounds like they just can’t get out of the habit of setting aside huge amounts of money that they don’t have to account for.