Opinion: Time to fight the rural fire tax
By George Runner
A fire tax bill is coming soon to a mailbox near you. It’s not fair; it’s not constitutional, but thanks to Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature, the bills are coming all the same.
On Aug. 13, California began mailing the first of more than 825,000 Fire Prevention Fee bills to Californians who own property with a habitable structure in a State Responsibility Area- those 31 million acres where CalFire has primary responsibility for fire prevention and suppression.
It doesn’t matter whether you’ve invested time, sweat and money to meet the state’s ever-evolving fire standards. It doesn’t matter whether you experience any benefit from CalFire’s prevention activities. It doesn’t even matter whether you already pay for local fire service – though if you do, you’ll get a $35 discount.
Like it or not, if you live in an SRA, the state is going to start billing you $150 each year. And if you don’t pay within 30 days, you’ll face steep penalties and interest.
The bills are going out in alphabetical order by county between August and early December. That means residents of Alameda, Alpine, Amador and Butte counties will receive their bills in August. Residents of Tuolumne, Ventura, Yolo and Yuba counties most likely won’t see theirs for several months.
The first round of bills is expected to raise $84 million to help pay for the state’s operations last fiscal year. The next round of bills is just around the corner – they’ll be mailed beginning March 2013.
Forget the photos of firefighters fighting fires. This new tax won’t pay for firefighters or put out a single fire. Nor will it do anything to expand the state’s fire prevention efforts. The dollars collected will simply fund existing CalFire programs.
Supporters of the fire tax argue that folks who live in fire-prone areas should pay for increased state fire prevention costs.
Imagine if we funded other state programs similarly. The Legislature would then require property owners in high-crime neighborhoods to pay a “crime prevention tax” to fund the state’s prisons and public safety programs.
After all, these high-crime neighborhoods produce more criminals.
Somehow I doubt urban politicians will extend the same logic to other state programs – especially not if it means higher taxes for the urban areas they represent.
When it comes to the fire tax, there’s no relationship between a taxpayer’s burden and the benefits he or she will receive.
Even so, the governor and Legislature are still trying to pretend this new tax is a fee. That’s because the Legislature doesn’t have constitutional authority to raise taxes without a two-thirds vote. By pretending the fire tax is a fee, the Democrat majority approved it on a simple majority vote.
I intend to join the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association in suing to halt this illegal money grab. But before a lawsuit can move forward, at least one property owner must 1) receive a bill, 2) file a written appeal and 3) have his or her appeal denied.
To help inform California taxpayers, I’ve established a website (calfirefee.com) providing detailed information about the new fire tax. Visit this site to find out if you live in an SRA and might soon receive a fire tax bill. You can also find further details regarding the process, timeline and grounds for filing an appeal.
California needs a balanced budget, but we should not balance it on the backs of already overtaxed Californians. As an elected taxpayer advocate, it is my duty and privilege to work each and every day to protect taxpayers from unfair and excessive taxation – including this new illegal fire tax.
George Runner is a member of the state Board of Equalization. His district, which stretches from San Bernardino County to the Oregon border, is home to more than 9 million Californians.
Will it be more fair to have every fee lot evaluated for ability to suppress fire then determine how much the state will charge to protect their assets?
Living in the Angora Fire area, I have mixed feelings about this fee. However, I don’t have mixed feelings about how the state handled it during these tough economic times. We received a letter from the state with the words “URGENT NOTICE” in red, 20 point type on the outside. It looked like some sort of dun notification. Inside, the letter helpfully told us that our property was in the fire fee area, and to look for the upcoming bill. Really? How much did the taxpayers spend for that endeavor?
scadmin, dont have mixed feelings, you are being stolen from. Cal Fire has one single employee working part time in the Tahoe Basin. During the summer there may be a couple seasonals doing defensible space inspections, but I dont even think that is happening. Cal Fire has given all of that responsibility to the US Forest Service and the US Forest Service is has some FRA land somewhere that Cal Fire oversees. So in Tahoe, we are truly paying for something we are not getting.
Also, if Cal Fire is getting $100 in funding. California pays that with a tax, then cuts the funding by $30 and replaces the money with money from taxpayers….isnt that a tax?
Are you not all the folks that asked for the chopping down of the forest in the tahoe basin for “fire safety”, logging is not free, who did you expect would pay for it?
That crime to fire analogy used in this article is terribly inappropriate.
Surely someone can do better. And they should.
I am not in support of the tax, but something needs to be done about the strain on public safety resources that has increased with sprawl in fire prone areas in California, and The West.
Sort sighted developers, lack of foresight from planners, and a problem that won’t go away.
We need a good dialogue and good ideas.
This letter didn’t help.
Honestly, I didn’t read past that analogy because it demonstrates extremely poor logic and I have no reason to expect any critical thinking from the author.
Thing fish I am not at all certain its a bad analogy. Why should people in gated communities pay more in taxes for people to live in high crime areas? Sure sure counties cashed in and put communities in harms way. But there was not an awareness before. Fire is most definitely a huge part of community planning and home construction now. The question is only really about the older houses.
It would be different if we were actually getting a service for the fee. We are not, all we are getting is a continuation of service. That is a tax.
All anyone needs to know about the author of this article is his affiliation with the Howard Jarvis tax avoiders assoc. These are the same greedmongers that gave us Prop. 13 and brought any chance of sane self-governance in California to a painfully grinding halt with it’s 2/3rds majority rules effectively giving the minority GOP the power of the purse.. The convoluted attempts needed now to produce any sort of revenue is craziness, I agree, but I think that’s how we got here.
Fire and crime are too fundamentally different. Crime follows people and is created by people. In this case people moved into areas of greater fire danger.
Affluent areas have a lower crime rate, and they also have the highest paid police. The crime rate was probably low to begin with, yet as a community, they spend more money.
This is from my experience on the East Coast, where there were townships, and wealth tended to be highly concentrated in specific townships. Not all townships had their own police, but Birmingham did. Highest per capita income in the state, and they had their own police, and the police were paid very very well, better than all the jurisdictions around.
Sprawl put hundreds of thousands of people in fire prone areas that are taking up more resources. Blame it one irresponsible development and planning or just a market force.
I am not debating the tax issue, that isn’t the big issue. The issue is WUI and sprawl. Grant money is going to go away or be spread so thin that it will not make a difference. Fire will still happen. Problem will get worse.
The problem needs to be fixed and people who use poor analogies aren’t helping.
Crime: social issue humans create
Fire: a major part of the ecosystem that humans have turned into a problem by living in the WUI in increasing numbers.
Yes, I agree, thing fish. You have analyzed the issue well. Fire that originates where hundreds of thousands of people live in the WUI are likely to be harder and more expensive to put out. These fires travel and endanger the rest of us who do not live in the woods.
Wild animals such as bears are displaced by development in heavily forested areas and come into town looking for food.
They often pay with their lives.
We are all already paying for irresponsible development and poor planning. And now we will have to pay some more.
Let us resist being manipulated by California politicians like George Runner who hope to gain by dividing the citizens of this once great state against one another.
Why didn’t the governor assess this tax the legal way, with approval by 2/3 majority required to pass it? Because he knew darn well it would never pass. This is NOT a fee. The amount of money going into this fund is being taken right back out the back door and being put into the general fund to be spent on legislators’ assistants, per diem expenses, pet projects, and all the othet stuff that we taxpayers should be upset about. But apparently most of you are not.
This “fee” is NOT about fire protection. It is another illegal taking.
Ive lived in my high desert community for forty years and have never had my house burn down or be even close to such a desaster. I pay many forms of taxes like state earnings, sales tax, fuel, property and local taxes. What i would like to know is when have I payed enough??? According to state census the areas that are to pay thos tax are comprised mostly of middle and lower income home owners and the majority of those people are not registered dems. so this tax is focused on people who dont really count in state elections… Were does this end and again I ask when have I payed enough??? My son goes to state preschool but my income is over 50k a year so we pay 500 a month while low income families dont pay at all and also recieve free meals. What am I getting for all the taxes im paying??? When my kid gets into public school we have to buy books and paper and all school supplies plus pay for lunch but if I didnt pay taxes and lived of the system he would be free. Im sorry but this system is punishing the productive and rewarding those that dont or wont produce… Why is it that I should be ok with this? If any firetax supporter would like to please explain when they feel ive done my share
You may have done “your share” when every child has a chance at an education that teaches them how to communicate with complete sentences that have some tenuous grip on grammar or spelling.
Hey Dick sorry but i wrote this in a hurry. And every child does have a chance at a good education thanks to my tax dollars. I was just wondering if you contribute to this state or do you leach off of it???