A firefight over sales-tax money
Some political actions are so brazen that one’s first response is not to get angry, but to chuckle at the chutzpah. That’s the case with Measure D, the countywide ballot initiative that would take money from deputy sheriffs and the District Attorney’s Office and give it to the Orange County Fire Authority.
Measures B, C and E were put on the ballot by the Board of Supervisors, which unanimously opposes Measure D, to give voters alternative choices for splitting up Proposition 172 sales-tax revenue. The idea was to make it less likely for D to pass.
Measure D has set off a nasty battle between the firefighters union, which claims that a shortage of funding is endangering public safety, and the deputy sheriffs and DA, who claim that its passage would endanger public safety by forcing reductions in staffing in both departments.
The fire authority has had its budget linked to property taxes since the mid-1990s and has enjoyed steadily growing budgets ever since. Firefighters enjoy average salaries and benefits of $175,000 a year, and the fire authority has built a fancy, $50-million headquarters buildingin Irvine.
Yet the fire authority and the firefighters union complain that there are insufficient firefighters and decrepit equipment. “Your Orange County Fire Authority firefighters rely upon aging equipment such as Vietnam-era helicopters and 20-year-old fire engines,” D supporters write in the ballot argument. “A more serious concern is that over half of your Orange County Fire Authority fire stations are understaffed.”
The firefighters, for a variety of reasons, also want to add a fourth firefighter on each truck, thus expanding union membership.
Talk about chutzpah. Presumably the Orange County Fire Authority could have used its resources differently, perhaps been less generous with pay and benefits so that it could have dealt with the supposed understaffing problem, or could have diverted more money to equipment and less to a headquarters building known derisively as the Taj Mahal.
D opponents are right when they argue that “[t]he Fire Authority needs more financial accountability, not more of our tax dollars.”
Now firefighters are seeking a new funding source. So they stepped back in history, rewrote a little bit of it and have crafted a campaign to grab another load of taxpayers’ cash. During the troubled economic times of 1993, legislators shifted local funds to the state to pay for education. To make up for the shortfalls, voters passed a half-cent sales tax for public safety, known as Prop. 172. The initiative allows county boards to decide how to spend the money.
The county board divvied up the money between the sheriff’s department and the DA’s office. Later, the fire authority was created as a special district funded by property taxes and protected from legislative fund shifts. On balance, the fire authority, which serves less than half of the county, did quite well by relying on escalating property taxes rather than sales taxes.
The firefighters are now saying that because they helped the Prop. 172 campaign, and the campaign promised to fund firefighters, they deserve some of the sales tax. Yes, the ads featured firefighters, but the ballot initiative allowed the money to be spent exactly as the county has spent it.
From a taxpayer’s perspective, the question is whether these agencies have sufficient funding sources, not what old campaign ads claimed. The Orange County Fire Authority has not made the case that it a) needs more funds or b) that it has tried other solutions before simply asking for more tax revenue. It has mostly attempted to show that it has a “right” to the funds.
Measure B would essentially keep the current system in place, C would create a homeland security fund, and E would give some of the sales-tax money to the Probation Department. These are designed to confuse the ballot and dilute support for D. We urge a No vote on all of them.
Bottomline: Vote No on Measures B, C, D, and E