In a media conference call earlier today, Mayor Bob Foster was one of six California mayors to express displeasure about the state’s attempts to raid local government funds in order to pass its own budget. The main issue concerns millions of dollars taken from local gas taxes, redevelopment funds and funds from Proposition 1A.
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa called the tactics “simply unnacceptable.” Mayor Foster called the Long Beach budget “a nearly unmanageable situation” due to the state. The group of mayors expressed their desire to pursue litigation against the state with hopes of regaining some of the funds lost.
“We’re going to be in a position of having to litigate,” Foster said. “It’s not a very productive path to take but we have no choice.”
Mayor Foster’s full statement is provided below:
I want to echo the comments of my colleagues. This is a very serious situation and, in many cases, illegal conduct. In the present context, just to give you an idea, a full 22-percent of the state deficit solutions are now coming out of local government if you count redevelopment, Prop 1A and gas tax takings. That’s 22-percent of their, quote, budget solutions. And these are amenities that have, every year, balanced our budgets in very difficult times.
In our case, they’ve taken $124 million out of our general fund in the last six years – out of a $400 million general fund. We had to balance our budget without gimmicks, so the state for years has been taking and raiding funds. They’ve taken over emergency funds and funds that are necessary at the City level. They’ve run out of those funds, they’re depleted. And now they’re turning to local government, who provide the services that our citizens count on every day. Fire police, library, public works – all of those things.
The gas tax in particular, is extraordinarily annoying, if nothing else. They’re taking, against the Constitution which requires that it be paid back, the California Constitution requires that it does get paid back and they are proposing to take it on a two-year basis and maybe permanently. That will affect almost everyone’s Public Works jobs, it will affect street sweeping, it will affect engineering projects, it will affect street pavement projects, traffic signal operations – all of those things will be affected at the local level by taking those gas tax funds.
And again, we’re going to be in a position of having to litigate. Not a very productive path to take, but we have no choice. When we’re facing, in our city here, $40 million in cuts that we have to make without the state takeaways, now add on the state takeaways on top of it and it becomes a nearly unmanageable situation.
Now if you step back from this, and you look at the conduct that the state – just take the last four, five years – if anyone thinks that they’re responsible, if anyone thinks it’s been successful, I’d like to see that because what they’re doing is repeating the same conduct to continue to borrow, to continue to use gimmicks of slipping things into the next fiscal year.
It hasn’t worked, it will not work, and their inability to face reality is now causing every citizen of California who lives in a city or county – which is everyone – to have more of their services severely cut back. So, we’re going to join with our colleagues and we’re going to see the state in court. It’s not productive, but it’s necessary.