The Legislative Analyst’s Office agrees with the governor’s proposal to dramatically increase the mill assesment. The independent budget advisors are also recommending lawmakers use the tax on pesticide sales to cover more of the Department of Pesticide Regulation’s programmatic costs.
As one of several recommendations in a new report analyzing the structural budget imbalance at DPR, LAO is taking aim at an air monitoring program. DPR tracks airborne pesticide emissions as part of an Air Resources Board program that targets grants to disadvantaged communities in the state’s most polluted air basins. The monitoring is one of several environmental justice initiatives DPR has taken on in recent years.
Funding for it has come from cap-and-trade revenues. Given the state’s budget crisis, however, the administration and the Legislature are digging into that money to fill funding gaps for programs outside the scope of cutting climate emissions.
LAO is looking for ways lawmakers can maintain that flexibility by minimizing any existing spending from the climate account. To that end, it is urging DPR to dip into its own fund to pay for the air monitoring, since the ongoing nature of the program suggests it is a core department function. That means the department must bump its tax on pesticide sales even higher to account for the additional costs, estimated at about $700,000 annually.
Noticeably absent: LAO points out that the Newsom administration has not allocated any funding to launch DPR’s new environmental justice advisory committee. Despite strong opposition from ag groups, Gov. Gavin Newsom last year signed AB 652 establishing the committee.
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The budget omission is part of the administration’s overall strategy to exclude funding for recently chaptered legislation. Newsom has taken heat from environmental groups over the absence of funding to implement California’s controversial new laws on corporate climate accountability, SB 253 and SB 261.
But: LAO suggests that the mill assessment presents an opportunity to set DPR’s scope of work as well. It offers “a key juncture” for considering new activities like this for the department.
Meanwhile: Louie Brown, an attorney with Kahn, Soares & Conway representing several ag organizations, is pleading with lawmakers not to increase any fees on food producers.
During a budget subcommittee hearing last week, Brown described how the new ag census finds that California has lost 7,000 farms over the last five years.
“No doubt some of this is related to commodity prices,” said Brown. “But also a significant factor in that are the regulatory costs in the state of California.”
