- Elizabeth Larson
- Posted On
April 2 ‘tele-town hall’ planned on state fire fee
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – A member of the state Board of Equalization will host a teleconference town hall in April on the state fire fee, which currently is the focus of a lawsuit and legislation seeking to overturn it.
Board of Equalization Member George Runner will host the tele-town hall beginning at 6 p.m. Tuesday, April 2.
For those who want to participate in the tele-town hall, they are asked to register in advance at www.calfirefee.com/townhall or by calling 916-324-4970.
Participants will receive a telephone call at the start of the tele-town hall connecting them with the group.
The fire fee, passed by the California Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2011, assigned a fee to every parcel in the State Responsibility Area, as Lake County News has reported.
At a November 2011 meeting, the California Board of Forestry and Fire Protection approved a per-parcel fee of $150. For parcels also covered by local responsibility areas, there was a $35 per parcel reduction in the fee.
The state began billing property owners for the fees in 2012.
Opponents of the fee said it wasn’t going toward fire prevention but to the creation of a new bureaucracy. At the same time, the state took a reported $50 million from Cal Fire’s budget.
Since then, legislation has been introduced to try to repeal the fee. Runner, a vocal opponent of the fire fee, said the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association filed suit to overturn the fee. The Board of Equalization was served with the suit on March 12.
“Recent revelations regarding the state’s misuse of fire fee dollars have only strengthened our case that the ‘fire fee’ is really an illegal tax,” Runner, who plans to join the lawsuit through an amicus brief, said in a written statement.
Payments of the fee so far have generated $72 million in revenue for the state, Runner reported.
He said the 2013 round of bills – which had been set to be mailed April 2 – is being delayed in response to concerns about accuracy of billing data.
Last week, Runner had sent Cal Fire a letter asking for the delay until the Board of Forestry has the opportunity to correct the State Responsibility Area maps, as there have been concerns that inconsistencies in boundaries resulted in some property owners being incorrectly billed.
Cal Fire also has been under increased scrutiny after nearly $4 million was discovered in a secret fund, with the fire fees reportedly diverted for wildfire investigations.
“The fire fee is tax policy at its worst,” said Runner. “Ever since the Legislature enacted this illegal tax, it’s created one problem after another. If the Legislature doesn’t act quickly to repeal this fiasco, the courts need to strike it down.”
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