Board Opts for Tax Revolt to Protest Budget

The Ventura County Board of Supervisors decided to withhold tens of millions of dollars in county property taxes from Sacramento in a protest vote Tuesday, just hours after the Legislature passed the state budget that would cut $2.6 billion from local governments.

The budget’s narrow passage before dawn Tuesday will hit some Ventura County cities harder than others: Oxnard will suffer an anticipated $1.2-million loss, while Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks, Camarillo and Moorpark could lose nothing at all, according to the office of the state legislative analyst.

Yet while some cities breathed more easily upon learning that Gov. Pete Wilson’s funding shifts may be gentler than they feared, Ventura County’s supervisors worried that the Legislature will not live up to its promise to lessen an estimated $36-million cut to the county government.

Supervisor Susan K. Lacey said she has little faith in numbers from the capital that hang on legislators’ pledges. Lawmakers say they plan to ease the effects of shifting $2.6 billion from local governments and special districts to schools by eliminating a series of costly, state-mandated programs.

Those measures followed the debate on the budget in the Assembly on Tuesday amid an assortment of 20 companion bills to implement the governor’s $52.1-billion spending plan.

“I think we’re dealing in snake oil here,” Lacey said just before the board voted 4 to 0, with Supervisor John K. Flynn out sick, to withhold the county’s property taxes as a protest against the budget package. The program cuts “don’t add up to the millions and millions they say,” she said.

Lacey also disagreed with state predictions that the county could reap up to $29 million a year if voters statewide approve continuing the half-cent sales tax, which is due to expire June 30.

Too often, state lawmakers look to local governments to bail them out, Lacey said, echoing a criticism voiced Tuesday by city officials across Ventura County. “They look at us for a source of property taxes, and that’s bad,” she said.

State Sen. Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley) explained that she voted for the budget, in part, because it allows schools to continue to get about $4,200 a year per pupil and because the state lifted a number of responsibilities that counties have been forced to undertake.

Wright said she lobbied unsuccessfully to cut in half the $2.6-billion spending shift. But she voted yes on the budget for only about the third or fourth time in her 13 years in the Legislature partly because she didn’t want to be the target of lobbying by Wilson or others. “I didn’t need all that pressure.”

If the governor signs the budget in its present form, Camarillo and the three east county cities will probably escape funding cuts because they never received money from the post-Proposition 13 bailout fund that the budget seeks to erase, said Anthony D. Gonsalves, a lobbyist for Camarillo, Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley.

Moorpark officials were braced to lose up to $260,000 in property tax revenues as a result of Wilson’s budget proposal, but likely will lose nothing, Gonsalves said.

“Justice prevails,” Moorpark Mayor Paul Lawrason said. “Hooray for us. I’m just more than pleased if we do come out of this unscathed.”

Thousand Oaks Councilman Frank Schillo said he believes that his city escaped relatively unscathed because of intense lobbying efforts.

“We did a little damage-control through lobbying,” said Schillo, who traveled to Sacramento with several other city leaders this spring. “I don’t think the legislators realized that counties and cities would work together; they were counting on us to be divisive.”

Other cities that stand to lose state funding said it could have been worse.

Yet while Ventura could lose only an estimated $740,000 rather than the $2 million earlier expected, the cut will still hurt, City Manager John Baker said.

“It’s kind of like putting your hand down and they take out this meat cleaver and say, ‘We’re gonna cut it off at the elbow,’ and they cut off three fingers,” Baker said. “You say ‘Gee, it still hurts.’ ”

Meanwhile, hard-hit cities such as Oxnard and Santa Paula grimly set about weighing options for absorbing the funding cuts to their own budgets.

After months of deliberations to spare libraries and other municipal services from cutbacks, Oxnard City Council members said Tuesday that they are not looking forward to having to tear into their $60-million budget again to handle an anticipated $1.2-million funding loss.

“It’s going to mean some more belt-tightening,” Mayor Manuel Lopez said. “We’re going to have to look into everything. That’s a big amount to try to reduce from an already austere budget.”

Adopted last week, Oxnard’s general fund budget is the most threadbare spending plan in recent years, containing $2 million in cuts to city services.

“Anything we have to cut, we’ll have to cut right out of the heart of our community,” Councilman Mike Pliksy said. “We should invite them down here and let them tell us where we’re supposed to come up with this extra money.”

Fillmore City Manager Roy Payne said the $86,000 state funding cut for his city’s $12-million budget is more than twice the $40,000 hit expected. It is likely to force more layoffs on top of the two the city had already planned. The city proposed the layoffs so as to divert money to increase weekend police coverage.

“We may have to take additional cuts or forgo extra police protection,” Payne said. “We don’t have anything but live bodies. There are no positions . . . we can eliminate.”

Port Hueneme stands to lose about $188,000 in state funding for its projected $4.6-million budget.

Councilman Dorill Wright said he wasn’t optimistic about the prospect of an additional loss in revenue.

The city is establishing special assessment districts to maintain a bare-bones operation that does not adequately handle upkeep for parks, streets, water and sewer systems, Wright said. “It’s difficult for me to say the state ought to be able to give schools the property tax revenues that have ordinarily gone to the cities and counties to provide those services,” he said.

Port Hueneme Councilman Ken Hess was fatalistic. “We’re worked so hard over the years to build the city up and we see things just crumbling. We’re so limited in what we can do.”

Although Camarillo appeared to have survived without significant cuts, City Manager J. William Little said he won’t believe that his city has been spared until Wilson signs the final budget and all accompanying bills.

“I don’t, quite frankly, necessarily trust those folks up there,” he said.

Santa Paula City Administrator Arnold Dowdy said he is frustrated to be handed another $231,000 loss in funding from state leaders so late in the budget process.

“Our whole structure of governmental finance needs overhauling from the git-go. It’s incredible how we keep having to play these brinkmanship games every year. When I talked to my department management team last week, I said, ‘There’s good news and bad news. The bad news is there’s no good news.’ ”

Moorpark’s Lawrason reiterated a complaint common among city officials weary of winding up as losers in the budget battles between Wilson and the Legislature.

“They balanced it on our back last year and, to some extent the year before, and this was going to be a giant repeat of last year,” Lawrason said.

“Wilson has been unswerving in his attitude to do it this way,” he said. “And I’m disappointed in him, having been a mayor and member of a municipal government, that he would not be more sympathetic to our situation.”

Times staff writers Fred Alvarez, Mark Gladstone, Stephanie Simon, Leo Smith and Phil Sneiderman contributed to this report, along with Times correspondents Maia Davis, James Maiella Jr. and Jeff McDonald.

* RAISES DELAYED: Supervisors postpone salary increases for county workers. B1

* VENTURA COUNTY CHART: B9