Forums Set on Use of Tobacco Taxes

Worried that a March ballot initiative could repeal Proposition 10’s cigarette tax for child development programs, county backers of the tax plan to hold a series of public forums to explain how the money will be used.

The forums will begin tonight and will be held around the county at various locations, county officials said.

Ventura County’s Children and Families Commission receives $11 million annually, generated by Proposition 10, to spend on programs benefiting young children. But critics say the special Proposition 10 commissions set up in Ventura and other counties have been too slow in spending the money.

Supervisor Kathy Long said the forums are intended to show voters where the dollars are being spent. “We have not been sitting here twiddling our thumbs,” she said.

Sessions will be held at the Centerpoint Mall in Oxnard tonight; the Pacific View Mall in Ventura on Wednesday, and Horizon Hills School in Thousand Oaks on Thursday. Each two-hour forum begins at 6 p.m.

The commission hopes to begin distributing dollars by July, after it has submitted a spending plan to a state panel for approval, Long said. She acknowledged that the process of identifying worthy projects has taken longer that expected.

Charles Janigian, president of the California Assn. of Retail Tobacconists, said only one county commission--Alameda in Northern California--has submitted a spending plan 14 months after Proposition 10 was approved by a narrow majority of California voters in 1998.

Proposition 28 on the March 7 ballot seeks to repeal the 50-cent-a-pack tax, and, if passed, would effectively disband the county commissions in Ventura and elsewhere. That gives new urgency to the local commission’s goal to raise its visibility with the public, commission members said.