By ERIC LEINS and PETER CROWLEY
GILROY
– The Gilroy City Council has authorized its attorney to look
into possible legal action against the state over the reduction of
vehicle license fees without a plan to backfill, or repay, millions
of dollars due municipalities.
GILROY – The Gilroy City Council has authorized its attorney to look into possible legal action against the state over the reduction of vehicle license fees without a plan to backfill, or repay, millions of dollars due municipalities.
This may mean joining a suit Santa Clara County and other California counties announced Wednesday, or it could mean joining another suit – or filing its own.
The city of Los Angeles has already announced its intention to sue, according to The Associated Press, as has the League of California Cities, of which Gilroy is a member.
“On the cities’ side, you may actually see the League take the lead,” Gilroy City Administrator Jay Baksa said Wednesday. “In the past, they’ve been very organized in these types of things.”
“I’m bothered by their total (avoidance) of responsibility at the state level,” said Roland Velasco, who in his day job is a policy aide for county Supervisor Don Gage. “No cuts have been made at the state level. No organizations have been cut so far. The only ones hurting are the (local) governments.”
On Friday, Gilroy Mayor Al Pinheiro wrote a letter to Assemblyman Simon Salinas, D-Salinas, saying that “the Gilroy City Council and the City of Gilroy in its entirety is extremely disappointed with your vote on AB 5X3 and AB 5X7.” The motion on the floor last week, brought by Republicans, was to fast-track the Assembly bills that would have allocated more than $3.6 billion in backfill to cities and counties, skipping committees and bringing the decisions straight to the Assembly floor. It failed. Democrats said the plan would require massive cuts that hadn’t been identified.
In a response letter to Pinheiro, Salinas defended his no vote. He said he will support the bills once a revenue source is identified to actually pay the backfill.
“Unfortunately, these bills would appropriate money that simply does not exist,” Salinas wrote.
“We need to hear from the governor. Where is the money going to come from?” Salinas told The Dispatch. “How does (fast-tracking the bills) solve the problem if there’s no revenue source attached to the bills?”
Baksa Monday night described Salinas’ vote as a vote “against the backfill.” Salinas called that characterization “ridiculous,” but Baksa came back saying that for cities with serious cash-flow problems from the vehicle fee loss, the Assembly’s failure to do something quickly amounted to the same as doing nothing.
“Fast-tracking would have helped our brethren cities,” Baksa said. “Many of those cites are now in a world of hurt. … I don’t see anything wrong with fast-tracking this.”
Gilroy is far from the hardest-hit city. Vehicle-license fee revenue makes up about 9 percent of Gilroy’s general fund, ranking it 351st out of 477 California cities. Some cities used the fees for 64 percent or more of their general funds. Around the region, the fee amounts to 22 percent of East Palo Alto’s general fund, 19 percent of Los Banos’, 18 percent of Saratoga’s, 17 percent of Monte Sereno’s and 16 percent of Los Altos Hills’.
