Mar 13, 2019
In this photo taken Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2019, California Gov. Gavin Newsom delivers his first state of the state address to a joint session of the legislature at the Capitol in Sacramento, Calif.
Gov. Gavin Newsom is again proposing the creation of a tap water tax on all Californians with clean drinking water, a proposal that failed under former Gov. Jerry Brown and in the state Legislature last year.
Newsom’s 2019-2020 budget would create a "safe and affordable drinking water fund [to] enable the State Water Resources Control Board to assist communities, particularly disadvantaged communities, in paying for the short-term and long-term costs of obtaining access to safe and affordable drinking water."
California residents with clean drinking water would be taxed 95 cents every month, or $11.40 a year, to contribute $110 million toward the fund. Dairy producers and feedlot operators would be expected to pay roughly $30 million in fees, according to the plan.
The fund would clean contaminated water in two areas of the state identified in a McClatchy 2018 analysis: the Southern San Joaquin Valley and the Mojave Desert. According to McClatchy, at least 360,000 Californians use water that fails state standards for toxins, and 6 million people have water providers that have violated state clean water standards since 2012 in these two regions of the state.
With California having a surplus of $14.8 billion, Jon Coupal of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayer Association said the solution is not to create a new tax.
Newsom’s proposal is an example “of California’s knee-jerk reaction to default to a new tax whenever there’s a new problem,” Jarvis told the Sacramento Bee.
It also opposes the will of the voters who rejected in the 2018 midterm election the $8.9 billion Proposition 3 water bond that would have devoted $500 million to clean drinking water, critics point out.
Members of the agricultural community and the Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA), which represents more than 400 water districts, oppose the plan and protested against it last year.
"The vast majority of the state's residents have access to safe drinking water, but a small percentage of the population does not," the ACWA said in a statement. "This unacceptable reality is a social issue for the state of California. A statewide water tax is highly problematic and is not necessary when alternative funding solutions exist and the state has a huge budget surplus.”
Orange County Republican Travis Allen, who ran for governor in 2018, said of Newsom’s plan, "In one of his first official acts, Gov. Newsom wants to TAX YOUR WATER," in a tweet to constituents. "There is no limit to what the Democrats will tax or excuses they'll make to TAKE YOUR MONEY. It's time Republicans start fighting and TAKE BACK CALIFORNIA!!"
The state constitution requires a two-thirds super-majority of legislators to impose a new tax. After the 2018 election, Democrats now hold super-majorities in both chambers of the Legislature, which could make passing the bill more likely.
But Assemblyman Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, told reporters after Newsom’s announcement that the proposal would be a “very tough lift” to tax all Californians, most of whom have clean water, to fix a pollution in a “very specific area.”
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Originally Posted by Andrew Ryan
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