Serving the Public Interest: a Legislative History of SB 1458 and the “County Service Area Law ”

Serving The Public Interest: A Legislative History of SB 1458 and the “County Service Area Law” October 2008 Serving The Public Interest --- October 2008 Serving The Public Interest: A Legislative History of SB 1458 and the “County Service Area Law ” Table of Contents Page Introduction 1 Discovering Legislative Intent 2 Summary of Policies, Powers, Procedures, and Oversight 3 The Working Group 6 A Brief Description of County Service Areas 7 The Revision Project 12 The Legislative History of SB 1458 14 Text and Commentary 19 Source Table 116 Disposition Table 123 Sources 128 Credits 129 The noblest motive is the public good. Good government demands the intelligent interest of every citizen. (Mottos above the entrances to the San Diego County Administration Center) Copying this report . This report is not copyrighted and its contents are in the public domain. You can retrieve the text of this report from the Senate Local Government Committee’s website: www.sen.ca.gov/locgov . You may make copies of this report without any further permission from the Senate Local Government Committee. Serving The Public Interest --- October 2008 1 Serving The Public Interest: A Legislative History of SB 1458 and the “County Service Area Law ” All five members of the Senate Committee on Local Government authored Senate Bill 1458 which revised the County Service Area Law, the state statute that governs nearly 900 county service areas (CSAs). Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed SB 1458 into law as Chapter 158 of the Statutes of 2008. The new County Service Area Law will take effect on January 1, 2009. Where did SB 1458 come from and how does the new CSA Law differ from the previous statute? This report answers those questions by documenting the bill’s origins and legislative history. By compiling the background materials and recording the thinking that went into SB 1458, this report offers public officials, researchers, legal advisors, and the courts an opportunity to un- derstand where the new statute came from and what its drafters meant to achieve. The Legislature passed the original County Service Area Law in 1953. In the 55 years between 1953 and 2008, legislators amended the CSA Law many times. But without a thorough statutory overhaul, the result was a state law that had not kept pace with California’s other statutory and constitutional changes. In the intervening years, the voters amended the California Constitution by passing Propositions 13, 4, 218, and 1A. In addition, statutory initiatives such as Proposition 62 changed local officials’ fiscal powers. The Legislature enacted and expanded state laws on public records, fiscal audits, local governments’ boundaries, land use planning, and property tax allocation. The 1953 CSA Law, even as amended over the years, reflected few of these statutory changes. Senator Gloria Negrete McLeod, Chair of the Senate Local Government Committee, directed her Committee’s staff to look into the possibility of revising the CSA Law. Under previous chairs, the Committee succeeded in revising the principal acts of other types of special districts: • Fire protection districts (SB 515 in 1987). • Recreation and park districts (SB 707 in 2001). • Mosquito abatement and vector control districts (SB 1588 in 2002). • Public cemetery districts (SB 341 in 2003). • Community services districts (SB 135 in 2005). In 2007, the Committee convened an 18-member Working Group on Revising the County Ser- vice Area Law to review the statute and recommend improvements. In cooperation with expert advisors, the Working Group met five times between September 2007 and February 2008 to review every section in the 1953 CSA Law and prepare drafts of the new CSA Law. The results of the Working Group’s efforts became SB 1458, which the Senate Local Government Committee introduced on February 21, 2008. As the bill moved through the legislative process, there were four sets of amendments. Exactly five months after the bill’s introduction, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed SB 1458 into law on July 21, 2008. The new CSA Law will take effect on January 1, 2009. Serving The Public Interest --- October 2008 2 Discovering Legislative Intent Unlike the United States Congress, the California Legislature does not produce extensively de- tailed legislative histories for its bills. The official record consists of the bills themselves, plus the analyses prepared for the policy committees, fiscal committees, and Senate and Assembly Floors. When interpreting statutes, the California courts rely on rules of statutory construction. One court explained these rules this way: The most fundamental rule of statutory construction is that the court should ascertain the intent of the Legislature so as to effectuate the purpose of the law. The court first looks to the language of the statute, attempting to give effect to the usual, ordinary import of the language and seeking to avoid making any language mere surplusage. Significance if possible should be attributed to every word, phrase, sentence and part of an act in pursu- ance of the legislative purpose. The various parts of a statutory enactment must be har- monized by considering the particular clause or section in the context of the statutory framework as a whole. Further, wherever possible, the statue will be construed in har- mony with the Constitution. The provision must be given a reasonable and common sense interpretation consistent with the apparent purpose and intention of the lawmakers, practical rather than technical in nature, and which, when applied, will result in wise policy rather than mischief or absurdity. The court should take into account matters such as context, the object in view, the evils to be remedied, the history of the times and of legis- lation upon the same subject, public policy, and contemporaneous construction. To ascertain the legislative intent behind a statutory amendment, we may rely upon committee reports provided they are consistent with a reasonable interpretation of a statute. Regarding reliance upon statements and letters of individual legislators in construing a statute, we do not consider the motives or understandings of individual legislators who cast their votes in favor of it. Nor do we carve an exception to this principle simply be- cause the legislator whose motives are proffered actually authored the bill in controversy; no guarantee can issue that those who supported his proposal shared his view of its com- pass. A legislator’s statement is entitled to consideration, however, when it is a reitera- tion of legislative discussion and events leading to adoption of proposed amendments rather than merely an expression of personal opinion. The statement of an individual legislator has also been accepted when it gave some indication of arguments made to the Legislature and was printed upon motion of the Legislature as a letter of legislative intent. Correspondence within the Governor’s file from interested parties does not repre- sent the intent of the Legislature… [where] it is neither a statement of the legislator nor a report to the Legislature from the bill’s proponents. Nor will the courts give much weight to post-enactment statements by administrators or other public officials to their understanding of the underlying legislative intent, even though such persons may have actively supported the measure and irrespective of the fact that the subject matter of the enactment may have directly involved their official responsibilities under existing law. Honey Springs Homeowners Assn v. Board of Supervisors (1984) 157 Cal.App.3d 1122, 1136, footnote 11. [citations and quotation marks omitted] Serving The Public Interest --- October 2008 3 A central purpose of this report is to record the efforts of the Working Group on Revising the County Service Area Law and the Senate Committee on Local Government, so that public officials, researchers, potential litigators, and the courts may have access to the thinking that the drafters and the bill’s authors invested in SB 1458. Summary of Policies, Powers, Procedures, and Oversight The new County Service Area Law that the Legislature enacted in 2008 differs from the 1953 CSA Law in dozens of ways. One approach to understanding these changes is to look at how the bill affects CSAs’ policies, powers, procedures, and oversight. Policies Some bills contain explicit policy statements. Specific findings and declarations of legislative intent are the most obvious ways for legislators to send signals to colleagues, constituents, and judges. A bill may enact a new section that overtly recites findings and declarations. Bills that create major programs often place these recitations immediately after the title of the new divi- sion. For lesser measures, a legislator may relegate these statements to an uncodified section. On some occasions, bills declare that they incorporate the changes recommended in outside reports, even citing the studies by name. More often, legislative policy is implicit , to be detected and interpreted from the new statute’s context. The ways that a bill arranges procedures, defines terms, limits authority, or raises reve- nues are clues to the author’s intent. When a bill’s intent is not plain from its own wording, the courts may look at secondary sources, such as committee bill analyses and reports from interim hearings. The 1953 CSA Law contained statements of legislative intent to guide county supervisors, property owners, and residents in the use of CSAs. SB 1458 opens the new CSA Law with seven revised legislative findings and declarations. [See the new Government Code §25210.1.] These explicit policy statements will guide the public officials, property owners, and residents who use the new statute. The explanations in this Committee report should help to clarify the new CSA Law’s implicit policies, Powers Responsible and effective local governments need enough -- but not too much -- power to carry out their statutory policies.

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