The contentious Contra Costa countywide clean water initiative has failed by nearly 19,000 votes. Property owners rejected the per-parcel fee by a 60 percent to 40 percent margin, which would have raised $14 million a year for water pollution prevention programs.

In a snippy press release, Clean Water Program Director Don Freitas blames the loss on the media, the voters in 1996, the California Constitution and the sun coming up. (Okay, I made up the last one.) Nowhere, it seems, does Freitas point the finger at himself.

Check out what Freitas put out a few minutes ago:

The purpose of this email is to inform you of the final election results for the “2012 Community Clean Water Initiative”. Contrary to recent press articles, Monday, May 7th has always been designated as the deadline to receive this information. Passage of the Initiative required fifty percent (50%) plus one of those casting a vote which included all property owners in Contra Costa County. The results are as follows:

Mailed Ballots – 339,586

Received Valid Ballots – 100,768

“Yes” Ballots – 40,924

“No” Ballots – 59,844

Invalid Ballots – 1,355

Based on the aforementioned results, the Initiative failed by approximately a 60% to a 40% margin. As was stated many times during this process, the defeat of the Initiative does NOT negate the need for all twenty-one affected jurisdictions in Contra Costa County from the regulatory mandates of the Federal Clean Water Act and California’s Porter-Cologne Water Quality Act. Each entity needs to immediately determine how the necessary funding will now be generated in order to implement the regulatory mandates or be found to be in noncompliance and subject to fines which could run into the thousands or millions of dollars.

The election results can and will be interpreted in many ways, but suffice it to say, the methodology outlined in the voter approved 1996 Proposition 218 ( California Constitution XIII ) had great challenges even though the Program followed its provisions religiously. Courts in California have said the legal nexus between urban runoff and property is valid, but the requirements of Proposition 218 became suspect in the voter’s mind and the press. It’s very easy for the press to condemn actions of local government; but rarely if ever, do they suggest valid alternatives. The election result has worsened local government’s ability to finance Federal and/or State mandates when it is done with no local financing. If the general fund becomes the only alternative to finance the regulatory mandates than the public debate will be simplified between “clean water vs. hiring police officers and other vital community services.”

Donald P. Freitas

Project Manager

Contra Costa Clean Water Program

 255 Glacier Drive

 Martinez, CA 94553-4825

 (925) 313-2373

 dfrei@pw.cccounty.us

An election forum featuring two candidates for Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors will air on public access television on May 7 and May 9.

The Contra Costa Council sponsored the lunchtime debate with candidates Tomi Van de Brooke, president of the Contra Costa Community College District Board of Trustees, and Danville Mayor Candace Andersen.

The pair answered questions earlier today in Lafayette about a wide range of topics including pension reform, water policy, tax initiatives and county budget trade-offs. And they sparred over campaign finances and whether positions on social issues matter in the local, nonpartisan race.

The third candidate, solar technology professor Sean White of Lafayette, was out of town on business and could not attend.

Held in Lafayette, the debate will air at 8 p.m. on May 7 and 10 a.m. on May 9 on Contra Costa Television. For Comcast customers, CCTV is on Channel 27; Astound, Channel 32; and AT&T U-verse, Channel 99.

For information, visit www.contracostatv.org.

Contra Costa District 2 supervisor candidates Candace Andersen and Tomi Van de Brooke will face off at the April 23 lunch meeting of the Contra Costa Council.

Van de Brooke, an Orinda resident and elected member of the Contra Costa Community College District, and Andersen, mayor of Danville, will answer questions and discuss their platforms.

The third supervisor candidate, Sean White of Lafayette, is out of town and cannot attend.

The Contra Costa Council is a nonprofit membership and nonpartisan organization that advocates for economic development throughout the East Bay.

I am the moderator and the event is open to the public.

Registration begins at 11:30 a.m. followed by the program at noon. It will be held at the Lafayette Veterans Memorial Building, 3780 Mt. Diablo Blvd., Lafayette.

Tickets are $45 for non-members and $35 for members. For reservations, contact the Contra Costa Council at www.contracostacouncil.com or 925-246-1880.

Van de Brooke

Andersen

The Contra Costa Times’ editorial board interview with Contra Costa County supervisor candidates Tomi Van De Brooke and Candace Andersen on Tuesday afternoon starts with fireworks over social issues. Read full story here.

But the candidates also speak at length about a wide range of policy matters closer to the work of a county supervisor, such as budget priorities, whether or not general fund dollars should subsidize the county hospital and pension reforms.

Watch video here:  http://bcove.me/twuc0kwx

A friend and a foe of the Mt. Diablo Health Care District, targeted by local regulators for transfer to the city of Concord to eliminate costly elections and overhead, are among the speakers at Wednesday morning’s Assembly hearing on health care district.

Assembly Committee on Accountability and Administrative Review Chairman Roger Dickinson, D-Sacramento, will lead the hearing starting at 9:30 a.m., which will be aired via webcast at the California Channel.

• Click here for the agenda.
• Click here for the committee’s white paper on the subject.
• Click here for the Bay Citizen story that helped spark the hearing.
• Click here for a link to the California Channel’s live webcast of the hearing.

Mt. Diablo Health Care District board chairman Jeff Kasper is scheduled to speak, along with district critic and Contra Costa Taxpayers Association Executive Director Kris Hunt.  Contra Costa Supervisor Karen Mitchoff of Pleasant Hill will also testify. (Speaker list updated on 4/10/2012. LAV)

The Local Agency Formation Commission last month voted to dismantle five-member elected health care district board and turn over its limited remaining duties to Concord’s city council. The district hasn’t run a hospital since 1996. Since then, four civil grand juries and the Local Agency Formation Commission’s hired consultant have concluded that the district has spent the vast majority of its property tax proceeds — $240,000 a year — on elections, overhead and legal bills, with very few dollars going to community services or programs.

Mt. Diablo is a piker compared with other health care districts, according to a recent Bay Citizen analysis of similar agencies statewide.  It found a Peninsula district, for example, with $43 million in reserves that refused to help subsidize health insurance for the poor. It reported that 30 of 74 of California’s taxpayer-funded health care districts no longer run hospitals but continue to collect public dollars, diverting that money for administrative and legal costs, along with benefits for their directors.

“Allegations of administrative waste, wrong doing, and lack of appropriate spending priorities persist, while unmet health care needs linger in their communities,” wrote the committee in a news release about the hearing. “The committee will aim to uncover if health care districts are still the best use of public funds and if they are using their resources to promote public health and welfare, especially given the current health care environment in the state.”

The committee said witnesses will include representatives from the Peninsula Health Care District in San Mateo, the Beach Cities Health District in Redondo Beach, Mt. Diablo Health Care District in Concord, the Legislative Analyst’s Office, health care advocates and the Association of California Healthcare Districts.

The testimony will focus on the health care districts’ current and former purpose, funding mechanisms, Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) oversight, the current challenges of healthcare service delivery, if the health care needs of the state are being met and case studies of health care district expenditures, the committee said.

The powerful Contra Costa Local Agency Formation Commission, of LAFCO, which oversees orderly growth and public agency boundaries, narrowed to five the candidates it will interview April 11 for its public member seat.

It took LAFCO nearly two years last time to fill this opening after dueling factions couldn’t settle on a mutually acceptable choice. Confirmation requires at least one aye vote from each of the groups represented on its board — Contra Costa supervisor, special districts and cities.

Whether or not the vote proves difficult this time around remains to be seen.

But the central question of the prospective commissioners remains the same: How would you balance the ever-present tension between the demands of a growing population for housing, water and other services and the agency’s responsibility to control sprawl?

The short list is an impressive one: Retired Contra Costa Mayors Conference executive director and former Walnut Creek city manager Don Blubaugh of Brentwood; attorney and former Lafayette Councilman Ivor Samson; retired San Ramon city manager Herb Moniz; retired wastewater plant general manager Kathy Hopkins of Lafayette; and the commission’s current alternate public member, Sharon Burke of Alamo.

Blubaugh and Burke are the likely front-runners, but Hopkins and Samson reportedly did well in the first round of interviews.

Moniz will almost certainly draw the most attention from the environmental community, whose leaders closely monitor LAFCO’s policies on the county’s urban limit line. Moniz helped write San Ramon’s controversial failed Measure W, which would have expanded the city’s urban growth boundary into the Tassajara Valley.

Interestingly, former commissioner and one-time Concord Mayor Helen Allen didn’t make the cut.

She says county power-brokers conspired behind the scenes to keep her out and promote their own choices. But others say the outspoken woman’s dominating personality grated on her colleagues, staff and the public.

Former Concord Mayor Helen Allen

For years, the conservative Allen and appointee of the Contra Costa Mayors Conference was considered a reliable vote for new development. She pooh-poohed global climate change and said that as long as people keep having babies, local governments should help build places for them to live.

Allen has been a lightening rod for years on a whole host of issues. But she lost significant support from her elected colleagues in 2010 after she signed a letter as a LAFCO commissioner which was later used in a campaign mailer promoting a Brentwood urban growth boundary ballot measure. She narrowly escaped a move to have her removed from LAFCO.

Allen declined to seek re-election to her city council seat later that year and as a result, she was no longer eligible to serve on LAFCO as the mayors conference representative and avoided what would have almost certainly been an uphill fight to win reappointment.

She put out the word months ago that she would apply to LAFCO when the public member seat opened, citing her experience with the agency’s often arcane and complex issues.

Her chances were slim, though. She still faced concerns about her dominant personality and her past transgressions.

Allen admits she sealed her fate during the screening interviews with three LAFCO members, when she says she told them she knew she wasn’t going to be appointed and lectured them for more than 20 minutes.

Well, if you have to go out, you might as well make a lasting impression, right?

Belva Davis (Photo by Greg Habiby © KQED 2009)

Watch ” This Week in Northern California” with host Belva Davis tonight and yours truly, where I will talk about Chevron’s stunning property tax appeal defeat in Contra Costa County.

The show airs at 7:30 p.m. on Fridays on KQED Public Television Channel 9 or you can watch a video archive online at http://www.kqed.org/tv/programs/thisweek/watch/

Here’s the blurb about tonight’s full line-up:

In the wake of the devastating shooting at Oikos University in Oakland, hundreds of community members attend an international prayer vigil. Meanwhile, Mayor Jean Quan calls for a renewed effort to curb gun violence and improve access to mental health services. Yahoo hands out pink slips to 2,000 employees, implementing the most significant layoff in the company’s history. New CEO Scott Thompson is expected to make further cuts this year as part of a monumental corporate restructuring. Oil giant Chevron is dealt an unexpected blow as the Contra Costa County Assessment Appeals Board slaps an additional estimated $26.7 million in taxes on its Richmond refinery, claiming the property was previously undervalued by the county. As baseball season kicks off the San Francisco Giants sign a record $127.5 million deal with All-Star pitcher Matt Cain and unveil plans for “Mission Rock,” a new waterfront development next to AT&T Park.

Guests:

Mina Kim, KQED News

Lisa Vorderbrueggen, Contra Costa Times

Kara Swisher, All Things D

Rachel Gordon, San Francisco Chronicle

Chevron has lost its Richmond refinery property tax appeal in the worst way possible: It not only won’t receive a $73 million refund but it has to pay an additional estimated $27 million.

Contra Costa County, cities and special districts heaved a big sigh of relief at Monday morning’s Assessment Appeals Board decision, which could have forced public agencies to repay Chevron as much as $73 million of the $129 million the company had already paid for tax years 2007-2009.

“There were a lot of people conjecturing that this wasn’t going to be a question of winning or losing but how badly we were going to lose,” said Richmond Councilman Tom Butt, whose city receives 60 percent of the property tax proceeds the refinery pays. “It was a pleasant surprise to hear that we not only beat back the appeal but we may have more money coming to us.”

In the uncharacteristically detailed and strongly worded 24-page opinion, the three-member appeals board rejected the disparate taxable values Contra Costa County Assessor Gus Kramer and Chevron had vigorously defended.

Kramer is legally entitled to set property values, but he and his staff failed to produce supporting evidence behind the numbers they entered for the refinery, the panel wrote.

Chevron’s values were based on “greatly exaggerated” calculations in some areas and outright unbelievable in others, the document also stated.  Click here to read the rest of the story.

For the full text of the appeal, click here for supplemental decision and here for main ruling.

Tomi Van de Brooke

Ellen Tauscher

Free from the strictures imposed upon federal employees,  former Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security and former Democratic East Bay Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher has endorsed Tomi Van de Brooke for Contra Costa County supervisor.

Tauscher left her high-ranking post in February after serving three years with friend and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. A cancer survivor, Tauscher said she wanted to take time to do other things with her life. She remains a special envoy for the State Department and recently joined the Atlantic Council’s Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security.

One of those things Tauscher apparently wanted to do was help her friends back home with their elections. Tauscher will host a fund-raiser for Van de Brooke next week in Contra Costa County.

Van de Brooke, a Contra Costa Community College trustee and Orinda resident, is running in the June 5 election for the District 2 seat held by retiring Supervisor Gayle Uilkema of Lafayette. Also vying for the opening is Danville Mayor Candace Andersen and Lafayette solar expert Sean White.

The Contra Costa County Assessment Appeals board will release its decision Monday on Chevron’s challenge of its Richmond refinery values.

The oil giant seeks refunds worth up to $73 million in property taxes it paid from 2007 through 2009, or slightly more than half of what the company was assessed.

The county and cities, along with fire, parks and other dozens of other special districts, will bear the burden of any repayment at a time when most public agencies have already experienced years of declining budgets.

The three-member appeals board heard dozens of hours of testimony over the winter on the complex challenge from the county’s largest property taxpayer.

Chevron argued that Contra Costa County Assessor Gus Kramer and his staff failed to document how they derived the values and intentionally miscalculated the final numbers. (Read an excerpt of Chevron’s brief filed with the Assessment Appeals Board here.)

In response, Kramer accuses the deep-pocketed oil company of systematically bullying the county with unsubstantiated and costly appeals and lawsuits in an effort to lower its taxes.

If the board sides with Chevron, it will be the refinery’s second victory in its nearly eight-year fight with Kramer over its taxable worth.

The panel in 2010 ordered a repayment of $17.8 million on the refinery’s 2004-2006 property assessment appeal, a figure far short of what the company sought. Chevron subsequently filed a lawsuit, which is still pending.

Chevron has also appealed its 2010 and 2011 property values.

Refinery spokesman Dean O’Hair said the company remains eager to negotiate with the county a settlement of all the appeals and the lawsuit.

If the appeals board orders a refund, O’Hair said Chevron will again work with the county to minimize the financial impact on the public agencies including a phased-in repayment schedule and a waiver of interest.

The public appeals board hearing begins at 9 a.m. in the Contra Costa County administration building, 651 Pine St., Martinez.