BILL ANALYSIS
SB 1939
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Date of Hearing: August 9, 2000
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON LOCAL GOVERNMENT
John Longville, Chair
SB 1939 (Alarcon) - As Amended: August 9, 2000
SENATE VOTE : 30-10
SUBJECT : Irrigation districts.
SUMMARY : Revises the qualifications for directors and voters in
irrigation districts. Specifically, this bill :
1)Removes the requirement that a director be a landowner in the
irrigation district they represent.
2)Permits irrigation district boards to adopt resolutions
authorizing property owners, whether or not they are residents
in the district, or their representatives to vote.
3)Defines "eligible voter" as either a person who meets the
definition of "eligible voter" in the Elections Code and is a
resident of the district or a property owner within the
district.
4)Authorizes any eligible voter, as defined, to be a member of
the board of directors.
5)States that the provisions described in numbers 2-4 above
shall be operative only so long as the district does not
provide water, drainage services, electricity, flood control
services, or sewage disposal services for domestic purposes
for district residents.
6)Requires a district to notify the Secretary of State 30 days
prior to providing any of the specified services for domestic
purposes.
EXISTING LAW requires each director of an irrigation district to
be a voter and a freeholding landowner in the district except in
specified circumstances.
FISCAL EFFECT : Unknown
COMMENTS :
SB 1939
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1)Most of California's 3,400 special districts are registered
voter districts; both the electors and the members of the
governing boards must be registered to vote within the
district's boundaries. About 350 water districts are
landowner-voter districts. State law assigns voting power in
these districts to those who own real property within the
district. Members of these districts' governing boards must
be landowners or landowners' representatives.
2)California's 97 irrigation districts are a hybrid of
registered voter and landowner-voter type districts. In
general, registered voters are eligible to vote in district
elections, but board members must also be freeholders
(landowners) in the district. The Legislature enacted the
freeholder requirement for irrigation district board members
in 1897, when the districts' primary purpose was delivering
water to agricultural landowners. Since then, the Legislature
has allowed irrigation districts to provide other services,
including drainage, flood control, sewage disposal, and water
storage and distribution. Four irrigation districts
(Imperial, Merced, Modesto, and Turlock) provide electricity
services to residents.
3)Community services districts, municipal utility districts and
public utility districts do not require board members to be
landowners. All who are affected by the boards' decisions are
eligible to serve on the governing boards. Since many
irrigation districts no longer serve only agricultural
landowners, but rather serve as de facto utility districts to
a greater or lesser extent, it may no longer be appropriate to
exclude non-landowner residents from serving on their
governing boards. It may also be unconstitutional. The
California Supreme Court ruled in Choudhry v. Free, 17 C.3d
660 (1976), that the Imperial Irrigation District's landowner
requirement was an unconstitutional deprivation of equal
protection of the laws. The Court declined to extend the
ruling to all irrigation districts, but only because the other
districts had not been parties in interest with an opportunity
to present their views or to offer evidence.
SB 1939 gets rid of the landowner requirement and replaces it
with a requirement that each director of an irrigation
district be a voter and a resident of the district. SB 1939
in no way prohibits resident landowners from voting or serving
SB 1939
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on the board of directors of irrigation districts. It opens
up the boards to qualified residents of the district whether
or not they own property.
4)The Legislature has allowed eight irrigation districts
(Glenn-Colusa, Richvale, Jackson Valley, Camp Fair West,
Montague, Cordua, Provident, and Big Springs) to become
landowner-voter districts, and has authorized the restriction
of board membership, but not voting, to landowners in four
others (Pixley, Hills Valley, Stratford, and Byron-Bethany).
The governance provisions for these districts are found in
Secs. 20527.5-20527.11 and 21100.2-21100.6 of Division 11 of
the Water Code, which pertains to irrigation districts.
SB 1939 preserves the current status of these 12 districts by
including the phrase "except as otherwise provided in this
division" in its amended version of Water Code Sec. 21100,
thereby clearly exempting all irrigation districts with
individually specified governance provisions.
5)SB 1939 allows an irrigation district board of directors to
adopt a resolution authorizing landowners or their
representatives to vote and to serve on the board of
directors. A landowner need not be resident within the
district in order to exercise these rights. However, if the
irrigation district begins to provide services for domestic
purposes (water, drainage, electricity, flood control, or
sewage disposal), the provisions allowing absentee landowners
to vote and serve as directors become inoperative, and control
of the district shifts entirely to residents of the district.
These provisions appear to be both overly broad and redundant.
The basis for the Legislature's creation of the 12 current
landowner-restricted districts was that the districts had few
or no residents and provided only irrigation water to
agricultural landowners. Any other district in these
circumstances may be specifically exempted from
resident-voter/board member status by legislation. In fact,
SB 1571 (Costa), currently in the Assembly Appropriations
Committee, proposes to make the James and Corcoran Irrigation
Districts landowner-voter districts. These
statutorily-established landowner-restricted districts are
protected from SB 1939's resident-voter provision by the
"except as otherwise provided for in this division" language
of the bill. A broader, less well-defined exemption, such as
is currently created in Section 4 of SB 1939, is unnecessary.
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Suggested Author's Amendments
The Committee may wish to request that the author delete Section
4 of the bill. It may also wish to request that the author
change the archaic and frequently-misunderstood word
"freeholder" to "landowner" in the second paragraph of Water
Code Sec. 21100. Water Code Sections 21100.2, 21100.4,
21100.5, and 21100.6 should also be amended to remove
reference to the landowner requirement of Section 21100 (which
SB 1939 deletes) and replace it with the phrase "a person who
is a landowner in the district?"
6)SB 1939 contains other provisions outside this Committee's
jurisdiction. These other provisions address programs serving
low-income electricity customers.
7)This bill has been double-referred to both the Assembly
Committees on Utilities and Commerce, where it passed with a
9-0 vote on August 7, 2000, and to Local Government.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
CA Journal For Filipino Americans
CA Public Utilities Commission
CA Rural Legal Assistance Foundation
Central Valley Opportunity Center
City of San Jose
Coalition of CA Utility Employees
Community Action Agency of San Mateo County, Inc.
Community Medical Centers, Inc.
Congress of CA Seniors
Consumer Federation of CA
Finca Management Inc.
Foundation For Quality Housing Opportunities, Inc.
The Greenlining Institute
Hermandad Mexicana Nacional
JERICHO
Latin American Civic Association
Latino Issues Forum
Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund
Natural Resources Defense Council (if amended)
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Pacific Gas & Electric Company
Pacoima Beautiful
Pueblo Nuevo Development
Support (continued)
Pueblo y Salud, Inc.
Rural California Housing Corporation
San Fernando Gardens Resident Management Corporation
Sempra Energy
Southern CA Gas Workers Council
TELACU
United Farm Workers of America AFL-CIO
Watts/Century Latino Organization
West Angeles Community Development Corporation
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Opposition
Agricultural Energy Consumers Association
Alameda Power & Telecom
Association of CA Water Agencies
CA League of Food Processors
CA Municipal Utilities Association
Cities of Gridley, Lodi, and Lompoc
City of Azusa Light & Water Department
City of San Bernardino Municipal Water Department
Imperial Irrigation District
Lassen Municipal Utility District
Merced Irrigation District
Modesto Irrigation District
Northern CA Power Agency
Roseville Electric
Sacramento Municipal Utility District
Southern CA Public Power Authority
Trinity Public Utilities District
Turlock Irrigation District
Analysis Prepared by : J. Stacey Sullivan / L. GOV. / (916)
319-3958