BILL ANALYSIS Ó
AB 1816
Page 1
Date of Hearing: April 20, 2016
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON LOCAL GOVERNMENT
Susan Talamantes Eggman, Chair
AB 1816
(Dahle) - As Amended March 31, 2016
SUBJECT: Tulelake Irrigation District.
SUMMARY: Makes changes to the qualifications for voters and
directors in the Tulelake Irrigation District (District),
including a requirement that voters be landowners, instead of
registered voters in the District. Specifically, this bill:
1)Requires voters in the District to be owners of real property
assessed by the District, instead of registered voters, in
order to vote in District elections.
2)Establishes a weighted vote system that provides landowners
with either one, two, or three votes based on the total number
of assessed acres owned in the division, as follows:
a) For 50 or fewer assessed acres, one vote;
b) For more than 50, but no more than 250 assessed acres,
two votes; and,
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c) For more than 250 assessed acres, three votes.
3)Requires each director of the District, at the time of his or
her nomination or appointment through the entire term, to meet
the following requirements:
a) Be a registered voter in California;
b) Reside within the residency area, as defined by this
bill; and,
c) Be a landowner within the division he or she represents
or a legal representative of a landowner within the
division he or she represents.
4)Defines the following terms:
a) "Corporation" to mean "any legal entity, public or
private, properly organized under the laws of the state in
which it was created, that is allowed to own real property
in California;"
b) "Legal representative" to mean "a person authorized to
act for or on behalf of a corporation, estate, or trust
holding title to land within the District;" and,
c) "Residency area" to mean "land within the District or
land within one mile of any District boundary".
5)Provides that the last District assessment roll is conclusive
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evidence of ownership and the number of assessed acres owned
by the voter in the division.
6)Requires, if land is owned in joint tenancy, tenancy in
common, or any other multiple ownership, the owners of the
land to designate in writing, as specified, which owner is
deemed the owner of the land for purposes of qualifying as a
voter. Requires the designation to be made upon a form
provided by the District. Requires the form to be filed with
the District at least 40 days prior to the election and
remains in effect until amended or revoked. Prohibits any
amendment or revocation to occur within the period of 39 days
prior to the election.
7)Allows the legal representative of a corporation, estate, or
trust owning real property to vote on behalf of the
corporation or estate, including a designee. Requires a legal
representative, before voting, to present the District a copy
of his or her authority.
8)Authorizes every voter, or representative, to vote at any
District election either in person or by a person appointed as
a proxy. Requires the appointment of a proxy, pursuant to the
existing process for California Water Districts.
9)Provides that, if the Commission on State Mandates determines
that this bill contains costs mandated by the state,
reimbursement to local agencies and school districts for those
costs shall be made, pursuant to current law, governing state
mandated local costs.
EXISTING LAW:
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1)Requires that each voter of an irrigation district be a
resident registered to vote in the district.
2)Requires that each director of an irrigation district be a
voter, a landowner in the district, and a resident of the
division of the district that he or she represents at the time
of nomination or appointment and through the entire term,
unless elected at a formation hearing.
FISCAL EFFECT: This bill is keyed fiscal.
COMMENTS:
1)Irrigation District Voter and Director Qualifications.
California's 93 irrigation districts function under a range of
statutes that are a hybrid of registered voter and
landowner-voter type districts. In general, registered voters
are eligible to vote in district elections, but directors
(also referred to as board members) must be landowners of the
district. Originally drafted in 1897, the provisions
requiring directors to be landowners in the Irrigation
District Law were drafted to recognize that landowners (at
that time) were the only ones affected by the decisions that
irrigation district boards made. The Legislature has
recognized landowners' special concerns for irrigation
districts' operations by creating unique separate statutes
that preserve the landowner requirement to vote in districts
that primarily deliver agricultural water. Some of these
districts have landownership, but not residency requirements.
These provisions in current law for individual irrigation
districts either contain a process to allow the irrigation
district to internally change to a landowner voter district,
pursuant to a resolution of the governing board and a protest
process, or make the change statutorily, as this bill would do
for the District. However, the Legislature has not passed a
bill limiting voting to landowners for an individual
irrigation district in over 15 years.
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Historically, irrigation districts only provided irrigation
water services to agricultural land. However, as California's
population has grown, more and more residential and commercial
development is encroaching on agricultural land. In response
to this growth, many irrigation districts began providing
retail water service to residential customers that live within
their jurisdictions in the absence of traditional retail water
suppliers in the area. This trend has caused the Legislature
to reevaluate these landowner restrictions, both uniformly and
on a case-by-case basis.
2)Are the Landowner Qualifications Constitutional? The
California Constitution provides that the right to vote or
serve in elected office may not be conditioned on a
landownership qualification. However, in 1973, the U.S.
Supreme Court ruled in Salyer Land Co. v. Tulare Water
District that the California statute requiring a landownership
qualification did not violate the Equal Protection Clause of
the U.S. Constitution. The court ruled there was no violation
because those districts do not exercise normal governmental
authority and their activities disproportionally affect
landowners.
The California Supreme Court, in Choudhry v. Free (1976) 17
Cal. 3d 660, declared unconstitutional a section of the
Irrigation District Law requiring potential board candidates
to be landowners. The court ruled that this section was
unconstitutional as applied to the Imperial Irrigation
District and its board of directors, the real parties in
interest, because it deprived the irrigation candidates and
voters, including petitioner voters, of equal protection. The
court's opinion gave two reasons it did not extend its ruling
to other irrigation districts. First, the Imperial Irrigation
District was singular at that time among irrigation districts
in that it had more residents, land, and employees than any
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other irrigation district and it was providing retail water
service. Second, neither respondents nor real parties in
interest had opposed petitioners' claim that Water Code
Section 21100 was unconstitutional, and numerous irrigation
districts in the state that would have been affected by a
finding of unconstitutionality did not have the opportunity to
present their views or offer evidence regarding the
characteristics and operation of irrigation districts in
general.
3)Bill Summary. This bill establishes a separate provision in
Irrigation District Law for the District and specifies voter
and director qualifications.
Voters. Under existing law, voters in the District are
registered voters. Under this bill, voters in the District
would be landowners. In other words, this bill allows all
owners of real property assessed by the District to vote, but
non-landowner registered voters within the District would no
longer be eligible to vote. Under this bill, any owner of
property assessed by the District, regardless of whether they
live on their property in the District, would be eligible to
vote in elections. Additionally, this bill establishes a
weighted vote system based on the total number of acres owned
within a division of the District. Landowners of 50 or fewer
acres would get one vote, 50 to 250 acres would get two votes,
and more than 250 acres would get three votes. This bill also
makes a number of other changes to the qualifications of
voters to address different types of ownership and the use of
a legal representative or proxy.
Directors. Under existing law, directors of the District are
registered voters, landowners, and residents within the
division they represent. This bill makes changes to the
qualifications for directors to allow landowners who do not
live within the division or even within the District to serve
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as a director. Under this bill, owners of assessed parcels
would need to fulfill three qualifications during the time of
nomination or appointment and through the entire term as
director: a) be a registered voter in California; b) reside
within the boundaries of the District or on land within one
mile of the District's boundary; and, c) be a landowner within
the division they represent. This bill is sponsored by the
District.
4)The District. The Tulelake Irrigation District is located
within the Upper Klamath Basin and includes land in both Modoc
and Siskiyou counties. The District has an exterior boundary
that includes 96,000 acres, and its northern boundary is
contiguous to the border between California and Oregon. The
District's governing body is a five-member board of directors.
According to Modoc County Local Agency Formation Commission's
municipal service review, the District was formed in 1952, and
entered into a contract with the U.S. Bureau
of Reclamation in 1956 for repayment of construction charges and
the transfer to the District the maintenance of the facilities
used to deliver water to District lands. In 1957, the Board
of Directors approved the formation of an improvement district
to operate and maintain pumps, dikes, and drainage facilities
already constructed by landowners and to apportion all charges
among several landowners according to the number of acres of
land owned. The District only provides water services for
agricultural purposes and is financed by assessments on
landowners.
5)Author's Statement. According to the author, "The current
system of qualifying and electing directors of TID [Tulelake
Irrigation District] is failing. The current residency
requirements preclude those with an interest in the proper
functioning of the irrigation district from running.
Directors who may wish to step down are concerned that a
dearth of potential candidates exists and are therefore
continuing to serve long past their preferred tenure. TID
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exists in the very rural northern part of the state and
provides no municipal services. The TID leadership has come
to the realization that candidates for board seats will more
likely be found once potential candidates realize that the
operations and governance of the irrigation district are
directly tied to the farmland that they own and operate. TID
held a community workshop on 3/15/16 to which residents and
landowners were properly noticed and invited to discuss the
pending amendments. No opposition was expressed by those in
attendance."
6)Prior Legislation. This Committee has heard a number of bills
addressing qualification requirements for both voters and
directors of irrigation districts. There have been several
legislative attempts that have sought to limit landowner
qualifications for board directors. SB 614 (Wolk) of 2013
would have removed the landownership requirement from the list
of qualifications to serve as a director of an irrigation
district, if the district provided water for agricultural
purposes and water for municipal or industrial purposes. SB
1939 (Alarcón), Chapter 1041, Statutes of 2000, deleted the
landowner qualification for board members of irrigation
districts that provide electricity. AB 2279 (Dymally) of 2004
would have deleted the landowner qualification for board
members of most irrigation districts, but failed passage in
the Senate Local Government Committee. AB 159 (Salinas),
Chapter 847, Statutes of 2006, removed the landowner
requirement for irrigation districts that are required to
submit an urban water management, and thus, provide 3,000 or
more acre-feet of water to residential customers or that have
more than 3,000 customers.
Several bills seeking to make changes to voter and director
qualifications for individual irrigation districts were never
heard by a policy committee or failed passage. SB 1189
(Florez) of 2006, which was never heard by the Senate Local
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Government Committee, would have required voters to be
landowners instead of registered voters in the Alpaugh
Irrigation District. When AB 1189 was before the Legislature,
the Alpaugh Irrigation District only had 131 registered
voters, and only six of those registered voters were
landowners eligible to serve on the board. AB 286 (Matthews)
of 2005, which failed passage in the Senate Local Government
Committee, would have allowed the Board of Directors of the
Banta-Carbona Irrigation District to adopt a resolution to
allow non-resident landowners to serve on the board. This
bill is nearly identical to AB 386 (Dahle) of 2015, which was
never heard by the Committee.
7)Committee Amendments. The Committee may wish to consider the
following alternatives to restricting the right to vote based
on land ownership:
a) Voters. The author argues that there are not enough
potential candidates to serve on the Board. The Committee
may wish to consider, if these arguments justify imposing
the qualification of landownership on the right to vote.
Further, the Committee may wish to consider that 200
registered voters within the District would no longer be
eligible to vote because they do not own land.
In light of these considerations, the Committee may wish to
ask the author to remove all portions of the bill that
would require landownership as a qualification to vote and
maintain the qualifications in current law for irrigation
districts, which designates registered voters as the voters
of the District. The Committee may wish to ask the author
to remove subdivisions (b), (c), (d), (e), and (f) from the
bill.
b) Directors. The Legislature has authorized several
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irrigation districts: Pixley Irrigation District, Hills
Valley Irrigation District, Stratford Irrigation District,
and Byron-Bethany Irrigation District, to allow nonresident
and nonvoter landowners to serve on the board
of directors, if the board passes a resolution. There are
protections in existing law that establish protest
proceedings for resident voters in each of the Districts,
if they do not want nonresident and nonvoter landowners to
serve as directors.
In light of these considerations, the Committee may wish to
ask the author to amend subdivision (g) in the bill to
mirror existing law, which would authorize the District to
modify the residency requirements for the qualifications
for directors. The Committee may wish to ask the author to
authorize the District to adopt a resolution, in a public
hearing subject to protest proceedings, to allow landowners
of the District, who are residents within the residency
area defined by this bill, to serve on the board.
According to the District, there are 200 landowners within
the residency area defined by this bill, who would then
qualify to be a director.
8)Policy Considerations. The Committee may wish to consider
there are other approaches to widening the pool of eligible
directors besides allowing nonvoter and nonresident landowners
to serve as directors.
a) Resident Non-landowner Directors. The principal acts
for almost all other types of special districts do not
require landownership as a qualification for office. The
Committee may wish to consider allowing resident voters,
who are not landowners, to be eligible to serve on the
board as a director. The Legislature has established an
exemption to the landowner requirements in existing law for
the South Bay Irrigation District.
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b) Size and Divisions. Existing law provides a process for
irrigation districts to change the number of divisions or
the method of electing directors. Due to the expressed
challenges by the District in getting five directors to
serve, who are registered voters, landowners, and residents
within the division, the Committee may wish to consider, if
a three-member board or removing the divisions in the
District would help remedy these challenges.
9)Arguments in Support. The District argues "AB 1816 will
change the qualifications for voters and those seeking to
serve on the District's Board of Directors, expanding the pool
of eligible Directors and implementing a tired voting
structure based on land ownership. The District has had
difficulty finding landowners who are willing and eligible to
serve on its Board of Directors given the current requirement
that Directors live in the Division they represent."
10)Arguments in Opposition. None on file.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION:
Support
Tulelake Irrigation District [SPONSOR]
City of Tulelake
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Modoc County Board of Supervisors
Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors
Opposition
None on file
Analysis Prepared by:Misa Lennox / L. GOV. / (916) 319-3958