BILL ANALYSIS Ó
AB 1816
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ASSEMBLY THIRD READING
AB
1816 (Dahle)
As Amended April 25, 2016
Majority vote
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|Committee |Votes|Ayes |Noes |
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|----------------+-----+----------------------+---------------------|
|Local |9-0 |Eggman, Waldron, | |
|Government | |Alejo, Bonilla, Chiu, | |
| | |Cooley, Beth Gaines, | |
| | |Gordon, Linder | |
| | | | |
| | | | |
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SUMMARY: Authorizes the Tulelake Irrigation District
(District), to adopt a resolution to make changes to the
qualifications for directors. Specifically, this bill:
1)Authorizes the District's Board of Directors to adopt a
resolution that authorizes a person, who owns land in the
District and resides within the residency area, to be a
director of any division in the District.
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2)Authorizes registered voters in the District to request, in
writing, that all of the directors, who are appointed or
elected subsequent to the receipt of the request, be required
to meet all of the requirements in existing law for directors
to be registered voters, landowners, and residents within the
division they represent. Requires the request to be submitted
to the District's Board of Directors.
3)Requires, if the Board of Directors determines that at least
25% of the registered voters in the District have signed the
request submitted under 2), above, all of the directors
following the receipt of the request to meet all of the
requirements under existing law for directors to be registered
voters, landowners, and residents within the division they
represent.
4)Defines the following terms:
a) "District" to mean "Tulelake Irrigation District,
originally formed as Tule Lake Irrigation District."
b) "Residency area" to mean "land within the District or
land within one mile of any district boundary."
EXISTING LAW:
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
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of nomination or appointment and through the entire term,
unless elected at a formation hearing.
FISCAL EFFECT: None
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.
Historically, irrigation districts only provided irrigation
water services to agricultural land. However, as California's
population has grown, more and more residential and commercial
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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 United
States (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
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
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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. Under existing law, directors of the District
are registered voters, landowners, and residents within the
division they represent. The Legislature has authorized
several 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.
This bill mirrors provisions in existing law for several other
irrigation districts and authorizes the District to adopt a
resolution in a public hearing to allow nonvoter nonresident
landowners who live within one mile of the District's
boundaries to serve as a director. This bill also includes
the ability for registered voters to protest the change 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. 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.
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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
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."
6)Prior Legislation. The Assembly Local Government 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), Chapter 784, Statutes of 2013,
would have removed the landownership requirement from the list
of qualifications to serve as a director of an irrigation
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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
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
introduced version of this bill was nearly identical to AB 386
(Dahle) of 2015, which was never heard by the Committee.
7)Policy Considerations. The Legislature may wish to consider
that there are other approaches to widening the pool of
eligible directors besides allowing nonvoter and nonresident
landowners to serve as directors.
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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
Legislature 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.
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 Legislature may wish to consider,
if a three-member board or removing the divisions in the
District would help remedy these challenges.
8)Arguments in Support. The District argues "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."
Arguments in Opposition. None on file.
Analysis Prepared by:
Misa Lennox / L. GOV. / (916) 319-3958 FN:
0002858
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