BILL ANALYSIS Ó AB 1816 Page 1 ASSEMBLY THIRD READING AB 1816 (Dahle) As Amended April 25, 2016 Majority vote ------------------------------------------------------------------- |Committee |Votes|Ayes |Noes | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |----------------+-----+----------------------+---------------------| |Local |9-0 |Eggman, Waldron, | | |Government | |Alejo, Bonilla, Chiu, | | | | |Cooley, Beth Gaines, | | | | |Gordon, Linder | | | | | | | | | | | | ------------------------------------------------------------------- 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. AB 1816 Page 2 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 AB 1816 Page 3 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 AB 1816 Page 4 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 AB 1816 Page 5 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. AB 1816 Page 6 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 AB 1816 Page 7 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. AB 1816 Page 8 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 AB 1816 Page 9