In the hurly-burly of the California budget debacle it may not have been noticed that Governor Schwazrenegger signed into law Republican Assemblymember Tony Strickland's SB 63 which eliminated the only majority LGBT state board in the country.
The board, which directs a 450-member, $235 million state operation, regulates the permitting and inspections of nearly 300 landfills across the state that handle some 42 million tons of garbage annually, and has a number of recycling programs.Things that make you go hmmmm.
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Schwarzenegger has said elimination of the board was at the top of his priority list. "That's on the top of the list - the most absurd one because it costs the most money because people are sitting there with $132,000, or whatever, salaries," Schwarzenegger said last month in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle.
But others say the move is more posturing than substance, and that placing the board's functions within a new state department will cost more than it saves.
Critics note that the board's operations are covered by trash and recycling fees from the sale of new tires, tonnage fees from landfills, motor-oil sales and the sale of new TVs and computer monitors, which alone bring in about $100 million annually, and that eliminating the panel will have little or no impact on the strapped General Fund. They believe Schwarzenegger has focused on the board in part to divert attention from cuts he's supported in public education and social services, among others.
An internal government analysis of the board's elimination reviewed by Capitol Weekly showed that the elimination might save $2 million to $3 million annually in salaries and benefits for board members, among other things. "However, any savings would be lost and a fiscal impact of several million (dollars) would be observed for several years by transferring the newly created (department) from the Cal-EPA to the Natural Resources Agency."
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