As California faces its largest budget
deficit ever, a nearly 40-year-old farmland-protection program
could go to the chopping block.
Reacting to a burst of
mid-century sprawl, the state legislature passed the Williamson Act
in 1965. Under the act, farmers promise to keep their land in
commercial agriculture in exchange for county property tax breaks.
The state then reimburses the counties for the lost tax
revenue.
Today, the act protects 16 million of the
state’s 30 million acres of agricultural land. Nathan
Rosasco, president of the Tuolumne County Cattlemens’
Association, believes that the act helps farmers continue to farm,
rather than sell out to developers. “Up here (near Yosemite),
we’re trying to maintain open space,” he says.
“People from the Bay Area and Central Valley are willing to
pay astronomical prices for land.”
But as California
wrestles with a $34.6 billion deficit, Governor Gray Davis, D, has
proposed permanently slashing Williamson Act reimbursements to the
counties, as well as education, health and human services and other
popular programs.
“There are scores of programs that
no one would like to see cut,” says the Department of
Conservation’s Erik Vink, who administers the Williamson Act.
But farmers and environmentalists say that the savings
from cutting the act — about $39 million, or 1 percent of the
deficit — would be just a drop in the bucket. “The act
has a low budgetary impact and high impact on farmland,” says
Jenny Lester of the American Farmland Trust.
The state
Legislature began debating the act this spring. Before signing the
budget, the governor has the final say in what items will be
cut.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Farmland protection may dry up.
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