The following updates were provided by Riverside County First District Supervisor Kevin Jeffries.
Pennies on the Dollar
Each year you, your family, your friends, and local businesses located here in Riverside County pay your state income taxes. Those tax dollars are then allocated and spent via the adopted state budget and its regulatory formulas. Many of those tax dollars are directed to the 58 counties to carry out programs and services as mandated by the state.
Riverside County is the fourth most populated county in the state (behind Los Angeles, Orange, and San Diego). So how does Riverside County do when it comes to getting tax dollars back to support all the services mandated by the state? Well, we come in near the bottom in nearly every measured ranking (54 out of 58, 50 out of 58, 49 out of 58 for Mental Health funding) according to a firm that conducted a study for San Bernardino County.
The only area we do well in is from the Prop 172 law enforcement sales tax (7th out of 58). So, as we are all donors to the rest of the state, I guess you can at least feel good knowing that you are helping millions of people in other counties.
Voter Validation
A group of civic-minded residents has been attending our board meetings, expressing concerns about the election processes and the accuracy of voter rolls, and the apparently high numbers of voters who appear to have moved or died but still show up as registered voters. This is particularly important now since the COVID-era state law changes require every registered voter to receive a ballot by mail.
In response to these concerns, the Registrar of Voters hired a credit reporting agency to review our entire list of voters to identify those who have moved or may be deceased. That agency identified 123,541 individuals who may have moved, and almost another 150,000 out of 1.34 million voter file records whose addresses “couldn’t be validated.” Good news, right? Well, partially.
Some of these people may only be temporarily out of the county (temp job, military, college, etc), so we have to verify each voter independently but this list does give us a good starting point. The bad news is that we are required by state law (Elections Code 2227) to receive an affirmative response from the voter that they have moved or no longer wish to be registered to vote in our county before we can remove them.
We can send a postcard to the new address, but if they do not confirm their voter status has changed, sign the postcard, and mail it back, the state requires that we keep them listed as a registered voter and spend tax dollars mailing ballots to their old address forever!
It would seem to me that if they don’t respond to the inquiry, they should be flagged and removed, particularly since a voter can now register to vote as late as Election Day if they still wished to vote and were mistakenly disenrolled. But those are the rules the state has mandated for all 58 counties.
Dead Man Voting
The voter registration review also identified 1,080 potentially deceased registered voters county-wide but it isn’t clear to me whether state law also requires the dead to respond to the postcard affirmatively in order to remove them from the list. We’ll keep digging!
Election Integrity Meetings
In response to voter concerns, the board created both a Citizens’ Election Advisory Committee (https://rivco.org/election-advisory) and an Ad Hoc Committee (consisting of Supervisors Karen Spiegel and Manuel Perez) to evaluate election processes in Riverside County. The Ad Hoc Committee recently held a standing-room-only public meeting with the Registrar of Voters and community members to answer questions and discuss concerns. Their next meeting will be held on September 11.
Future of March Air Reserve Base
The importance of the March Air Reserve Base both to our local economy and national security cannot be overstated. The military almost completely walked away from the base in the mid-1990s, downsizing the base operations and transferring significant acreage over to a local re-use commission known as the March Joint Powers Authority (March JPA). The remaining military mission was transferred to the Air Force Reserves and California Air National Guard.
Fast forward a couple of decades and the world has dramatically changed. China has become a contentious world power in the Pacific, multiple military and national security-related agencies now work out of the base, and the newest group of military aircraft was recently announced to be deployed at the base in the near future. The rebounding role of military operations at March ultimately increases the number of flight operations on the base and the jobs that come with it.
Meanwhile, at the same time, the base re-use commission (March JPA) is looking to significantly increase the civilian/commercial/private sector use of the military runway. When the future of the base was in question in 1997, the military agreed to allow up to 21,000 private sector-related flights (take-offs and landings). But the world has changed.
In my opinion, if the March JPA insists on expanding anywhere near the 21,000-flight maximum, it will almost certainly negatively impact the viability of the base for future military operations. For those sitting in the Pentagon evaluating which West Coast bases to invest in and preserve, March ARB would seemingly fall a number of notches or more.
Some of you might be saying that not every military base needs to be preserved forever, and we could have a good debate over that issue. One undeniable concern or question then becomes – what would the former base be used for if the military packed up? Today, that proposed expanded use is for cargo flights. All that merchandise we buy online has to come from somewhere, land somewhere, and be stored somewhere (warehouses). How much more of the logistics industry do we need to host in Western Riverside County? Choose wisely.
120 Days Left
One hundred twenty days, that is how much time I have left to get things done, or at least have projects kicked off that can be completed after I pack up on December 31. As always, if you have suggestions, gripes, or just need to vent about county services, feel free to drop me an email.
