The Fee-fdom Known as County Government

by Andy Caldwell

The recent salary raises for county supervisors was just the tip of the iceberg; employee salaries, benefits, and pension costs continue to rise with no end in sight. As a SBCurrent commentator put it, county employees are always asking for more money claiming that “they are over-worked, under-paid, and under-appreciated.” Ironically, the county sups made this same pitch as the justification for raising their own salaries, and future pensions. Thereby, county supervisors can no longer be considered the people’s representatives. They are now simply five additional county employees who managed to complain themselves into a 48% raise worth $56,000 per year. Many of these same politicians raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions for “the honor of serving” as a county supervisor. Then they turn around and complain “the job” doesn’t pay enough and the hours are too long?

Of great concern to the business community is that every time the county raises employee salaries, they end up taking even more money out of the pockets of the private sector by raising fees. A policy known as 100% cost recovery posits that the affected community pay for the entire cost of these programs, including overhead, even when those regulations exist to protect the public.

Hence, on March 11, there will be a hearing to raise fees again by the County’s Environmental Health Department, which administers 122 different fee categories on some 5,700 businesses that include restaurants, tattoo parlors, gas stations, auto repair shops, and farmer’s markets, among many others. This same department raised their fees in 2019 based on 100% cost-recovery. Now they are asking for even more money because the fees they charge aren’t keeping up with their raises.

The definition of a fee in the hearing report states that a “user fee” is “A fee or rate charged to an individual or group that receives a private benefit (emphasis is added in the county report) from services provided by the County. As part of an overall funding strategy, local government relies upon user fees to fund programs and services that provide limited or no direct benefit to the community as a whole.”

This statement is preposterous. Nonetheless, you can expect county sups will raise the fees without admitting the real reason for the fee increases, that is, because county employees want continuous raises. For instance, consider restaurant inspections meant to ensure a safe food supply, which we all want and benefit from. These inspections are meant to ensure public safety; it is not for the private benefit of the restaurant owner.

Ironically, at this same hearing, the supervisors (thank you Supervisor Hartmann) will continue to wrestle with the problem of roadside and sidewalk food vendors who are breaking just about every rule in the book as it affects safe handling and storage of food. However, in this case, all the laws enforced on brick-and-mortar businesses and food trucks are, for all practical purposes, null and void because of two insane pieces of legislation (SB946 and 972) that allows the operators to avoid and evade prosecution. Go figure.

Dumpster Diving for Higher Fees

Back to the issue of fee increases. The county will charge a gas station a fee for having a hazardous substance (gasoline) on the premises and charge them a fee based on the size of the gas tank. It is ludicrous to assert the fee is for the private benefit of the gas station owner as the owner already knows how much gasoline he can store in his tanks. Yet, year after year, the owner pays an ever-increasing fee to redundantly report the same information to this county department simply because the employees and their managers want to be paid more.

What really bothers the business community is that their use, storage, and disposal of so-called hazardous materials is dwarfed by the public’s use of the same. That is, if this department could logistically figure out how to inspect your garage and dumpster dive into your garbage can to look for various violations pertaining to hazardous chemicals and empty containers of the same (paint, oil, gasoline etc.), and charge you for it every year, they would do so in a heartbeat.

The policy of 100% cost recovery means the county sups have no incentive to keep a lid on fee increases and neither do the employees of the department, as these fees are money in their pockets.

And they call this public service?

Andy Caldwell, Executive Director, COLAB