MORE than $320 million that should have been rushed to aid parched California communities remains unspent over a year after lawmakers voted to use the funds to provide water, protect wells from contamination and upgrade outdated water systems.
Weeks after declaring a state of emergency, Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration allocated $687 million to assist farmworkers and counties suffering from the drought. About half of that amount has not been awarded or spent, according to figures the state Finance Department provided the Associated Press.
While millions have been spent to alleviate drought-devastated communities throughout California, the remainder of unspent money reflects the slow response time of government even during a crisis.
State officials acknowledge the time it takes to spend the money, but say the slow pace is meant to ensure funds are spent properly. If officials move too quickly, they risk paying for shabby work and unintentionally harming the environment.
“Where there have been immediate needs, the state has committed immediate dollars,” H.D. Palmer, the spokesman for the Finance Department told the Associated Press. “We want to spend it quickly, but we want to spend it properly.”
California’s drought assistance package set aside $239 million for local water systems, including pipelines and water-treatment plants. These projects were deemed “shovel-ready” by lawmakers, although they won’t be awarded until this fall.
While “shovel-ready” implies work will begin immediately or the next day, the reality is that it will be many months, said Steve Boilard, a former nonpartisan policy analyst who heads the Center for California Studies at Sacramento State University, according to the Associated Press.
“The issue is not that this is taking longer than it should. It’s taking longer than the voters have been led to expect,” Boilard said.
So far, drought-relief efforts by the Brown administration have had a positive impact on city dwellers, farmers and wildlife.
For one, 11 new wells are tapping into more underground water for Los Angeles. Near Santa Maria, slow-trickling valves have replaced sprinklers on 200 acres of farmland. In Sacramento, a pond with depleting water levels has been replenished, protecting a popular ground for the threatened giant garter snake.
Still, it took some time before significant amounts were able to help Californians who suffer most from the drought.
California allocated $21 million toward housing assistance, but only $10 million in state money was spent. Of $11 million from federal housing grants, only a fraction was spent.
Evan Gerberding, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Housing and Community Development, told the Associated Press that millions of unspent dollars were rolled back into general housing programs.
Furthermore, only small, low-income communities could qualify for federal funds. Gerberding told the news agency that many of those towns are usually unable to manage money that has to be turned around quickly, or do not see it as their responsibility.
It also took the administration more than a year to spend $25 million on food banks for counties struggling with job losses related to the drought. Michael Weston, a spokesman for the state Department of Social Services, told the Associated Press that funding was spread out in installments, as opposed to purchasing all the food at one time.
To date, more than 650,000 boxes of food have been provided to affected individuals.
Last year, the state government proposed to assist communities seeking to increase water supplies by speeding up the spending of $472 million, funds that voters approved for water projects in 2006.
Approximately half of those funds were awarded by the Department of Water Resources last fall. However, construction on some of those projects has not yet began, as local governments are still shopping around for the best deals and obtaining other funding sources.
Some officials say they would like to figure out ways to hasten spending for drought-relief, and others have said that the severity of the drought requires more immediate action.
“It’s just the nature of the beast,” Brown said, acknowledging the government’s slow pace, “that things don’t go as fast as the system seems to want.”
(LA Weekend June 13 – 16, 2015 Sec. A pg.7)
