On the evening of September 28th Governor Schwartzenegger signed into law Assembly Bill 1602. This bill cleared both houses of the legislature and all committees without opposition.

This legislation restores Vehicle License Fee in-lieu payments to their full historic level for cities incorporated after year 2004. This clearly resolves one point in 2005's controversial vote for EDH cityhood. At this level of VLF funding to the proposed city it would have had fiscal surpluses in the range of about $39 million to $50 million for the duration of its first 9 years of operation. As indicated in the Comprehensive Fiscal Analysis, those surpluses would have been applied to increasing levels of service for functions such as law enforcement and for building financial reserves.

Our membership includes people who were strongly on both sides of the cityhood issue. It is appropriate to review issues such as this as questions of fact, and the cityhood debate probably will resume at some time within several years. This is an important point of fact for that debate.