Chesbro & AB 479

Eric Kirk gave me the heads up on the North Coast Journal giving us a heads up on some new legislation introduced by our local state legislators. Not going to deal with them all right now but Wes Chesbro's AB 479 sounds like bs to me.

So, just what does AB 479 do? It actually amends the earlier Integrated Waste Management Act of 1989, which I believe is what requires us to divert 50% of our waste from the landfill by some particular date or face heavy fines. That was one of the excuses for forcing mandatory garbage service on residents of Eureka.

Here's the text of the bill.

Did Chesbro try to ease up on the communities and realize that it's not so easy to divert all that garbage, especially with recycling all clogged up now with some recyclers having to pay to get rid of recycleables? Of course not. If I'm reading this right, he makes it harder on everybody. Here's just a few quotes from the bill in bold print (formatting from copy and paste didn't work well):

This bill would require a city or county to divert 60% of all
solid waste through source reduction, recycling, and
composting activities on and after January 1, 2015, thereby
imposing a state-mandated local program by imposing new
duties on local agencies regarding solid waste management.

Notice he's imposing a yet a new state- mandate on cities and increasing the amount of diversion required from 50% to 60%.

The act requires an operator of a solid waste disposal
facility to pay a quarterly fee of up to $1.40 per ton
based on the amount of all solid waste disposed of at
each disposal site and requires the State Board of
Equalization to collect the fees and deposit the fees
in the Integrated Waste Management Account in the
Integrated Waste Management Fund in the State Treasury.
This bill would, on and after January 1, 2010,
establish the amount of the fee in an amount of $3.90
per ton and would require $2.50 of that fee after
that date to be available for expenditure by
the board, upon appropriation by the Legislature, for
apportionment to jurisdictions, as specified.

Not quite sure what they're doing here but it seems like they're more than doubling the fee that garbage companies pay to dump trash at a landfill and sending that increase to Waste Management Fund (raises for Chesbro's friends on the Board perhaps).

Then there's this last little gem:

 The California Constitution requires the state
to reimburse local agencies and school districts
for certain costs mandated by the state.
Statutory provisions establish procedures for making
that reimbursement.
   This bill would provide that no reimbursement
is required by this act for a specified reason.

Note that the state is supposed to pay localities for at least certain costs imposed upon them. He then says the state doesn't have to pay localities for any costs they incur as a result of this bill. At least that's the way I'm reading it.

I'm almost glad he's introduced this, though. I've said here before while talking about all these waste diversion mandates that, although Chesbro wasn't in the senate when the current mandates came around, he would of pushed something like that if he was.

What a creep. And that's coming from an avid recycler.