Stanislaus county is a little guy when you look at the county’s population compared to the rest of California. We have about 550,000 people here. California has over 40 million. Every congressional district has around 750,000 people. We are outweighed by the Bay Area, Sacramento, the coast, the inland empire and of course, by LA and southern California.
Our success depends on navigating national, state and regional politics. That’s never easy. But we can win.
— Releasing green and orange balloons over the valley.
On June 17, 1997, then congressman Gary Condit gathered colleagues and officials for a press conference on a sunny windy day high in the Altamont corridor hills. Condit wanted the public to know why he was carrying a bill to make sure the Bay Area would have to comply with Smog 2 just as the valley had to meet that standard. Condit knew the facts — 27% of the smog in the northern San Joaquin valley came from the Bay Area and Sacramento.
State legislators House, Machado, Cardoza and Montieth were stood with Condit. His congressional colleague, republican Richard Pombo supported his legislation. Mayor Lang of Modesto came with a bus full of local elected council persons and county officials. The group released several dozen balloons to prove what we already knew, but had to show others that the wind blew the balloons into our valley, just as it also blew the Bay Area air pollution here.
Condit won that fight because his federal, state and local elected colleagues stood with him. Jointly demanding equal treatment for the valley.
— End the negative bailout.
The poor treatment that Stanislaus faced was never so apparent then when California passed legislation to reimburse local government for their revenue losses resulting from passage of proposition 14 in 1974. At the time the state had a huge surplus, and then Governor Brown worked to bail out local governments and schools to offset the lost revenue. But the formula they crafted to bailout and hold harmless local government had a flaw. Five counties, including Stanislaus, discovered after the fact that the bailout for them was substantially less than before. Hence the negative bailout that would plague Stanislaus for nearly 40 years.
Our local state legislators didn’t forget us. On several occasion legislative fixes neared success. Two bills made it to the Governor’s desk…only to be vetoed.
But 2014 brought some new elements to the table. Governor Brown wanted to get a redevelopment reform bill enacted. Stanislaus supervisor Vito Chiesa was a key leader in CSAC the county supervisors Association of California. The Stanislaus County delegations included Kristen Olsen, Anthony Cannella, Adam Gray and Cathleen Galgiani. Two republicans, and two democrats. On the same team! They crafted an amendment to the redevelopment bill that addressed the negative bailout problem. it reversed the formular to what it should have been all along. To date, at end of 2025, Stanislaus County will have received approximately $100 million for county programs from that amendment.
— Stop the water grab.
The largest demonstration at the state capitol in 2018 was organized by then Assemblyman Gray and attended by over 1,000 people. Numerous county elected leaders attended and spoke. This gathering was as bipartisan a rally as any had seen in years.
But action was needed. The state water board and many in the environmental community wanted to help the endangered salmon by forcing the operators of dams like Don Pedro to let more water flow freely into the delta to support the fish. It didn’t matter to them that the farmers and urban users of that water would be cut short. It didn’t matter to them that biggest dangers to salmon wasn’t the water flow issue, but the presence of nonnative fish species. And it really didn’t bother them that the Don Pedro dam was solely financed by the local rate payers of the three utilities who built and operated it. Here is an often overlooked fact in California water wars. When the last state or federal major water project began operations our state population was 20 million. Now it’s 40 million.
This fight is not over. Even now there are elements in the government and who lobby the government to simply take the water from the valley. Voluntary agreements have been reached between the state and our water districts to solve this issue but efforts are always underway to undercut the agreements and to take more water. We need to be on guard.
None of the elected officials mentioned in this column were found wanting when the need was greatest. None of them were scared off by their own political parties. They put us first. This should always be the standard for people we send to Sacramento and Washington.
Little guys can win!
