A Baldwin Park machinery business gets charged $226 by Azusa for dropping off and picking up parts in that city, because officials said the company did not have a delivery license. Traffic citations in Montebello jump sharply from February 2009 to March 2009 and four police officers accuse the city of punishing them for not meeting enforcement quotas. The Orange County city of Huntington Beach approves an ordinance forcing out-of-town drivers who cause accidents to pay for emergency responders sent to the scene.
Voters and lawmakers may be reluctant to raise taxes, but local governments are finding other ways to get money out of people as the ongoing recession saps revenues.
"It used to be when you wanted to do a room addition or a patio it was pretty cheap for a permit, but now it's an arm and a leg," said Sen. Bob Huff, R-Walnut. "It's purely a strategy to help survive when other revenues are being trimmed."
Huff called the trend predictable.
Unlike tax increases, cities can implement fees without a two-thirds popular vote, Huff said.
And fees are at least attached to things the payer owns or uses.
"If you're asking me to pay a tax for a road I'm never going to use that's not fair," Huff said. "At least for a fee, if it's done properly, there's a nexus between what you're paying and what your getting. With taxes there may not be a nexus."
In Whittier the cost of adding on to your home has crept up 6 percent in the last five years, even though the inflation rate was half that. The fee went from $103 per square foot in 2005/2006 to $110 now. Even the dog catcher cranked up costs.
Baldwin Park began doing some animal control duties in-house after the county drastically increased fees for contracted services like collecting dead animals and picking up strays, said Baldwin Park police Chief Lili Hadsell.
Field calls costs went from $59.42 per incident to $75.51 in 2009. Meantime the cost for housing dogs and cats shot up 62 percent, she said.
"It was staggering when I realized how big the increases were," she said.
Some said government should cut fat before reaching for residents' pockets.
West Covina Councilman Mike Touhey said he's resisted proposals to charge residents $200 for city firefighters to assess or treat without transport and levy a utility users fee.
"People are asking even more questions about what all the government people are getting paid, and is that what (the fees) are subsidizing," Touhey said. "That's what we need to look at as a council and government leaders overall - people are questioning if we're charging them more and more to pay people unsustainable salaries and pensions."
Public records show local government employees are compensated handsomely in salaries, benefits and perks like car allowances and cell phones.
As of 2009, West Covina City Manager Andy Pasmant's total compensation reached $298,489 and the city leases a Cadillac STS for him to drive.
El Monte doles out $228,000 in car allowances for 55 employees, according to records, while Pasadena spends $300,000 yearly for 76 employees to get the fringe benefit.
Monterey Park paid former city manager Chris Jeffers $484,000 and former police chief Jones Moy $372,000 in unused time off when they left the city in 2007 and 2009, respectively.
"In the last 10 years there's been a big increase in public employee salaries and perks, but what's fairly new is the nickel and diming (of residents) to pay these employees more rather than to, say, get better parks," said Douglas Johnson, a fellow at Claremont's Rose Institute of State and Local Government. "Bell is the obvious example of this taken to an extreme but it happens a lot on a smaller scale."
The public is losing trust in the government, evidenced by the failure of Proposition 21 in November, which would have added $15 to car registration fees to pay for state parks.
"I don't know any political professional who predicted that would lose," Johnson said. "You can't get a more generically happy cause than state parks. It was only 15 bucks a car, and it went down. We're starting to see the people's loss of faith in their government showing itself."
A decade ago cities were riding the dot com boom of 1990s, offering generous pension packages supported by stock market gains, on the assumption the high-flying economic conditions would persist.
But after the bubble burst, governments had to start footing the bill themselves.
And once the salaries, pensions and other benefits are negotiated and agreed on, cities can't get out of them unless they file for bankruptcy and negotiate contract changes with a judge.
The current levels are unsustainable, Johnson said.
Touhey said something has to give.
"There are many ways you can figure out to charge people, but the people's pockets are empty," he said. "Government needs to go on a diet. We need to go on `The Biggest Loser' and start cutting."
http://www.sgvtribune.com/news/ci_17237268