STAYING
ALIVE
fighting to keep the Williamson act working for you
Many California Cattlemen’s Association (CCA) members have been asking about the status of the Williamson Act (Act) and are concerned that this valuable program could be discontinued due to lack of state funding. This article provides information on the goals, history, and status, of the Act. The Act’s main challenge at this time is the lack of state funding to local governments to help defray the tax revenue lost to them as a result of the program. Restoration of this state funding (subvention) is one of the CCA’s top priorities. WHAT IS THE WILLIAMSON ACT AND WHY DO WE NEED IT? During the boom following World War II, California’s population boomed. The population in 1940 was about 7 million. By the time the Act was being debated in the early 1960s, the population had risen to about 17 million. Property taxes were rising and making it more difficult for ranchers and farmers to afford to stay in business. In response to this, the state legislature passed the Act in 1965 to curb the loss of agricultural lands to urban use. The Williamson Act, officially known as the California Land Conservation Act, is a program administered by the California Department of Conservation (DOC). Cities and counties are authorized to enter into contracts with private landowners to restrict specific parcels of land to agricultural and open-space uses. The landowners then receive a reduction in their property tax assessments. The length of these contracts is typically for 10-year terms. There are also 20-year contracts for lands which meet specific requirements relating to their quality, significance or uniqueness, as determined by the DOC. This longer commitment enables the landowner to enjoy greater property tax reductions. The three main tenets of the Act are protection of 42 California Cattleman September 2021
agricultural resources, preservation of open land and promotion of efficient urban growth patterns. The Act recognizes that agricultural land is an economic resource which is vital to the general welfare of society and preservation of that land is necessary to protection of the state’s economic resources, especially in providing adequate, healthful and nutritious food for California and the nation. The preservation of open space land is acknowledged in the Act as having a public value and provides physical, social, esthetic and economic assets to towns and cities. Rural lands can be a key component of properly functioning upland watersheds, which improve water quality, provide endangered species habitat and enhance flood management. Promotion of efficient urban growth patterns is a concept most people can agree on, however implementing that in practice is increasingly difficult as the population increases and the urban/rural interface contracts. To meet the increased needs of the population, cities and counties struggle to find new revenue sources, often succumbing to the policy known as the “fiscalization of land use.” Open lands are hastily developed into uses which provide quick and easy revenue to the local treasury, usually manifested as shopping malls, auto malls and other forms of sprawl. Haphazard, opportunistic and sprawling urban development can be disastrous to society and is almost impossible to fix after the fact. The Act’s goal states it is a matter of public interest to both rural and urban residents to discourage unsound growth and development patterns. Therefore, the Act is an important planning tool for local government policy makers and planners and provides some long-term stability as a bulwark against short sighted zoning and politically motivated land use decisions. These are ...CONTINUED ON PAGE 44
