Donor Counties
I got a good chuckle from the recent OC Insider column (Speier Sputters, May 23) when Sen. Jackie Speier evidently raised with representatives from the OC Business Council the issue of California’s current status as a “donor state,” i.e. sending more tax dollars to the federal government than it receives. Your column noted Sen. Speier’s apparent bewilderment over Orange County’s “donor county” status and its disgraceful ranking as dead last behind every other county in the state in terms of the percentage of local property taxes that remain with the county.
The fact is that, because of an outdated property tax distribution formula enacted 26 years ago, taxpayers in OC, which retains only 7 cents out of every local property tax dollar generated, end up subsidizing Sen. Speier’s constituents in San Francisco, which keeps 26 cents out of every local property tax dollar generated there.
I have authored several bills during the past five years to remedy this funding inequity, including this year’s AB 1033, but to no avail. Perhaps Sen. Speier can work with me to persuade our legislative colleagues who represent the counties of San Francisco, Los Angeles and similar “recipient” counties that taxpayers living in OC, as well as in California’s other “donor” counties, deserve some fairness and equity, too.
Lynn Daucher
Assemblywoman
R-Brea
Cooley Kudo
Tim Cooley’s Viewpoint column on identification of Orange County as a metropolitan statistical area (May 30) is right on. Using the names of the largest cities, Santa Ana-Anaheim-Irvine as the U.S. government now does, is confusing to everyone,including the national media.
During the late 1970s, when OC was known as Anaheim-Santa Ana, Time magazine wrote that “Anaheim-Santa Ana is the fastest growing residential area in the nation.” Time is headquartered in New York, and the editors were puzzled by the government report which provided the statistics. So, after reporting that Anaheim-Santa Ana was the fastest growing residential MSA in the nation, the magazine wrote, in parenthesis, (We don’t understand this, we have been to Anaheim and there doesn’t seem to be that much open space.)
As Tim writes, we have to get our MSA changed back to Orange County.
Martin A. Brower
Corona del Mar
The “Orange County” brand is important in ways that go beyond branding. Losing the Orange County designation on empirical data is the first step to losing the data altogether.
Thank goodness we have Tim Cooley to bring an important issue to our attention (Viewpoint May 30). Few in the county have done more to fight the good fight in preserving and enhancing our county’s name brand capital.
Jim Doti
President and Donald Bren Distinguished Chair of Business and Economics
Chapman University
Orange
During the past two decades leaders in business, academia and the public sector have found common ground in recognizing the need to establish one clear identity for Orange County. Initially through Partnership 2010, and subsequently through other organizations and initiatives, focus and commitment were brought to bear and much progress has been made.
Kudos to Tim Cooley for providing a wake-up call in his May 30 editorial. We cannot allow our Orange County identity and brand to be compromised at any level. I urge our leaders to renew their commitment and rally together once again to preserve and enhance our brand.
Gary Liebl
Maui
More Great Park
Russell Niewiarowski is correct in praising The Irvine Company Chairman Donald Bren’s 50,000 acre “Great Park,” while panning ex-Irvine Mayor Larry Agran’s foolish 4,700-acre Great Park. But he is wrong in asking for a reasonable reconfigured airport at El Toro, which simply does not make sense (Great Park, June 6).
Niewiarowski’s reasoning puts him squarely into the anti-airport coalition of South County led by Agran, which he claims to abhor.
El Toro has been approved by the Federal Aviation Administration, and it has a very important feature that saves the airlines millions of dollars per day in fuel costs and schedule times. The airplanes take off to the north and to the east,in the direction they want to go,from cross runways in a calm sheltered valley. It would be foolhardy to try to turn this natural advantage into an inefficient John Wayne Airport, which upsets Donald Bren, the pilots and the airlines.
Donald Nyre
Newport Beach
