California to Shut 70 State Parks | Hacker News Reader

California to Shut 70 State Parks

bloomberg.com

22 pointslotusleaf198735 comments

This is more politics than anything else. The Governor is trying to cut visible things so people will accept the Tax extensions. The truth is, as the the article says, these parks only cost $33 million. In a state where the top 5 highest paid employees make over $10 million in salary (http://www.sacbee.com/statepay/) keeping those parks open wouldn't cost that much.

Plus we just found we've got $2 billion in tax revenue we didn't expect (http://tinyurl.com/3cv3t4k)

Also, for the record, California has a corporate sponsorship program for parks: http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=25426.

Yep, those salaries are obscene. Does the state pay $1 million bucks to the head coach of each of the UCs just so they can beat each other in football? That's an excellent place to start. No coach should be paid more than $60K a year.

When you look at the map linked in the article, http://goo.gl/adHC3, it's remarkable how such fantastic places in the state can be kept open for only $33M.

What this really means, I assume, is that it costs almost as much to keep a state park closed as it does to keep it open.

Given that they still need to employ maintenance services, for reduced but not non-existent needs, park rangers, etc., you're probably right.

> The Governor is trying to cut visible things so people will accept the Tax extensions.

Good! I've been publicly arguing for a while now that the only way to stop the Tea Party in its stupid tracks is to start cutting all the things that people actually see. We keep getting all these atrocious cuts to education and public services, and they keep managing to muddle along anyway, which keeps reinforcing the idea that there's still more left to cut from education and other public services.

It's time to start cutting things that people care about.

Nice. We don't have a few million. But paying $3 trillion to kill innocent Iraqis and Afghanis is cool.

Ugh. And what is even more distressing is that California voters rejected Prop. 21 in November that would have saved all these parks, and much more.

For the uninitiated: Prop. 21 was a $18 fee added to your vehicle registration, intended for state parks. A benefit would have been free admission to all day-use state parks, some of which cost $15/day right now.

Don't you understand that this is a political maneuver? They cut whatever seems most outrageous first, so that they can get voter support to raise taxes (and thus avoid having to make actual cuts anywhere).

If they were collecting that money on your vehicle registration they'd be doing the same maneuver somewhere else. Or possibly in the same damn place, because folks have short memories.

If it had passed, this particular bit of maneuvering would not have been necessary. It's more work and more drama for essentially the same result. Even then, there is no guarantee those funds will be reinstated and those parks reopened...

$33 million / $15.4 billion = 0.215%

When the cuts start, it is the projects with the most politically weak supporters that will get cut first.

Bigger ticket items, by definition, had to have strong political allies to get put into place, so they will be the last things to get trimmed - if at all.

Sometimes, it's popular small-ticket items that are targeted, in what's called a "Washington Monument Maneuver", to mobilize opinions against cuts in general.

seems rather stupid to me..

How about selling them? How about selling them to non-profits with covenants that they be publicly available 6months/year and forbidding parcelling and developing.

Well the old Governor's Mansion is the one on that list should definitely be sold. It's not useful, and it's not all that historically significant. It's a largish house on a smallish block in Sacramento, probably wouldn't even raise a million bucks if sold, but I'm sure that it'd save more than that in maintenance pretty quickly.

Sad... here's a link from the article to KQED's map of what parks are closing: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=21...

My home and property border Portola Redwood State Park which has been slated for closure. I wonder what this means for safety concerns like fires. Will these parks still be minimally staffed to prevent destruction of the facilities, preservation of the wildlife and prevention of illegal camping and the potential for fires?

At this point, why not just leave them open and don't spend any money on them? And if you're going to stop employing people, how about some Sacto bureaucrats that don't have much of an impact on anything?

Because without park staff, people will destroy park infrastructure, potentially start forest fires camping, and do damage to the wildlife, maybe?

Surely they're going to have to keep a whole lot of staff just to keep people out of the state parks anyway? Apart from anything else, hidden marijuana growing operations are a big problem in state and national parks.

> why not just leave them open and don't spend any money on them?

A State Park with no State Employees? Think of the liability!

I hate to say it but ahem all those Silicon Valley companies that used fancy accounting, etc to avoid paying fair share of Fed and state taxes..like say Apple, Google, etc..if they all paid 3% in state taxes no cuts would have to be made..

The real political fight is individuals versus company lobbyists

Why can't California collectively shame Google/Apple/Intel and others into paying more taxes? They're obviously headquartered here but pay no taxes in California because they just off-shore the profits and claim incorporation in Delaware.

It doesn't seem totally necessary to do this anyway, especially given the above:

> Also, for the record, California has a corporate sponsorship program for parks: http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=25426.

If these companies really felt that they weren't doing enough for their state, they could step up and have the parks "advertise" for them for 33 million... How much did the Facebookers just spend?

That's delusional and never going to happen. Companies don't just give away money.

Because the political climate in California right now is being heavily influenced by a very loud Republican contingent that is strictly opposed to anything that even smells like an increase on taxes for businesses.

(See, for example, the recent article that, in a poll among CEOs, found California to be one of the worst states for business.)

How can they even claim something like that and get away with it? Silicon Valley, Hollywood, Central Coast/Napa vineyards, agriculture production, services, travel industry, world-class hospitals like the Mayo Clinic, Stanford, UCLA, Cedars-Sinai, and on and on.

There are only a handful of places I can imagine would be better for business.

Here's the HN link from 5 days ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2527140

I didn't say I agreed, I was just answering the question.

I wasn't saying you agreed, my comment was rhetorical.

Nice. But paying $3 trillion to kill innocent Iraqis and Afghanis is cool.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why I'm flagging this thread as politics.

That's obnoxious. Just down vote his comment.

Or, they could close a tax loophole on 1-2 rich taxpayers, which would raise a lot more money than this misguided move.

I know which option I'd prefer.

Precisely which tax "loophole" can be closed to collect $33 million in state taxes from one or two individuals?

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