SUPERVISORS OPPOSE POT PROPOSITION

Sutter County leaders on Tuesday reaffirmed their resistance to
legalized marijuana use, coming out against a state ballot measure to
decriminalize a drug involved in a tug-of-war between California and
federal laws.

The Board of Supervisors unanimously opposed Proposition 19, which
would decriminalize the possession and transfer - but not the sale -
of up to one ounce of pot for those 21 and older.

District Attorney Carl Adams denied the county's stance was a
statement on the drug's legitimacy as medicine. Instead, he attacked
Prop. 19's ability to collect taxes from cannabis sales - a strike at
its supporters' claims pot sales could infuse deficit-wracked local
governments with fresh funds.

"This bill provides no mechanism to collect revenues, no way to pass
the money back to local government," he said, also criticizing Prop.
19 as a threat to efforts to reduce impaired driving and workplace accidents.

"In other words, pass it and we'll figure it out later?" asked
Supervisor Stan Cleveland. "Then I don't want that."

The stance followed supervisors' rejection in April of a
identification card program for users of doctor-prescribed marijuana,
which the state legalized in 1996 in defiance of a federal ban.
Sutter and Colusa are the only California counties not to issue the
ID cards. Supervisors also threw their support behind the effort to
freeze the state law curbing greenhouse-gas emissions, unanimously
backing Prop. 23.

The measure would suspend enforcement of Assembly Bill 32 unless
California's unemployment rate drops to 5.5 percent - a level reached
just three times since 1980 - and stays there for a year. The climate
bill passed in 2006 and aims to roll back greenhouse-gas production
to 1990 levels over the next decade.

Anxiety over rural counties losing control over spending priorities
drive the board's tighter vote to fight Prop. 25, which aims to get
state budgets passed more quickly by dropping the requirement to win
approval from two-thirds of the Legislature. California is one of
only three states to demand more than a simple majority to pass a
spending plan.

Lowering the bar for budget approval would rob Yuba-Sutter and the
rest of the Central Valley of a safeguard against urban communities
steering funding away from them, argued Supervisor James Gallagher,
who joined Cleveland and Larry Montna in opposing Prop. 25.

Without the two-thirds requirement, "come budget time, guess who has
the influence on the budget? San Francisco and Los Angeles," he said.
"You think we have problems with the Williamson Act now? Just wait
until they get their hands on it again. Funds for rural roads? You
can forget about that.

"I don't want to California any more rope to hang us."