[env-trinity] Redding Record Searchlight-Editorial: Assembly bill takes shackles off volunteers

[Tom Stokely]

CREEK RESTORATION
Editorial: Assembly bill takes shackles off volunteers
Redding Record Searchlight - 5/27/04
When the right constituency comes calling, even the California Assembly can be provoked into doing the right thing once in a while. 

Although normally solicitous toward the wishes of unions, legislative Democrats appear increasingly likely to pass a bill easing senseless restrictions imposed by the state Department of Industrial Relations on volunteers' lending a hand on public works projects. 

Are they motivated by common sense? Anything's possible. What really raised the pressure for change, however, was fervent lobbying by environmental groups that saw an array of water-quality projects threatened by the state's new insistence that public money and volunteer labor should never mix. 

The headwaters of the dispute are right here in Redding, where the nonprofit Sacramento Watersheds Action Group was fined more than $33,000 for employing volunteers and Shasta College students on a state-funded project to clean up the Sulphur Creek canyon and build a trail on the Old Highway 99 roadbed. The Department of Industrial Relations ruled that SWAG should have paid the volunteers and students prevailing wage. 

Creek restoration is not the only volunteer activity in question. Facing similar resistance from labor unions and the Department of Industrial Relations, the city of Redding has been unable to move forward with its share of funding for the volunteer-driven construction of a small neighborhood park in the Vista Ridge subdivision. The implications of the policy are truly staggering. If park and creek projects can't use volunteers, what does that imply for school aides? Museum docents? Library storytellers? 

Anyhow, the creek lovers had the political chops to get a bill introduced by Assemblywoman Lori Hancock, D-Berkeley, and while it initially would have opened only a narrow exception for watershed projects, later amendments broadly allow volunteers and nonprofit groups to pitch in on public projects. This is a development worth cheering, though the bill is not law yet. 

While Doug LaMalfa's chief of staff said the north state's assemblyman would support AB 2690, the bill's progress opens an illuminating window onto the Legislature's mindless partisan split. As of Wednesday, it had passed through two Assembly committees on strict party-line votes, Democrats for and Republicans against. Republicans would favor any bill that encourages volunteerism and stretches tax dollars, we'd think. Did they actually read it or just see that it is sponsored by a Berkeley Democrat and automatically vote nay? (Not an outrageous guideline, actually, but occasional exceptions are warranted.) 

Whatever the process, the bill must pass the Assembly by Friday or it dies for the year. With the usual medley of special-interest bills, vanity proposals and fads in the legislative works, the volunteer bill is a rare measure that will clearly help all Californians. We hope it does not get crushed in the deadline stampede. #

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