Environmentalists ramping up statewide ballot effort to save state parks
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Contra Costa Times: With the Schwarzenegger administration preparing to close up to 100 state parks, California's top environmental groups are quietly putting together a ballot campaign they hope will turn the bad news into a renaissance for the state's long-struggling park system. The Nature Conservancy, National Audubon Society, Trust for Public Land, Save-the-Redwoods League and others have raised nearly $1 million and conducted months of polling toward a November 2010 ballot measure that would increase vehicle license fees by $15 a year to fund parks.
If voters approve the measure — which needs a simple majority to pass — it would raise roughly $400 million a year, doubling the parks' budget and making it no longer dependent on the state's fluctuating general fund. In exchange, all California motorists would get free admission to all state parks, which now charge up to $14 for entrance fees. "We're in a moment where Californians can look at a pile of lemons or we can try to be bold and turn them into lemonade," said Elizabeth Goldstein, executive director of the California State Parks Foundation, a nonprofit group in San Francisco. If the groups move ahead with the campaign, as expected, they would submit papers in the next few weeks and begin gathering signatures by January. They would have to gather the signatures of 433,000 registered voters by mid-April.
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