Funds for off-road enforcement in limbo  

Audit, lawsuit, outrage prompt a state hearing on the oversight program.  

 

In the wilds of Calaveras County, Deputy Sheriff Eric Lamb boards a dirt bike and goes to work, keeping order on 8,000 acres of forest.   “I’m stretched pretty thin,” Lamb said.  

In the county of about 45,000 residents, he is the only deputy responsible for keeping tabs on off-road vehicle riders cruising hundreds of miles of trails through Stanislaus National Forest. Because the vast off-road trails burden the rural county’s budget, the county has relied on a grant from the state’s Off-Highway Vehicle Trust Fund to pay for Lamb’s position. 

Lamb filed the paperwork in October for this year’s grant, but later learned from the state Off-Highway Motor Vehicle Recreation Division of the Department of Parks and Recreation that his request - along with those of 45 other agencies that provide enforcement or other off-road-vehicle services totaling $18 million - is in limbo. A critical 2005 audit of the state’s off-highway vehicle program, a lawsuit and outrage from the industry have prompted an April 26 hearing of the Joint Legislative Audit Committee. 

One pressing issue: The seven-member Off-Highway Motor Vehicle Recreation Commission expires in 2008, so the Legislature must decide to reform it or abandon it - and the same with the whole off-highway vehicle program, which is scheduled to sunset next year. The program operates eight off-road parks funded through fuel tax revenues, vehicle registration fees and entrance fees. 

Grants from the commission are used for everything from law enforcement to trail maintenance on locally or federally owned land in the state. The rest of the fund - about $50 million this year - is used primarily to maintain the state off-road parks. 

Lamb and other grant hopefuls have been trapped as the off-highway commission and program administrators face charges of mismanaging public funds, and polarized ideological battles have paralyzed the commission. The controversy crests at a pivotal time for the off-road industry, a sport that requires a wide berth from most other outdoor pursuits. 

Ownership of off-road vehicles in the state has nearly tripled in six years to 960,495 in 2006 from 333,162 in 1995, according to the Department of Motor Vehicles. At the same time, open space is giving way to urban growth. The audit released in August points to millions of dollars unwisely or questionably spent, including nearly $2 million for a 669-acre “buffer” for Prairie City State Vehicular Recreation Area in Rancho Cordova in 2003. The land is five miles from the park it is supposed to protect. 

A 1972 state law dictates the off-road money be evenly used for restoring land destroyed by users and buying and maintaining property for the sport. Off-highway vehicle supporters contend the commission has been largely hijacked by environmentalists who are cold-shouldering enhancement of the sport in favor of conserving land or restoring it. 

For several years, appointed commissioners have splintered into a four-vote environmentalist bloc and a three-vote bloc of off-highway vehicle interests or law enforcement. Auditors concluded that commissioners granted money based on “individual interests,” and the program’s administrators and commissioners lacked a common strategy or “shared vision.” 

“It’s a spoils system that has been corrupted,” said Terry McHale, a Sacramento lobbyist for the off-highway vehicle industry. “What it has turned into is sort of a slush fund.” Amador County Sheriff Mike Prizmich, a commissioner, said the audit was too harsh on the off-highway division, which changed administrators during the audit period. 

“The commission has been the greater problem in the disruption,” he said. Prizmich, who was appointed by former Gov. Gray Davis, said the solution is to reduce the panel’s role to an advisory one. 

Administrators of the off-highway program say they are correcting problems attributed to them in the state audit, including the implementing of an objective scoring system for awarding grants. “We took this audit very seriously,” said Daphne Green, deputy director of the division. 

The new commission chairman, John Brissenden, who is part of the four-vote bloc, said the present commission is actually bringing parity to a program that has long neglected conservation and restoration. “We believe in a balance, and that’s what we are trying to accomplish,” he said. 

Appointed in 2002 by former Democratic Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson, Brissenden said the commission is effective even without a majority not aligned with the sport. “I think we come with fresh ideas and fresh eyes,” he said. 

An off-highway vehicle group, Ecologic Partners Inc., has filed suit in

The suit was filed in January, but it’s not a new problem, said David Hubbard, an Escondido attorney representing the off-highway vehicle groups. “It’s been building for years because of the dysfunctional nature of the commission,” he said. In Calaveras County, the major concern is getting grant money to pay for Deputy Lamb. 

“It would virtually impossible to keep him in that position without it,” said Sheriff Dennis Downum. Before Lamb was on the job, trespassers overran private property near the forest. 

“I’m sure it would start again,” Downum said, “almost immediately.”