The Newsom administration is gaining traction in its years-long push for a dramatic increase in California’s sales tax on pesticides.
The added revenue would boost the budget for the Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) by as much as 45% and position the administration to deliver on promises to expedite registrations and evaluations. But stakeholders on both sides of the debate are pushing for guardrails to ensure the department—on the brink of insolvency after cost overruns—would deliver on those promises.
The concerns over transparency and accountability were enough to drive Assemblymember Eduardo Garcia of Coachella to pluck the proposal out of the notoriously opaque budgetary process and into the public policy arena for a more in-depth debate.
He crafted Assembly Bill 2113 to mirror many of the provisions in the administration’s trailer bill on the mill assessment. Garcia hopes to refine AB 2113 based on stakeholder feedback and incorporate the revised proposal into the state’s budget plan.
Even subtle changes could present opportunities for agriculture since Garcia’s bill could place the first legislative restrictions on the administration’s sweeping pesticide agenda, a 30-year plan known as the Sustainable Pest Management Roadmap. AB 2113 elevates the issues to a larger stage by having the full Legislature weigh in on the policy proposals as well as DPR’s related structural imbalance.
“This department in particular has had a major challenge for a long time,” Garcia said during a recent committee hearing on his bill. “This issue has not been taken on directly.”
Nicole Quiñonez, Household & Commercial Products AssociationAB 2113 would raise the mill revenues in phases, from about $30 million currently to $54 million in four years. It would also require DPR to reevaluate five pesticides per year starting in 2027. Environmental groups argue such a mandate is necessary because DPR has taken about 30 years to review just five pesticides.
Several environmental and anti-pesticide groups support the bill and are pushing Garcia and the administration to go further.
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After the Legislature rejected the administration’s proposed overhaul of the mill assessment in 2021, DPR hired Crowe LLP to examine the options and issue a set of recommendations. Last year the private consulting firm issued a report recommending a mill increase of more than 60%. Interest groups are now seizing on that advice in their requests to policymakers.
Crowe also recommended that DPR eventually revisit its proposal for a tiered mill system, which would levy higher fees on materials the department determines to be more hazardous.
According to an analysis of AB 2113, the environmental coalition also wants timelines for completing reevaluations and $20 million in mill revenues to support incentive grants for sustainable pest management. While agricultural groups are pressing for the department to speed up registrations for new products, the environmental interests want DPR to only expedite organic and biological pesticides.
Pesticide manufacturers and farm groups want to establish firm timelines in state code as well. They are calling for the Legislature to require DPR to report annually on meeting certain registration targets.
The industry groups warn the administration’s proposal would eliminate the Legislature’s tax authority over setting the mill fees. The trailer bill outlines a 28% mill increase over the next three years. After that DPR could raise it further, potentially expanding its budget by 45% overall in five years and without legislative oversight, according to Taylor Roschen, a lobbyist for the firm Kahn, Soares and Conway, which represents a coalition of farmers and ranchers.
“Agriculture wants a properly resourced DPR,” said Roschen at the hearing. “It's not in our own interests that the work of registration, revaluation and enforcement be unfunded or underfunded.”
Yet Roschen charged that both AB 2113 and the trailer bill lack accountability and transparency measures. She pointed out that the Legislature provided DPR with $20 million two years ago to address its structural imbalance.
“That money is gone,” she said, adding that, since then, registrations have slowed, licenses have been delayed and DPR’s deficit has grown larger. “Considering this, we're concerned about providing such a dramatic increase without guardrails.”
Nicole Quiñonez, a lobbyist representing the Household & Commercial Products Association, echoed the concerns over accountability.
DPR “has just said that it's their goal to decrease the backlog of registrations they currently have and to start new applications within 30 days of receipt,” said Quiñonez. “That seems like not as much as we would expect with that additional amount of resources.”
While the committee approved the bill along partisan lines, Asm. Diane Papan of San Mateo said there should be some requirements for "how quickly DPR has to come up with safer alternatives. People ban things and people remain in limbo for a long time.”
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