As June '98 fast approaches, our mailboxes will soon be brimming with those gratuitous reminders from the California DMV telling us our bi-annual OHV tithe is due. Twenty-two measly dollars. "A pittance ," they say, "why it's only eleven dollars a year." They expect us to be glad to pay it in exchange for all we get... Get? Let me see... Last year we got screwed, and near as I can remember we got screwed again the year before when the earthquakes rattled the porcelain caps and synthetic breasts of the movie stars up in the San Fernando Valley. And wasn't it the year before that when the State of California couldn't get a budget drawn up? Seems they were broke because all the politicians are a bunch of blood sucking morons that can't balance their own checking accounts. So they paid the state employees from the OHV fund. And the year before that... Well you get my point, every year our projects get delayed while the State spends our money on causes more "noble". I'm not going to bore you with statistics, and quite frankly I'm too lazy to compile them. You know it, I know it, they know it, they stole our money. And now the courts know it. Thanks to the hard work of plaintiffs' attorney Richard I. Fine and scores of persons and OHV organizations, the courts have finally found the State of California guilty of stealing millions of our dollars from the OHV fund. On March 18th a Los Angeles Circuit Court Judge ordered the state to repay $21.5 million "loans" that were taken from the fund for Off-Highway Vehicle Programs over the last 15 years. In the years since the "loans" started a lack of funds has stalled efforts to build an off-highway vehicle park in San Bernardino County and reduced or delayed state grants for similar projects throughout the state, including the Imperial Sand Dunes. Superior Court Judge David Workman also found in the Wednesday ruling that the state finance department had never entered the "loans" on it's books. He ordered the department to register the loans as a debt and the parks department to enter them as an asset until the $21.5 million is repaid. The lack of bookkeeping suggests the state stole the money and had no intention of ever making repayments to the Green Sticker Fund, now or in the future. As we sit back in our chairs in relief that justice has been done, let us not forget that this is not over. The state hasn't repaid a dime and they most certainly will appeal. Once again I call you to arms my fellow Desert Rats. Now is the time to keep a vigilant eye on your representative. Call them, send them letters, e-mails, postcards, even better, drive to Sacramento and get in their faces. We have won an enormous battle, let's keep the momentum going. Get off your butt and get political. If you're not part of the solution... you're part of the problem!
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