LAND SALES COULD RAISE CASH LEGISLATION AIMED AT SOFTENING BUDGET BLOWS.

Byline: Steve Geissinger Sacramento Bureau

Lawmakers are embracing cost-saving bills as never before, and in a reversal are even advancing legislation - snubbed last year - to sell hundreds of millions of dollars in surplus state land from the Bay Area to Southern California to Tahiti.

Spurred by Alameda Newspaper Group reports as the state began facing a multibillion-dollar shortfall in 2002, the measures are aimed in particular at what the authors call ``questionable properties'' ranging from an Oakland Hills golf course, the Cow Palace, and a San Rafael strip mall to the land under the Los Angeles Coliseum and a parcel in Tahiti.

All told, the state has a property inventory equaling the size of Los Angeles County. Supporters of selling off unneeded parcels say they could be worth hundreds of millions in current proceeds and ongoing savings.

Two Republican state senators, who introduced a package of 10 bills in the Legislature, say they have the backing of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Most of the measures are advancing, with the help of majority Democrats, from the Bay Area to Southern California, who fear harsh spending cuts and resulting backlashes. More hearings on the measures are scheduled this week, along with Schwarzenegger's introduction of a revised budget proposal that's expected to deepen cuts in key government services.

With the GOP governor and his party colleagues in the Legislature standing firm so far against tax hikes to blunt spending cuts, lawmakers of both parties are looking for alternatives such as ending ``fraud, waste and abuse throughout state government.''

With surplus property, ``California does not even know what it owns,'' said Sen. Jeff Denham, R-Modesto. ``There is no centralized list of state- owned property.''

The complex bills, which Denham jointly authored with state Sen. Jim Battin, R-Palm Desert, are aimed at improving the state bureaucracy's ability to track and account for its unneeded properties, then sell them off.

According to little-noticed government and private studies over the past decade, bureaucratic obstacles and an absence of incentives have frustrated surplus land disposal efforts.

The state owns 2,000 individual properties that total more than 2.5 million acres. It also possesses more than 19,100 buildings with more than 180 million square feet of space - the equivalent of 18 New York World Trade Centers.

``The parcels reflect the diversity of the Golden State - windy hillsides populated by oaks and acorn woodpeckers, rocky cliffs pounded by the Pacific surf, rectangles of downtown San Francisco and Los Angeles valued by the square foot, sprawling suburban university campuses and patchworked farm fields,'' says a Little Hoover Commission report.

The independent government efficiency panel and state auditor, in a similar study, have said that some of the property was underused or unneeded altogether. After ANG stories began in December 2002, Battin introduced a bill in 2003 that stalled in the Legislature.

But Battin and Denham - whose staff contacted ANG Newspapers as their aides researched a new round of legislation for this year - are zeroing in on particular examples that they said prove their points:

--The Montclair Golf Course in the Oakland Hills, which the city of Oakland leases from the state for $840 a year, contains a relatively modest moneymaker of a course but is surrounded by multimillion-dollar homes. It was originally purchased by the state nearly 50 years ago for highway work that never occurred.

--The Cow Palace in San Francisco, originally built as a livestock pavilion during the Great Depression, is now a poplar location for public events and is worth about $86 million. The state agency that owns and operates it says it breaks even and doesn't require state subsidies.

--The Los Angeles Coliseum, owned and operated by local government, is located on valuable state land.

--A San Rafael strip mall sits on high-value land originally purchased for a road project. The mall includes a massage parlor as a tenant.

--A piece of property in Tahiti was donated to the University of California and is used by the Berkeley campus as a research site.

Some state officials defend the retention of such land. And Denham and Battin acknowledge that these particular facilities might not be sold. But they insist the parcels are examples of why their legislation is needed.

Steve Geissinger

sgeissinger(at)angnewspapers.com