State's most conservative county uses much cash

Rhonda McGarva has come home to Likely, CA. to help out on the ranch. Modoc County in the far northeastern corner of California is an interesting mix of Republican ranchers and progressive newcomers who seem to share a distrust of government and have an independent spirit. less Rhonda McGarva has come home to Likely, CA. to help out on the ranch. Modoc County in the far northeastern corner of California is an interesting mix of Republican ranchers and progressive newcomers who seem to ... more Photo: Brant Ward, The Chronicle Photo: Brant Ward, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 15 Caption Close State's most conservative county uses much cash 1 / 15 Back to Gallery

Sprawling across the northeastern corner of California, this huge, thickly forested county with more cows than people epitomizes the Western frontier - and what seems to be a two-faced political ideology.

Modoc has the highest Republican registration of any county in California, it unfailingly elects anti-tax Republicans to office, and the vote here against last month's ballot measure that would have raised a variety of taxes was one of the most lopsided in the state. And yet, per capita, Modoc County gets more state taxpayer dollars than all but one of California's 58 counties.

The prevailing attitude among the right-wing ranchers and modern hippies who define Modoc County is of fierce self-reliance - but more people here than just about anywhere else depend on welfare checks of some kind to get by.

So with state Republicans blocking new taxes and insisting on deep cuts in taxpayer-funded services, does that make this most solid of GOP bases politically conflicted? Or, worse, just plain ignorant?

No way, say the cattlemen and the hippies. Most folks up here will tell you that no matter who is in office or what the big-city politicians do, the dearest wish of anyone living in Modoc is to be left alone - except for a little help for core needs like hospitals and schools.

And if you cut off our funding even for that, they say, we won't like it - but we'll get by. We're independent.

It's a frontier thing.

Split but not split

Ken McGarva and Tina Hodge will both tell you with equal ardor that government should stay out of their faces. But you wouldn't know they could agree by looking at them.

McGarva is a cowboy. The real kind, one who ropes and brands his cattle in the dot-in-the-road town of Likely. At 70, he loathes liberal politics.

Hodge is a back-to-the-land hippie. The real kind, one who raised her kids in a tepee on a remote mountaintop near tiny Eagleville and now lives off the grid in a hobbit-style house on that same mountaintop. At 57, she loathes conservative politics.

However, both McGarva and Hodge maintain that state legislators shouldn't even think of cutting health and education funding to rural counties like Modoc, where 9,184 residents knock around a territory the size of Connecticut.

Instead, they say, swing the budget ax on bloated-big-government-style frills - for instance, state-paid cars for legislators and misguided environmental regulations, though they don't always agree on which ones are misguided.

'We'll just get by'

The fact that health and education spending make up about 70 percent of California's general fund, leaving little else to cut, only emphasizes the importance of that funding, they say.

And if the Capitol does indeed slash Modoc County's money for road maintenance, health services and welfare job training - which will happen, if Sacramento's Republicans get their way - McGarva and Hodge have the same plan.

"Well, we'll just get by the way we did in the Great Depression - on our own," McGarva said, swatting mosquitoes on his porch after another hard day of herding dogies on his 1,000-head ranch. "We'll grow a vegetable garden, we'll use milk cows." If the roads are closed, he said, they always have horses.

"We have pretty much all we need here on the mountain, and if we had to we could grow more of our own food," said Hodge, standing in her front yard, which is 6,100 feet above sea level and a jarring, 4-mile rumble up a dirt road. If the roads are closed, she said, she can always pack into town using her herd of llamas.

The politicians 200 miles south in Sacramento say they admire that frontier spirit, and both sides say they know what is best for Modoc County. But that's about where they stop sounding alike.

Politicians can't agree

Democrats say the solution to the state's $24.3 billion deficit involves more revenue sources. Republicans say it requires only expenditure chopping. Both sides have dug in their heels.

Assemblywoman Noreen Evans, D-Santa Rosa, chairwoman of a legislative budget conference committee, ordered up a report last winter ranking which of the state's counties send the most tax money per capita to the Capitol, and which ones consume the most in health and other services. It showed that conservative counties - like Modoc, with 49.9 percent Republican registration, the state's highest - generally consumed the most, and liberal counties sent in the most.

Marin County was No. 1 in contributions, at $4,793 per person, and San Francisco was No. 3 at $3,578. Modoc was No. 2 in consumption at $2,216 per person, and conservative Tulare was No. 1, with $2,223.

"I don't think voters in the conservative counties understand the connection between the service they are receiving and the votes their representatives are making," Evans said. "Maybe the layers of government are so convoluted that many people don't realize how it works."

In Modoc, the way it works is that if the cuts being proposed go through, near-catastrophe will reign, said County Administrative Officer Mark Charlton.

He said the entire road maintenance service would be closed except for snowplowing on a few main roads, the welfare-to-work CalWORKS program would be cut in half, many mental health patients would no longer be monitored and would relapse and wind up behind bars, and there would be fewer police patrols.

"You'll be able to translate these cuts into more accidents on the road, more people in jail, more people getting sick," Charlton said.

Assemblyman Jim Nielsen, R-Gerber (Tehama County), vice chairman of the Assembly budget committee, represents Modoc County. He said cutting social services is not what he has in mind when he talks about deficit reduction - it's chopping other things, such as regulatory oversight committees and government employees.

He said health and road services cost more per capita in rural places like Modoc because they're remote and expensive to reach. So don't blame the sticks for consuming more funding per person, he said.

"There's no way you're going to have a booming county up there, so every penny we send counts," Nielsen said. "The funding there wouldn't buy (much) in San Francisco, but it goes a long way in Modoc."

Barbara March, 62, who moved up from Carmel Valley six years ago to publish the Modoc Independent News with husband Ray, 74, said the only people who move so far into the trees are by definition stubborn, frontier types. So it makes sense they would share some values. If you're looking for multiplexes and Starbucks, you don't come.

A self-selecting population

"Hippies and buckaroos and everything in between - they all have a tolerance and generosity of spirit up here," March said. "But you can't tell them what to do."

In the cities, talk of chopping government services brings defiant cries of protest. In Modoc, cowboy McGarva, whose family has ranched here since 1918, said his solution to the budget crunch is to shoo government as far away as possible. Fund good education and rural health services, he said - but don't raise taxes.

"Get rid of all this environment crap first, saving the three-legged frog and whatnot, and protecting the mountain lion so much it ruins the hunting up here," he said. "Cut down on useless things like all those departments they have. Then they'll make some progress."

Back-to-the-lander Hodge and her husband, Bill, 63, moved to their mountaintop in 1981 to raise two daughters, as well as llamas for wool and breeding. In 1995, she started Eagle Peak Herbals, which ships herbal remedies and potions all over the world. In their way, the Hodges are every bit the self-starting business people that the ranchers are.

"I think we should raise money when it's needed ... but no, government does not work as well as it should, and there are quite a few things we don't need," Hodge said. "We don't need the corporate subsidies we give, and we don't need more dams on the rivers up here."

Her suggestions don't exactly match McGarva's. But then, they and their families said, in a place like Modoc, they don't have to be a perfect fit.

"Around here there are a lot of people with great hearts, and if you work hard, you can do fine," said Bill Hodge. "We all have a real sense of community."

"We're the kind of people this country was founded on, still strong enough to stand up for our ideals," said McGarva's daughter, Rhonda, 44, who can drive cattle with the best of them. "When you're talking about self-reliance, you're talking about us.

"No matter what they do in Sacramento."