The squabble for Mrs Buck’s bucks

Press, 12 February 1982, Page 13

The squabble for Mrs Buck’s bucks

By

WILLIAM SCOBIE

Few people ir. trendy Marin County, a famous pocket of lily-white suburban affluence across the Gold Gate Bridge from San Francisco, fall within Ronald Reagan’s category of the "truly needy.” Home prices in its green ' hills average around $200,000. It is a land of hot tubs, houseboats, yachts, Porsches, divorce, cocaine, and “laidback life-styles," where grass ($3OO an ounce) is something you grow in the basement under ultra-violet light. Nevertheless. Marin has a money problem. Because of a bequest from a wealthy widow. Beryl H. Buck, scion of an old Marin family, the county is obliged to shower, this year and every year in the foreseeable future. $25 million on its charitable organisations and their clients. Mrs Buck's will left $3OO million "for the care of the needy" in Marin, and Marin alone — "the county I love.” She had no heirs. Nor had she any idea, when drawing up the will shortly before her death in 1975, that her nestegg of 69,156 shares of Belridge Oil Co. stock, valued at $7 million, was about to swell to 40 times its size. Shell Oil snapped up little Beindge. and the modest bequest grew into a $3OO million bonanza, rising from 99th place in assets among United States foundations to 11th. (The $25 million is interest on investments.)

Soon a bitter feud was under way over Mrs Buck's bucks. Charities in San Francisco. Oakland, and nearby counties where real poverty abounds, claimed a share.

This month, after lengthy legal arguments. 28 bay area organisations, backed by 13 private residents of Marin, won the right in San Francisco Superior Court to push ahead with suits to break the Buck trust's Marin-only proviso.

They joined with Marin County's ruling Board of Supervisors — badly hit by Reagan tax cuts — in challenging the will and seeking a bigger slice of the pie. The board claims local government is due more than $lB million but has been given less than $2 million.

California's attorney general, Robert Gnaidza, is personally refereeing the case. “It's foolish, it’s embarrassing,” says Gnaidza, representing both groups. “It's a perverse, uncharitable way of handing out the money. Mrs Buck didn't foresee this."

The 13 residents Gnaizda represents speak for many, he adds, in arguing that the influx of wealth will eventually hurt Marin, damaging property and social values, turning the county — as a

local pastor put it — "into a home for the lazy.” Fewer than 5 per cent of Marin's 223.000 residents receive any form of public aid. Often.’ officials admit, these are members of the county's large artistic community “lifestylers" paid in cash for their wares, claiming welfare because they have no traceable, taxable income.

The disastrous California floods this month, which left 23 dead and $lOO million in property damage, exacerbated local feelings. Marin Countv will benefit from the Buck 'funds while neighbours battle tight-fisted state and federal sources for relief.

Critics like Gnaizda point to a string of "frivolous" projects already handed Buck funds. Among them; • A "Bio-Dynamic/French Intensive Garden School” which grows more vegetables in less space: $6OOO • "Re-creation of a sixteenth century Italian wedding" at a Dominican college: $5OOO 9 "Dramatic dialogue depicting the historv of women in the United States” by a local theatre group: $5OOO • An organisation working to "reduce stress among the children of divorcees": $403.9b4

• The local bird observatory: $114,600 “This is for the birds,” Gnaizda says. "There are hungry people out there.”

The San Francisco Foundation, a body which handles scores of trusts similar to Mrs Buck’s, “simply doesn’t know what to do with the money.” according to its critics. “Last year they spent $6.8 million — that’s a third of what the Rockefeller Foundation spent throughout the world in 1981 — buying land in Marin. They've got no use for it. They say it's an investment. It's a lousy one. There wasn't one other bidder for that land.”

One court challenge to the San Francisco Foundation in coming weeks will be that it invests its millions injudiciously. The S.F.F. is earning a modest 8 per cent on its $3OO million. Gnaizda says that could be doubled easily in today's market. Martin Paley, director of the S.F.F.. responds that he is simply carrying out the widow’s wishes according to the law. He points to grants made to worthy bodies such as the Marin Symphony, the Y.M.C.A., scholarship programmes, and conservation groups. "There is a wide range of legitimate projects. We see no responsible basis for challenging the will, still less to replace lost tax dollars," Paley says. Copyright — London Observer Service.