So much money, they don’t know how to spend it

Press, 16 January 1986, Page 17

So much money, they don’t know how to spend it

From

JOHN HUTCHISON

in San Francisco.

Mrs Beryl Buck, who died in 1975, left a trust worth about S2O million to be used in her home county for the public good. Like the rice in the fairy tale, that boiled over until it chased the cook from the kitchen, the money is overflowing the pot Mrs Buck had in mind for it and is inundating its keepers. Mrs Buck, whose wealth came from oil properties, would doubtless be surprised today if she could know that the S2O million has become almost SBOO million and is growing at the current rate of about S6O million annually. It might also occur to her, if she gould have second thoughts, that could have chosiijd more needy recipients for her largesse. Her county, Marin, is small, by Califor-

nia standards. It has about 240,000 inhabitants, distributed in a dozen towns and environs across a mountainous and sea-girt landscape of great beauty and breathtaking real estate prices. Its affluenceaittracts a degree of national attention which sometimes approaches notoriety. Marin has become the California stereotype

to much of America, envied for its climate and comforts and ridiculed for its hedonism and extravagance. The beneficiaries of the Buck Trust have the behest per capita income in California, which itself by that measurement ranks second

in the United States only to Alaska.

Marin is called the sixth richest county in the nation. It doea have some social problems, to t# sure, and among them these days is how to spend Mrs Buck’s money. It is

growing faster than the county can spend it. A reputable, 40-year-old foundation in neighbouring San Francisco supervises the fund and distributes money from it in accordance with the clear instructions of Mrs Buck’s will that it must be spent* only in Marin. Twenty-eight organisations in seven other counties,

including San Francisco, and the foundation itself, are trying to break the will. A will is a will, says the Marin County Government, and it is an outrage to suggest such a betrayal of Mrs Buck. The county has won the official support of the California attorney general, legal watchdog over charitable trusts. He has come into court with an action to counter the San Franciscans and their allies, and he has warned them not to pay their lawyers from Buck Trust funds.

No such inhibition appears to have been placed on Marin County, which should be able to pay its attorneys’ fees. The fund keeps earning interest at a reputed rate of about $160,000 a day. Every little bit helps.