Redevelopment corruption in NJ, but CA Gov. Brown "snuffed out redevelopment agencies in 2011."

[factsarenotfair]

This is a fascinating story, told in two articles well worth reading in their entirety:

California Redevelopment Agencies' Demise
by Tibby Rothman and Jill Stewart Thursday, Jun 30 2011

Until this week, Los Angeles' leaders had been on a mission that, due to attendant PR problems, unfolded behind closed doors: preventing California Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature from moving billions of dollars in taxpayer money out of the hands of developers and into state coffers to balance the budget and help schools.
...
As L.A. Weekly reported on Jan. 27 ("Jerry Brown Redevelopment Alert: Wealthy Eli Broad Gets $52 Million for a Garage; the Entirety of South L.A. Gets $32 Million&quot , a CRA list of projects earmarked $52 million for a parking lot next to a museum that billionaire Broad is erecting for his private art collection near Frank Gehry's Disney Hall in downtown's Civic Center — an area without blight.
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The chief of the nonpartisan state Legislative Analyst's Office, Mac Taylor, has found there's "no reliable evidence that redevelopment agencies improve overall economic development in California."
...
"How much is Glendale going to give [developer Rick] Caruso?" Sutton asks. "How much are we going to give [AEG owner Philip] Anschutz? Fifty-two mil to Eli Broad could have paid for 1,000 teachers. We subsidize billionaires instead of schoolchildren."

http://www.laweekly.com/2011-06-30/news/california-redevelopment-agencies-demise/


California redevelopment agencies, the sequel
Editorial
Gov. Brown was right to kill the CRA system. But something like them is still needed.
September 22, 2013|By The Times editorial board

The genius of the state's late and not-very-much-lamented community redevelopment agencies was that they built projects that raised property values and then kept for themselves the higher tax receipts that resulted. Normally, taxes are divvied up among the city, the county, the school districts and the state, but in a California-style CRA project area, any tax receipts beyond what the parcel already had been generating would stay with the agency to pay off bonds and invest in new projects.
...
There followed, over the years, a series of budget bills and ballot measures that constantly rejiggered the shares of property tax money that went to municipalities, schools and the state, and with each step the incentive grew for cities (and sometimes counties) and their supposedly independent redevelopment agencies to declare more areas blighted, to build more commercial projects and to require the bare minimum of affordable housing. CRAs pumped public money into private development plans to build car dealerships, entertainment complexes and other projects that demonstrated little public value beyond the increased property tax revenues — which didn't even help pay for schools or police but stayed with the agencies for the next project and the one after that.
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But the primary reason Gov. Jerry Brown snuffed out redevelopment agencies in 2011 was a continuing diversion of Sacramento's share of property tax dollars. The state had for years directly backfilled the budgets of schools and other agencies that had their property tax receipts capped under Proposition 13 and diverted under redevelopment, and then ordered cities, counties, schools and special districts to backfill one another in a government version of three-card monte. But by the time Brown returned to the governor's office, the state was itself so broke that it finally needed its own share of the redevelopment property tax "increment" back.
...
Lawmakers proposed replacements last year, but it was too early to start over. This year, it should have been a different story. SB 1 by Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), which would have created Sustainable Community Investment Authorities to succeed the CRAs, almost made it to Brown's desk — almost. At the last minute, Steinberg held the bill back for fear of a veto, but he should put it near the top of his agenda when the Legislature reconvenes in January. And Brown should sign it.
...
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/sep/22/opinion/la-ed-redevelopment-20130922

Kudos to the CA Legislature and Gov. Brown! I think they're going to get it right.

[El_Johns]

1. I wasn't so enthusiastic about brown, but good for him on this. This is the same scam a lot

of cities are running, holding back some tax money in special funds, supposedly to help poor neighborhoods, but which actually get channeled to the connected -- while they cut city services and plead "we're broke!".

Notably Chicago & its TIF funds.