“I am returning Assembly Bill 2531 without my signature.
“Redevelopment funds are to be used solely for the purpose of eliminating blight in urban neighborhoods in California cities. This bill would authorize the use of redevelopment funds for projects that are not necessarily blighted as well as for projects outside the redevelopment area, and as such would violate the primary purpose of redevelopment law.
“For these reasons I cannot sign this bill.
“Sincerely,
“Arnold Schwarzenegger”
Thus did Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger veto a sneaky bill that would have allowed California redevelopment agencies to take unblighted property outside the boundaries of redevelopment projects.
If you want to see how California redevelopment agencies mess up while wasting or misappropriating fortunes in taxpayer funds, see today’s Los Angeles Times, front-page story by Kim Christensen and Jessica Garrison, Arrested Redevelopment: Lots of Cash and Little Scrutiny, L.A. Times, Oct. 1, 2010, p. A1. Don’t miss a word of it. Note particularly the Times’ description of the Santa Barbara Plaza redevelopment project in LA’s Crenshaw district that has been the subject of government solicitude and funding since 1984, and that today, is described by the L.A. Times, as follows.
“The plaza was sliding into decay three decades ago. Today it is a sprawl of mostly boarded-up businesses and chain-link fencing surroundinga huge wasteland of a parking lot.”
There is evidently “lots of cash” for that sort of stuff, but as the California Supreme Court once put it, we plumb can’t afford to pay condemnees for all demonstrable economic losses actually inflicted on them when their land is taken by eminent domain because if we did, an “embargo” on public projects would have to be declared.
And so it goes.
For the entire Los Angeles Times article go to http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-redevelopment-20101002,0,4355503,print.story