The Sacramento Bee reports that newly elected Governor Jerry Brown, dubbed “Governor Moonbeam” by Chicago’s late, lamented columnist Mike Royko, has announced that as part of his drastic reform of California’s insane finances, he means to eliminate local redevelopment agencies. We can’t wait.
Here is the whole Sacramento Bee story:
http://www.sacbee.com/2011/01/03/3295079/brown-to-propose-broad-list-of.html#
Follow up. Here is an additional article on this subject from the Sacramento Bee.
Second Follow up: Predictably, the reaction of California redevelopment agencies to this bit of news has had all the subtlety of an empty trash can falling down a long flight of concrete stairs. They are committing as much money as they can, as quickly as they can to keep the state from getting its hands on it. But it appears that some of the redevelopment projects to which these funds are being committed by cities, are something less than paragons of planning. The L.A. Times characterizes this effort as “an attempted end-run around Brown’s proposal to scrap redevelopment and allow school districts, counties and the state to take the billions in property tax dollars the agencies now correct to improve blighted areas.”
Third Follow up. The saga continues. Today’s Los Angeles Times editorial takes up this topic, and its title says it all. Facing the Budget Music: Gov. Brown’s Proposal to Eliminate Redevelopment Agencies Is Controversial, But It’s Worth Considering, January 20, 2011. We will have a separate post on that one shortly. So stay tuned. For the tesxt of that editorial go to