First, let’s review the bidding. A while back, California’s new governor, Jerry Brown, has announced that he wants to abolish redevelopment agencies in California so that the circa $1.7 billion in public money diverted by them from municipal taxing agencies can be used for public purposes instead of funding redevelopers’ private businesses, and being diverted to repayment of redevelopment agency tax-free bonds. This, says the guv, is necessary to help balance California’s state budget and keep the ongoing deficit from eating up what is left of the once Golden State. With that deficit hovering someplace around $20 billion this year, this is serious stuff, given that California has the highest unemployment rate in the nation and new businesses aren’t exactly marching from thither to hither to enjoy California’s business climate which is rated as the worst in the nation.
But guess what? It turned out that when push came to shove in the California legislature, it was — surprize! — the Republicans, not the Democrats, who voted to oppose Brown’s proposal and thus kept redevelopment agencies in business as usual in spite of the fiscal calamity descending on California. How come?
Conventional wisdom of politics has it that it is the Democrats, the left-liberal party, that disfavors private property rights and wants to see wealth redistributed from the fat cats to “the peepul.” In theory, you can count on the Democrats favoring erosion of private property rights and cheering on government use of eminent domain for redevelopment. It appears at times that these folks get their jollies from the contemplation of a process whereby “the peepul” get to confiscate the ill-gotten gains of the rich. So you might think that the Democrats would stand up in defense of the “little people,” the lower middle-class and poor folks who are the usual victims of redevelopment, and keep them from being evicted and undercompensated in order to make lebensraum for the likes of car manufacturers like General Motors, Chrysler and Nissan, as well as major merchandisers like Costco, Target and Best Buy, etc. But that is not what is happening. See 4 Albany Gov’t. L. Rev. at 64-65, fn. 109, for a lengthy list of fat cats with their snouts in the public trough, supping lavishly on public funds diverted from the public treasury to feather their already cushy nests.
The Republicans, on the other hand, are supposed to be the guardians of private property rights resisting the leftist notions of confiscation and wealth redistribution as favored government policies.
But as it turns out in this case, neither of these conventional-wisdom scenarios is unfolding in California. On the contrary, the Democrats favor Brown’s proposal to abolish redevelopment, while the legislative Republicans, in a rare display of near-unanimity, are fighting tooth and nail to keep the redevelopment process going and redevelopment agencies alive. That entitles one to ask: what the hell is going on here?
We don’t have a clear answer to that one, but today’s Los Angeles Times sheds an oblique light on the process. See Shane Goldmacher, Wife’s Consulting May Pose Conflict for State Senator, L.A. Times, May 10, 2011, at p. AA1, http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-redevelopment-huff-20110510,0,3897790.story What this story tells us is that the leader of the Republican block that is doing its utmost to preserve redevelopment in California, happens to be married to a lady who, as the Times puts it, “is a paid consultant for a large developer eager to keep the [redevelopment] program intact.” For this her business, says the Times, has collected a cool $100,000, and in a praiseworthy display of gratitude, her company and its executives have given some $30,000+ to her husband’s campaign.
Conflict of iterest you say? Nah, says a company spokesman — “even though there’s the perception of conflict, he does what’s right.” So says the Times.
So there you have it folks. We were thinking of saying something snide but that quote is well-nigh impossible to top. At least for us.
But on the political-ideological side of things we do have a thought: With conservative Republicans like that, who needs radical Democrats?