Here’s the link to the California Supreme Court ruling on Community Redevelopment Agency legislation and the key paragraphs with the substance of the ruling just released:
“Assembly Bill 1X 26, the dissolution measure, is a proper exercise of the
legislative power vested in the Legislature by the state Constitution. That power
includes the authority to create entities, such as redevelopment agencies, to carry
out the state’s ends and the corollary power to dissolve those same entities when
the Legislature deems it necessary and proper. Proposition 22, while it amended
the state Constitution to impose new limits on the Legislature’s fiscal powers,
neither explicitly nor implicitly rescinded the Legislature’s power to dissolve
redevelopment agencies. Nor does article XVI, section 16 of the state
Constitution, which authorizes the allocation of property tax revenues to
redevelopment agencies, impair that power.”
“A different conclusion is required with respect to Assembly Bill 1X 27, the
measure conditioning further redevelopment agency operations on additional
payments by an agency’s community sponsors to state funds benefiting schools
and special districts. Proposition 22 (specifically Cal. Const., art. XIII, § 25.5,
subd. (a)(7)) expressly forbids the Legislature from requiring such payments.
Matosantos’s argument that the payments are valid because technically voluntary
cannot be reconciled with the fact that the payments are a requirement of
continued operation. Because the flawed provisions of Assembly Bill 1X 27 are
not severable from other parts of that measure, the measure is invalid in its
entirety.”
As Vinnie Barbarino used to say, “Up yours with a rubber hose” Garcetti, Wesson, and all you other thieves stealing the tax dollars to give to your developer cronies!!!!
This isn’t about partisan politics, its about straight talk and doing what’s right.
State Controller John Chiang and Treasurer Bill Lockyer got it right just based on the numbers – These are editorialized opinions these are inarguable facts.
By siphoning off property taxes to subsidize private projects, Redevelopment spending in 2011 did not proportionally account for an increase in property valuation and economic activity that would offset the loss.
In fact Redevelopment was mostly about Corporate welfare and trickle-down economics that did not work.
And that is something that could have been used by Occupy LA – Instead of cuddling up to Rosendahl and Garcetti, they should have condemned them for taking from the “99%” and giving to the “1%” while stealing from schools and local services.