The Wicked Witch of Community Redevelopment Agencies is dead.
exercise of the legislative power vested in the Legislature by the state
Constitution,” the court ruled. “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Legislature’s fiscal powers, neither explicitly nor implicitly rescinded the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.”
But the companion measure AB27x, sought by redevelopment officials, as a way to stay in business by partially restoring them if they surrendered some of their funding to the state was found to be unconstitutional. It violates the recently passed Proposition 22 that barred the Legislature from continuing its practice of borrowing or even confiscating funds allocated to cities, counties and other local government agencies.
Ironically, it was the CRA lobby that wanted Prop. 22 so badly to end the legislature’s practice of taking some of their money whenever there was a deficit, which has been nearly every year for a long time.
“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,” the court ruled. ”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.”
Desperate to whittle down the $25 billion deficit he faced, the governor argued that CRAs had overall done a poor job of removing blight — the legal justification for creating them in the first place — because so much of the money was used to subsidize skyscrapers and luxury condos and apartments and so little to revive poor neighborhoods or even to build affordable housing.
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.
Ron, once again, you hit the nail on the head and gave us another factual side to this issue (unlike much of the reporting that has been leaning in favor of those who benefit financially from Redevelopment).
You are also right to sound the bell – The financial forces who have a stake in Redevelopment are those on Wall Street and 1st Street (legal and financial firms) who benefit from Subsidies will pressure the State legislature to resurrect under a different name.
And by the way, the fruits of this decision will really be felt in about 10 years because of all the borrowing that Redevelopment allowed without voter approval.
The big guys with long arms that reached so deeply into the deep pockets of the CRA must all be having coronaries about now.
Corruption in LA went down a notch.
To those of you who think Redevelopment will come back – You’re right that they will try, but the bottom line on everything in America is money.
Money is the reason Redevelopment was shut down. So where is the money to fund a new Redevelopment entity?
The legal team that represented the Redevelopment lobby originally argued against both 26 and 27. Then the attorney for the Redevelopment side flipped and was ok with 27 staying. This was a fatal flaw and all the public funds that were spent on trying to save Redevelopment was wasted.
The Citizens of the City should now demand a set time frame, say three months, and then all of the employees are let go. I do not believe they are “City Employees” and therefore are not transferrable to other departments. And if they were to be transferred they would receive NO cut in pay, benefits, etc. I do not want to have to pay the Chris Essels of the planet $250,000 per year for the next decade or so.
I believe that the City of LA will absorb the CRA/LA employees who are currently with CalPERS (State pension).
Ron can verify this.
Quote for LA Times blog:
Thursday’s court ruling was hailed by Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who had argued repeatedly that redevelopment agencies have been starving cities and counties of cash needed to deliver basic services by siphoning away much-needed property tax revenue. He said redevelopment started out as a sound idea but eventually fell prey to abuse.
“Unfortunately, over the years it evolved into a honey pot that was tapped to underwrite billions of dollars’ worth of commercial and other for-profit projects that had nothing to do with reversing blight, but everything to do with subsidizing private real estate ventures that otherwise made no economic sense,” he said.
The Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los Angeles is a legally separate entity. Eric Garcetti and Jan Perry better not be thinking about automatically transferring the CRA employees over the City. We need to organize the public and Occupy LA to march in the streets in front of the CRA to stop any golden parachute for Chris Essel on down.
Now that the CRA is dead, let us focus our attention on the need to break up the City of Los Angeles into about six or seven smaller cities. It is time to start the public discussion of how to it because the monster still is alive at 200 N. Spring Street.
God, did anyone read the LA Times comments of Madeline Janis, CRA Commissioner and Villaraigosa Ass-Kisser-in-Chief? During her entire tenure with the CRA, she and the other losers on the CRA Board handed millions and millions of dollars to the wealthy real estate developers.
Occupy LA should call for a march on the construction site of Eli Broad’s art museum that Madeline subsidized to the tune of $50 million. How many police and fire department personnel would that pay for Madeline?
Bye-Bye Madeline. Your “public service” to the rich and wealthy is now over. Go jump off the empty W Hotel condos that you subsidized with millions that could have gone to our school children.
IMAGINE—I GAVE A 15 MINUTE SPEECH BEFORE THE CRA BACK A FEW MONTHS AGO AND TOLD THEM THEY WERE A BUNCH OF CRIMINALS TRYING TO HIDE $910,000,000? Why? Because I stated that they could not transfer the whole thing to L.A. City without first WAITING for the Governor to act and the Courts and Legislature to do whatever they were doing!!! A HUGE THANK YOU TO JOHN WALSH, WHO GOES TO EVERY HEARING HE CAN AND KEPT RAISING THE HELL OUT OF THE CRA AND THEIR DEALINGS FOR YEARS AND YEARS! Now naturally the crooked crooks at Spring St with the help of the turncoat City Attorney Carmen “gaga” DUMBTANICH WILL SURELY DO WHAT THEY MUST TO KEEP THE CAMPAIGN DONORS AT WORK BUILDING OVERPRICED GARBAGE AND BULLSHIT PARKING GARAGES WE DON’T USE. But all the Crooks statewide just took 10 steps BACKWARDS in their theft of our property tax bucks. DAMN NICE HOLIDAY PRESENT!
CRA employees are non-civil service that resulted in corruption and nepotism to the max. They got jobs through the back door and were overpaid so they could participate in the rip-of off the taxpayer and communities. Fire them all. We don’t want to see them hired by that other corrupt, rip-off, and under scrutinized agency, MTA. Check out the number of jobs and pay scales at MTA where little money is spent on building rail lines with bulk of it funding useless and unnecessary jobs.
Don’t ever vote for measures to fund the MTA or LAUSD.
CRA employees are non-civil service that resulted in corruption and nepotism to the max. They got jobs through the back door and were overpaid so they could participate in the rip-of off the taxpayer and communities. Fire them all. We don’t want to see them hired by that other corrupt, rip-off, and under scrutinized agency, MTA. Check out the number of jobs and pay scales at MTA where little money is spent on building rail lines with bulk of it funding useless and unnecessary jobs.
Don’t ever vote for measures to fund the MTA or LAUSD.
How many of the CRA employees will be laid off, I mean, trasferred to DWP?
The evil monster is dead. No, I am not talking about the avaricious Eli Broad. I am talking about the CRA/LA.
But, like a true Hollywood horror story, the mad scientists such as The Garcettoid, the parasitoid who feeds on the life blood of Hollywood, are busy pushing their crooks and thieves in Sacramento to pass legislation to Super Size a new CRA/LA.
Remember it was The Garcettoid who backed AB 2531 which would have brought the CRA to every single parcel of land in LA and with the CRA comes its Kelo Eminent Domain. That’s The Garcetoid’s vision for Los Angeles — every single piece of property may be confiscated and given to one of his cronies.
If you want to see how tightly these leaches have attached themselves to our tax dollars, just look at the paragon of Greed, billionaire Eli Broad. He could not bear to give up just 1/10 of his $52 M so kids in Hollywood could have a park. For over a year this creepizoid has been getting horrible press about his avarice, yet he clings to the $52 M plus all the other goodies Garcetti and the CRA have given him.
These parasitoids (parasites that kill the host) will not let go of our tax dollars. Right now they are plotting their return with a monster-size CRA.
Of course everyone noticed the headlines in the LA Times and Yellow Sheet about the ruling indicating that the “city” is the loser because all of those wonderful redevelopment projects will get stopped – just imagine – no more parking structures for art museums (how will we survive without more of those?), no more Staples Center/Nokia projects (that bring all those low-paying jobs to LA?), no more hotels being built (to buy off the union vote), no more free rent gifts, etc. – perhaps there will be some money to raze the rat-infested apartment structures around MacArthur Park, perhaps a few dollars to rebuild earthquake-unsafe bridges, maybe a dollar or two to upgrade some hospitals, perhaps a few more beds around the missions for the homeless – of course these kinds of uses for our taxpayer funds don’t generate advertising revenue for the Times (Is Donald Sterling the real mayor of this city?) Oh and by the way, whatever happened to the homeless center that Sterling said he would build 5 years ago – but I digress………
Please tell me that the CRA is really dead this time, and that that tool Chris Essel is really out of a job.
Hearing the good news, I celebrated over the long weekend and just returned home. Thanks John Walsh, and Wayne of Encino, for your commitment to our City! And, thanks former mayoral candidate Walter Moore, for declaring to abolish the CRA in your past platform. Now, let us hope City Hall will continue to follow your platform by abolishing the City’s business tax!
I will vote for no incumbent. Not one!