Despite Jerry Brown’s troubling push for higher taxes, the governor vetoed all six bills that were designed to resurrect, in one way or another, the redevelopment process he killed last year.
Steve Greenhut in the NCTimes wrote, “Redevelopment is a land-use and tax scheme that blends Eastern European-style central planning with American-style crony capitalism.” I could not agree more.
Good news for taxpayers and property owners… The Governor has vetoed all six of the bills passed attempting to resurrect Redevelopment.
GREENHUT: Brown stands firm against corporate-welfare scam
Brown Vetoes the resurrection of redevelopment,SACRAMENTO —- In much of the country, the mere mention of the name Jerry Brown signifies the otherworldly nature of California politics.
Many people in other states have come up to me and said something to this effect: “You Californians are so weird that, in tough economic times, you re-elected that retread from the 1970s.”
Yet in this season of bill signings, vetoes and elections, Gov. Brown has remained the last bulwark against the truly crazy left-wingers who run the Capitol. Brown has rejected union enrichment schemes,illegal-immigrant “rights” measures and other nonsense. And, despite his troubling push for higher taxes, the governor vetoed all six bills that were designed to resurrect, in one way or another, the redevelopment process he killed last year.
Redevelopment is a land-use and tax scheme that blends Eastern European-style central planning with American-style crony capitalism.
Started in the 1940s to provide local governments with a “tool” to fight urban blight, redevelopment morphed into a centralized planning system that obliterated property rights by giving City Hall expanded eminent-domain powers. Instead of fighting blight, city officials used the system to finance sales-tax-generating car dealerships, shopping malls, big-box stores and hotels by showering subsidies on influential developers.
City councils, via their local redevelopment bureaucracies, gained the power to declare large areas of their cities “blighted” based on the widest-ranging set of criteria. Once blighted, a redevelopment project area was formed and all the “tax increment” —- i.e., the growth in property tax revenue in that specific area —- flowed to the locality rather than the county and state.
Redevelopment agencies would float debt and use the added property tax money to pay off the bonds that financed the subsidies that were provided to developers, who built projects directed from City Hall.
The cities loved it because they would gain the sales taxes and bed taxes from the new projects and could micromanage development decisions. Developers profited by manipulating City Hall. Property owners got bulldozed and all the government intervention distorted the market, but since when has government ever cared about that?
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What is unconscionable is that the city attorney and his behemoth law firm, Rutan & Tucker, as well as the city consultant knew or should have known Brown would absolutely veto all legislation attempting to pump live into the dead carcass of redevelopment. He was very clear on this.
Nonetheless, the out-of-town consultant and Patrick A. Munoz continue to usurp as much money as they can from city vault before the city council finally wakes up from their comatose state of consciousness and tells they the party over boys.
At this juncture, it’s all about how much MORE money can they loot from the city vault before they are stopped dead in their dirty tracks.
Their next phase is law suits (joinders) with California League of Cities, et al. This may take time… but all the while the city vault continues to be looted without any returns whatsoever.
It’s very obvious the appeals court and the California Supreme Court will shoot them down. They have thus far at every instance.
Give it up Munoz.
Here is a current Link to Munoz’s ridiculous legal arguments.
http://sbsentinel.com/2012/06/29-palms-contends-state-rda-fund-grab-violates-sec-regulations/