Redevelopment in California: Back from the Dead?
“Two new bills could bring back California’s redevelopment agencies (RDAs), which were notorious for abusing eminent domain. Over the past decade alone, the Institute for Justice catalogued more than 200 cases of eminent domain for private gain.
Not only that, redevelopment in California wasted other people’s money by funding boondoggles. For example, a pizzeria, a nightclub, and a “mermaid bar” in Sacramento benefited from $5.4 million from Sacramento’s RDA. Redevelopment agencies have also crowded out private investment. In Hemet, the city is refusing to sell vacant, boarded-up properties once owned by Hemet’s redevelopment agency. Private developers have repeatedly offered to build “a nice gated community” that could generate some much needed tax revenue for Hemet. But instead, thanks to the city’s stonewalling, that neighborhood is plagued with crime, while “taxpayer-funded property is being left to rot.”
Little wonder California redevelopment agencies have run up $30 billion in debt. To bring some measure of fiscal sanity to the Golden State, under the leadership of Gov. Jerry Brown, the California legislature abolished more than 400 RDAs in 2011. A few months later, the California Supreme Court upheld their dissolution as constitutional.
Yet two new bills (AB 1080 and SB 1) would bring back redevelopment in some form.”
Silba, Nick. Institute for Justice 10 May 2013.