Redevelopment: Back with a vengeance?
“The same Jerry Brown who ended California’s controversial redevelopment agencies in 2011 is now considering legislation that would bring back something similar, but arguably with fewer restrictions on eminent-domain abuse and debt spending.
Redevelopment agencies sprung from the state’s 1940s-era urban-renewal law — designed to help local officials clean up blighted inner cities. But they morphed into a financing tool by which officials could clear away homes and businesses and float bonds that help developers build tax-generating shopping centers sought by city officials.
Redevelopment died in California — not because of official concern about the abuse of eminent domain, but because Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature needed a source of funds to balance the budget. These agencies diverted 12 percent of the general-fund budget from traditional public services through a mechanism known as Tax Increment Financing, which sent property-tax growth to the redevelopment agencies.
The League of California Cities and Sen. Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, have been pushing measures that would bring back redevelopment in some form, but without the tax-increment financing that let localities unilaterally grab other agencies’ tax dollars.”
Greenhut, Steven. UT San Diego 8 September 2014.