Some of the California legislators who voted last year to abolish redevelopment agencies and shift their money into schools and other local governments appear to be having executioner's remorse – creating uncertainty about redevelopment's future, if any.
A hastily formed coalition of labor, business and local government groups is pressing the Legislature to fast-track at least a temporary stay of execution for the more than 400 local redevelopment agencies.
In the aftermath of the California Supreme Court decree Dec. 29 upholding dissolution, some cities have assumed control of the agencies. Some – Los Angeles, most notably – have walked away from them. Many are beset by indecision. Senate Bill 659 would push the dissolution date from Feb. 1, the date set by the state Supreme Court, to April 15.
Clearly, however, the coalition – successor to the California Redevelopment Association – has more than a brief postponement in mind. It evidently wants to buy time to build political impetus for resuscitating redevelopment, but in what form is very cloudy.
It could be a new version of the half-a-loaf plan that the Legislature also adopted, allowing redevelopment agencies to remain in business if they coughed up $1.7 billion from their $5 billion annual take of property taxes. The Supreme Court invalidated that approach, saying it violated Proposition 22, the 2010 ballot measure that redevelopment agencies sponsored to prevent the state from taking their money.
It could be redevelopment by another name, such as "infrastructure financing district." Authority for those redevelopment-like entities now exists, but they require local voter approval to be implemented. Two pending bills would remove the voter approval requirement.
Or it could be an entirely new approach to underwriting local economic development and housing projects, as Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg advocates.
He wants the "asset pool" held by local redevelopment agencies to remain with their governments as long as they are used for "high-wage jobs," low-income housing, and projects that comply with the state's anti-sprawl, transit-friendly, anti-greenhouse gas standards.
Additionally, Steinberg wants the money to hinge on regional sales tax sharing, a pet goal that he tried, and failed, to get enacted for the Sacramento area.
Steinberg's approach would mean a quantum increase in state control of local land use policies, which would appear to violate Gov. Jerry Brown's pledge to reduce centralization and return more power to local governments.
As Steinberg notes, "The governor appears uninterested in re-creating anything related to redevelopment."
And Brown, after all, has the final say on what, if anything, will be done to keep redevelopment alive.
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