Those towns that are fully built and do not have large areas of vacant land to give away can not capture the sales tax dollars needed to take care of their residents and the money from leased cars was some help. Towns like City of Industry with few residents and lots of empty land have hundreds of millions of dollars in the bank from their Puente Hills shopping center while older towns with no big box discounters are having trouble providing the necessary services for their residents.
There is a certain irony that this week in Sacramento there have been Senate hearings on how Redevelopment law is working in the state. While public input has been invited, the feeling among some attendees was that the Committee was just "going through the motions." I hope that is not true, but there are powerful lobbying forces that drive the Redevelopment juggernaut.
Redevelopment is a huge cottage industry. It employees many people. On the city level, a whole separate staff is on the payroll to organize and direct the giveaways. The developers are in for their piece, admittedly less now with the squeeze between what the stores will pay in rent and what the cities can be pushed to provide in infrastructure improvements, but still an ample profit.
The next layer is the consultants. These are companies that write the reports Redevelopment agencies need to justify projects. They specialize in finding blight and other reasons to qualify a plan. When the same companies come up over and over again, it raises questions of impropriety.
Then there are the bond underwriters. Multi-million dollar bonds mean millions of dollars in fees and provides the extra money for lobbying efforts to perpetuate the system. The last group is the lobbyists in Sacramento that write and guide the laws to passage.
While they are a little large to be considered part of a cottage industry, one must also count the League of Cities and the California Redevelopment Association (CRA). The CRA’s sole goal is to promote Redevelopment projects. They never met a project they didn’t like. They have now started a PAC so they can direct political contributions to "our" representatives who will vote for their laws.
I do not expect much to come out of the hearings this week, but at least the Senate is having them. That is a start. As more people see and understand the abuses of Redevelopment, their voices of reason will be heard.
Redevelopment does not have to do with blight; it has to do with money and it will be hard to reform a system when so many people have their hands in the cookie jar.