Redevelopment agencies not pretty up close

The Orange County Register ^ | 3-7-2011 | Staff

[Mark Landsbaum]

The state controller has completed a review of 18 California redevelopment agencies and concluded their "lack of accountability and transparency is a breeding ground for waste, abuse and impropriety."

Controller John Chiang has determined that, for an activity consuming "more than $5.5 billion of public resources annually, we should be troubled that there are no objective performance measures demonstrating that taxpayers are receiving optimal return for each invested dollar."

The review ticked off agency shortcomings, failures and questionable activities, including ...

[MeganC]

I’ve yet to figure out why these ham-handed, near unaccountable agencies are the apparent darlings of California Republicans. These agencies routinely devastate small businesses and they routinely stomp all over property rights. Why on God’s green earth would the GOP defend them?

[tubebender]

Redevelopment agencies finance a corporate welfare system of government agencies with power to reward and penalize economic winners and losers. We agree with Mr. Chiang, who says the system "born in the 1940s is not how anyone concerned with performance, efficiency and accountability would draw it up today."

That may be the case in a few cities but our area is not one of them. There are some properties here that SHOULD be condemned, demolished and resold. I used redevelopment funds on a project 17 years ago that allowed me to secure financing to raze a ugly building on 101 and put up a award winning facility that is rented to a firm that was able to triple their work force and quadruple sales tax revenue...

[O6ret]

".....no objective performance measures demonstrating that taxpayers are receiving optimal return for each invested dollar."

Sounds like our educational system.

[Publius6961]

Redevelopment agencies not pretty up close

After demonstrably shredding the Coonstitution by abolishing one of the pillars of Our Constitution, Private Property, they should be banned forever. No mercy, no reprieve.

(By the way, I am filing this thread unde "Government Corruption.)

[Pining_4_TX]

It isn’t just CA. This nonsense is ubiquitous. Every state, city, town, and burg has it’s own economic development plan complete with busybody planners who think they can run the economy. I don’t understand it, either, but it seems to be universally accepted.

Politicians and overpaid bureaucrats go on taxpayer funded trips to attempt to bribe businesses to come to their state or city, and nobody seems to have a problem with this. It’s insane. If I owned a business, I would be extremely peeved about other businesses being offered sweet deals to compete with me.

[Smogger]

Maybe your local redvelopment agency sucks, but my local redevelopment agency has done wonders in reducing urban blight in my city. Not all redvelopment agencies are organized the same way.

[MeganC]

Sacramento’s agency - SHRA - has been a PITA for ages. They started out by preventing people from renovating old Victorians into single family homes from failed apartments and then moved on to stealing businesses in the downtown in order to put money in the pockets of the Tskapolous family and Phil Angelides.

More or less, that’s been SHRA’s purpose from the outset, to channel public money into the hands of Greek Democrat developers. I’m happy to see that agency go because it means defunding the Democrats in Sacramento County.