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Posted on 09/26/2003 2:05:54 AM PDT by calcowgirl
Governor speeds up open-space land deals
PRE-ELECTION RUSH TO BUY WORRIES SOME, PLEASES OTHERS
Less than two weeks before the election that could end his political career, Gov. Gray Davis is rushing to approve nearly $300 million in deals for the state to buy land from developers who have given him more than $160,000 in political contributions.
The governor's office praises the purchases as rare opportunities to preserve wetlands, a sprawling ranch and redwoods. And some environmentalists would like to see the deals sealed before a possible change in administrations.
Yet critics question whether the price for taxpayers is too high -- Davis refuses to make appraisals of the properties public -- and what role politics and campaign money are playing.
The governor's administration has called a special meeting Tuesday of the state's Wildlife Conservation Board, a little-known Sacramento agency that buys parkland.
Originally, the board was not set to meet until Nov. 18.
But in recent days, the administration added the special meeting to fast-track three major deals whose owners have given Davis $163,100 in the last three years, including $30,000 in the past month to Davis' ``No on the Recall'' committee. They are:
• The purchase of Ballona Wetlands, 483 acres north of Los Angeles International Airport, for $140 million from Playa Capital, a development group. One of Playa's lobbyists, Darius Anderson, was chief fundraiser for Davis' 1998 campaign. Playa has given Davis $55,100 in the past two years, including $20,000 on Aug. 18 to help him fight the recall, state records show.
• The sale of Ahmanson Ranch, a 2,959-acre property on the Ventura-Los Angeles County line for $135 million, from Washington Mutual Bank to the state. Washington Mutual has given the governor $26,000 in the past two years.
• The purchase of 691 acres of redwoods in a Humboldt County area known as Grizzly Creek, from Pacific Lumber, for $18.3 million. Pacific Lumber, controlled by Texas financier Charles Hurwitz, has given Davis $82,000 in the past three years, including $10,000 two weeks ago to help Davis fight the recall.
(Excerpt) Read more at bayarea.com ...
There was some LATimes article or something about this yesterday. When Washington Mutual was considering developing Ahmanson Ranch, they had to pay for some program to conserve the red-legged frog and the spineflower while the environmentalists blocked every possible proposal for development.
Now that WaMu is getting rid of the property, nobody will pay for the frog and weed conservation. Apparently, those endangered species are only important to environmentalists when those species can be used to block development.
In the mid-90's, real estate prices were about half of the current prices; a few short years ago, the state had budget surplusses. Those would have been better times to buy these tracts of land.
From the article:
"But with pending state acquisition of the land, protection of the species would rest with the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, an arm of the state Resources Agency.
Ahhh... the Resources Agency. In other words, we get to pay for it through taxes. No wonder someone appropriately added the word "landgrab" to this article post.
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