John Shirey: Master of Disaster

Steven Greenhut: As head of the California Redevelopment Association, John Shirey helped lead many local cities into a deep fiscal pit based on the redevelopment borrow-and-spend policies that promised great windfalls from these crony capitalist deals. Shirey was smart when it came to his own career, and he jumped ship shortly before redevelopment hit an iceberg. It’s fitting that the CRA announced that it would be shutting its doors the same week that Shirey, now city manager for Sacramento, was at a press conference announcing that the Sacramento Kings arena deal he helped put together had collapsed. The team’s owners argued that the deal was based on “highly overblown” financial projections that would push Sacramento to the fiscal brink. Call him the master of fiscal disaster, and call Sacramento a city of fools for hiring a man with this track record.

APRIL 14, 2012