i’m not talking about enacting rda – i’m talking about the actual abuse of the program in cali …

riverside, orange, and san diego counties are the top three rda scam counties – they beat out l.a. county ..

but looking nation wide – how about houston texas ….

houston has so much bond debt that it can’t be pulled up all at one time on ’emma’ … all those housing developments around houston are built with rda bonds …

on june 28th the city of houston took out a $200 million ‘payday loan’ to be paid in march, 2018 with their 2018 property taxes as collateral …

now all those houses with the massive rda property taxes are under water and worth a fraction of their value … houston will not receive the property taxes they expected to pay the bond debt due in march, 2018 …

houston could have mitigated their loses by requiring adequate drainage and not allowing chemical plants to operate next to residential neighborhoods …

… a penny in the good o’ boys’ pocket has created many pounds of debt and expense …

and now that houston really needs money – they’re maxed out – they ran up their credit card debt in the good times and now that bad times are here they have no money for the necessities ….

almost every cali city is the same …

“the rda scam was most widely abused by the gop…”

Only when the two parties became indistinguishable at the local level did the GOP really become drumbeaters for RDAs. When they went down in 2011 it was the Republicans who opposed its demise. The Dems were going with the Governor – but only until they could bring it back.

Now it’s a two party scam.

Uremovic’s comment that Redevelopment was abused mostly by Republicans is not born out by the historical record. For one thing, Redevelopment is a bi-partisan federal government program that was turned over to the States to be administered by local governments. In the states where it was adopted, politicians from all political parties (including Libertarian) endorsed it as a good thing and dismissed complaints as ignorant.

Bear in mind that Redevelopment is a Progressive government program, cooked up by 19th-century social reformers, big-city politicians, and urban planners as a solution to a number of “problems”: inner-city slums; “undesirable” populations of Roman Catholic immigrants from Southern Europe, Puerto Ricans from the Caribbean, and blacks from poor Southern States; inadequate tax revenue for local government treasuries; and “antiquated” commercial and residential buildings. In the early 20th Century it was a Veterans Housing program that was so corrupt even its proponents were appalled.

Personally, I think the worst part about Redevelopment is what it does to the American people as a class and as individual citizens:

When Congress adopted the Housing Act of 1949, their premise was that the People of the United States are no longer the nation’s greatest asset, but its greatest liability. Each State and city that adopted the program, in turn, made the same finding.

When a city establishes a Redevelopment Project Area, it is for the purpose of receiving property tax increment revenue to finance debt on future Redevelopment projects. As part of this process, all the people who live and work and pay taxes within that territory are stripped of their Constitutional Rights. They are, until the Project Area is closed down, second-class citizens.

Thus, Redevelopment has effectively created two new classes of citizens: those who have more rights than everyone else, those who have fewer rights than everyone else, and those whose rights are not directly affected. That is why Redevelopment developers are given so much latitude, and the victims of the projects are treated so badly, and everyone is helpless to do anything about it–or so people think.

Zenger’s observations about Redevelopment are correct. Cities that adopted Redevelopment are still paying off agency debts, and most won’t have retired them until your grandchildren are all grown up. You can watch the numbers in the State Controller’s Reports that I cited in my earlier post. It is all part of the public record.

If you are in Sacramento, stop by the California League of Cities and Redevelopment Association offices downtown. They are both in the same building, two separate but related organizations that bear close watching. Their lobbyists work very hard every day making sure the men and women who represent you are not moved by your opinions.

The way to get rid of Redevelopment is this:

Keep telling your local, state and national reps why you think Redevelopment should be abolished;

Keep writing letters to newspapers, posting your comments online, calling in to radio & television talk shows;

Keep telling your friends to do the same.

Steve, two observations about Redevelopment’s alleged “successes.” First, nobody can really prove that revitalization wasn’t possible, or even likely, by the availability of cheap rent incubators for economic development.

And two (what RDA cheerleaders never told anyone) Redevelopment generated NO new disposable income. It diverted it from other places that necessarily suffered. For every Downtown Pasadena there were fifty small downtowns devastated by subsidies to mall developers and big box stores. Oh, yeah, and the piratical behavior of car dealers and their municipal camp followers is legendary.

The only thing (besides bad, clownish, immediately outdated architecture) that Redevelopment created was invidious competition between cities to see who could throw away the most cash.

the rda scam was most widely abused by the gop … the gop in cali have the ability to be very corrupt because their constituents are so brainwashed to blame everything on the dems and protect their corrupt governments …

it was the gop that screamed for the rda loophole – and of course the dems allowed it because they profit from corruption too …

in a government of the people there’s no one to blame but yourself …

this is me – libionline.net … and here’s the audits that took down the city of beaumont – beaumontgate.org ..

who are you?

let’s see the results of your actions …

a grown adult hiding behind a phony name – are you a man born and raised in the u.s.a. or are you a coward that has forsaken their duties as a citizen in the government of the people…?

let me see the results of your pandering …. but i have absolute results from controlling my government …

Many Daca’s in future for “distant” relatives and greasee “qualified” contractors from Democrat corruption with RDA and related bond driven hybrids…

This is shameful….many Plutocrats licking their chubby fingers.

Queeg is right …. again …

Greenhut is always right.

almost the entire island of coronado was declared ‘blight’ so the city could get rda bonds without voter approval ..

the city of coronado has over $300 million in bond debt …. all those giant government buildings constructed in the last 20 years were built with bond money, which is like credit card money … .. which begs the question …

what happened to the property and revenue taxes collected in coronado – which has the highest property and revenue taxes in the country … ??

Teddy’s running a little low on Little Debbies and Ho-ho’s, time to ratchet back up the tax machine and fill back up the coffers.