Should government get into the business of judging people on the “efficiency” of their property?  SB 1 would grant government that capacity — along with the power to take that property if officials decide it’s being “inefficiently” used. SB 1 is by Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento.

Two years ago Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature abolished redevelopment in California to transfer from local governments $1.5 billion to the state budget. Redevelopment allowed local governments to declare anything, even nice homes and businesses, as “blight,” seize the property and give it to big-box retailers.

SB 1 would reintroduce property redevelopment. But this time, it only would apply to property that would comply with the “sustainable communities strategy” of SB 375, another Steinberg bill that became law in 2008 when signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. SB 375, among other things, mandated Plan Bay Area and other regional transportation, housing and land use plans throughout the 18 regions of the state.

SB 1 is really the financing and zoning vehicle for creating the new high-density, Plan Bay Area/sustainable communities lifestyle.  SB 1’s projects, paid with the new redevelopment money, would have to be high-density and restrict parking.

The SB 1 buildings also would have to be located within one-half mile of  public transit, be “walkable communities” or be green energy manufacturing sites.  Other styles of redevelopment are not included in this bill, as they are not the way we are supposed to live under the sustainable communities vision.

New bureaucracies

SB 1 would allow counties and cities to create Sustainable Community Investment Authorities, which would be new government agencies separate from the governments that created them. The SCIAs would be established without citizen concurrence and would be beyond direct citizen control. And the SCIAs would wield the authority of eminent domain, taxing and bond issuance for building such projects within a specified geography.   Such projects would have other specifications, including construction under prevailing (union) wages, and large funding for subsidized housing.

In order to acquire property for high density development, the bill expands the definition of blight to include a new concept of “inefficient use.” Under SB 1, suddenly inefficiency has become the big problem.  Or, the big excuse.  A host of societal ills are blamed on it, such as a poor economy, high housing prices, pollution and more.

‘Inefficiency’

What is inefficiency?  It is not defined in the bill, nor are its alleged ill effects substantiated in any way. But because inefficiency is suddenly deemed so problematic, it is given powerful status for determining blight.

Normally, slums and damaged property can be determined to be blighted, which enables them to be acquired under eminent domain and rebuilt.  Eminent domain is also used to acquire property for public use, such as for new roads.  There is an extensive body of case law that has clarified what is blighted, so property owners are safe from abusive governmental takings.  This would be superseded by the new inefficiency doctrine.

Since the workings of the free economy are deemed inadequate for creating efficiency, under SB 1 the government must use bureaucratic force to create it.  Conveniently, SCIAs could rely on this new legislative definition of inefficiency to acquire property under eminent domain, without a formal process of finding slum-like blight conditions.  So, depending upon how an SCIA grades what a person is doing with their property, the owner’s ability to keep it comes at the grace of the SCIA.  Since the lifestyle the government wants is high-density-urban, anything rural, neighborhood, single family, small commercial, small farm or suburban seems perpetually vulnerable to the inefficiency charge.

In Plan Bay Area, resident surveys told the regional planning bodies that they didn’t want regional planning by unelected bureaucrats.  Further, the Plan itself concluded that “stack and pack housing” (i.e., sustainable communities/transit oriented development) did not reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which was the whole point of the Plan. Yet, the Plan was approved. SB 1 would allow the Plan to be imposed despite citizen objections.

SB 1 recently was amended and will be heard Aug. 30 in the Assembly Appropriations Committee.

Pushing people into high rises is the goal of Senate Bill 1, the Sustainable Communities Investment Authority bill by Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Calif. Term limited out of office next year, it’s a key piece of the legacy he hopes to leave behind for California. SB 1 will be heard in the Assembly Local Government Committee Wednesday, Aug. 14 at 1:30 p.m.

It follows Steinberg’s SB 375, the Preferred Growth Scenario bill, which then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law in 2008. Along with Schwarzenegger’s better-known AB 32, the California’s Global Warming Solution Act of 2006, SB 375 was a keystone in the Steinberg-Schwarzenegger blueprint for a green, “sustainable” California of high rises.

The Preferred Growth Scenario requires all transportation plans and funds in the state must pack an absolute minimum of 10 families into an acre land. SB 375 basically means the state of California, by law, officially is pushing people out of single-family homes and into high-rises.

“Welcome to the brave new world of central planning,” then state Sen. Tom McClintock said back in 2008. “The denser the better.”

SB 1

The new bill, SB 1, advances that central state plan. SB 1 resembles failed ballot initiative Proposition 31, which voters defeated in November last year, 61-39. As CalWatchdog.com’s Wayne Lusvardi was the first to reveal, Prop. 31 could have authorized “the state to withhold or divert taxes from local governments unless those governments adopted a ‘Strategic Action Plan’ to distribute the revenues from the suburbs to the large urban cities.”

Such tax sharing actually means redistribution.

SB 1 would set up the Sustainable Communities Investment Authority, which would be a new state agency effectively implementing Prop. 31’s Strategic Action Plan.

Redevelopment 2.0

SB 1 would authorize both bonds and more taxes to fund these 
”sustainable communities.”

In 2011, Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature eliminated redevelopment to take the $1.5 billion a year being spent on it. Redevelopment originally was supposed do mean clearing “blighted” areas. But it ended up being used to seize middle-class homes and businesses to give the property to influential developers of Big Box commercial areas.

Such abuse could return under SB 1, which is why it’s being dubbed “Redevelopment 2.0.” According to bill analysis, it would authorize certain public entities of a Sustainable Communities Investment Area to form a Sustainable Communities Investment Authority to carry out the Community Redevelopment Law, consistent with the state’s restrictions on sustainable development.

The United Food and Commercial Workers union praises SB 1 as giving “cities and counties a modest tool to support sustainable economic development that creates good jobs, affordable housing and a healthy environment.”

But as with the old kind of redevelopment, much of this SB 1 development of transit priority areas, clean manufacturing districts and small “walkable communities” will be funded through tax increment financing. 

“Tax increment financing is an alluring tool that allows municipalities to promote economic development by earmarking property tax revenue from increases in assessed values within a designated TIF district,” according to the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. Proponents claim assessed property value within TIF districts grows much faster than in the rest of the municipality. But the Lincoln Institute found TIF areas grow no more rapidly, and perhaps grow more slowly, and “commercial TIF districts tend to decrease commercial development in the non-TIF portion of the municipality.”

Tax increment financing also would be authorized to support High-Speed Rail stations and related infrastructure.

Other bills

The outcome of SB 1 may be tied to a number of other bills on redevelopment. Some of the bills are new, and others are similar to redevelopment bills Brown vetoed last year:

* SB 33 by Sen. Lois Wolk, D-Davis, makes it easier for local governments to form infrastructure financing districts. A similar measure, SB 214, was vetoed by Brown last year.

* SB 391 by Sen. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, would generate $500 million in affordable housing funds.

* AB 294 by Assemblyman Chris Holden, D-Pasadena, directs the California Infrastructure and Economic Development Bank to work with local government on transit-oriented development and affordable housing projects. And it would allow an infrastructure financing district to use the Educational Revenue Augmentation Fund portion of incremental tax revenue.

* AB 229 by Assembly Speaker John Perez, D-Los Angeles, would expand types of local projects that are financed by existing infrastructure financing districts. Brown vetoed the similar AB 2144 in September.

* AB 243 by Roger Dickinson, D-Sacramento, would authorize new redevelopment districts, and the issuance of debt for those areas with only 55 percent of the vote, instead of the two-thirds currently required.