If there is at least one good thing that has come out of the Governor’s bargaining with the Legislature over tax and budget issues, it is Jerry Brown’s call for closing down the redevelopment agency scam that has allowed tax-and-spend Councilmembers and City Managers in local cities like pristine Mission Viejo to declare themselves ‘blighted communities" and then setup new taxing and spending authority to build corporate welfare edifices such as shopping centers anchored by up-scale stores like Williams-Sonoma and Nordstrom’s. It just doesn’t make economic sense for taxpayers, especially most taxpayers, who shop at WalMart, not Restoration Hardware.
Republican Assemblyman Chris Norby is a fighter against the redevelopment scam, having countered the policy on the Fullerton City Council, as a County Supervisor, and now in the Legislature. He is willing to be one of the just two votes the Governor needs to knock out this bad policy and save our budget millions in useless tax and spending authority.
The Orange County Register editorialized in favor of Brown’s and Norby’s position in yesterday’s newspaper. They called on at least one other member of the Orange County Assembly delegation to join fellow Assemblyman Norby to make the needed two-thirds vote to kill off redevelopment. But apparently most Republicans are being overly cautious about any of Brown’s proposals, including ending redevelopment. The Register is asking Orange County residents to contact Assemblymembers Jim Silva, Diane Harkey, Don Wagner, Jeff Miller, and Allan Mansoor to pull out just the one more vote needed from the GOP to pass the proposal.
Of this group, I know Diane Harkey has opposed redevelopment on the Dana Point City Council, because I served with her on that Council. Dana Point, to its credit, has consistently rejected even an opening discussion about declaring itself "blighted." Harkey ought to be the person that steps forward to make the needed two-thirds majority to get this important legislation through the Assembly. I join the Register in urging Harkey and all her GOP colleagues to get this one piece of business you can agree with Brown on, done, and put into a nice box with a ribbon on it, the kind of box you get at Tiffany’s and in perhaps some other blighted areas under current law.