There actually are worse things than profligate government spending. One is profligate government spending paired with abuse of private property rights. Unfortunately, a new proposition is circulating that both increases property rights abuse and adds new profligate spending by Sacramento and California local governments.
The California Jobs and Education Development Initiative Act (the “JEDI” for short), has been likened by some as a return of the Empire. However, any signature gatherer that approaches you with a petition to ballot qualify this initiative should be resisted with all a Jedi’s powers of Force lightening.
For decades, Californian’s suffered property rights abuse when 425 redevelopment agencies roamed free to use eminent domain powers to take private property. It gave elected officials tremendous power to affect real estate development by pursuing “land assembly”, to take land from unwilling sellers and make it available for other private development.
Governor Brown and the California legislature terminated redevelopment agencies in 2011. This important and healthy reform was not motivated by newly heightened interest in private property rights protections by California lawmakers. It was instead the desire for $2 billion in property tax monies that redevelopment agencies then held. Our Governor coveted that cash to help fix California’s strained finances. In an ironic way, Sacramento’s profligate spending came to the rescue of private property rights.
Sacramento claims to have fixed its budget woes. It did it in part by turning off the drain that California’s redevelopment agencies had on the State’s tax coffers. That is because redevelopment agencies got their cash by taking a portion of property taxes from other local agencies, including school districts. However, California’s school districts were entitled to have Sacramento backfill their finances when redevelopment agencies took their property taxes. Therefore, Sacramento’s budget woes were helped by turning off that diversion of revenues. Now that Sacramento claims its fiscal crises is over, centralized planners believe it is proper to install JEDI agencies and empower them to again lay waste to private property throughout California.
The argument is made that JEDI agencies are necessary to address high unemployment – which the JEDI Initiative characterizes as the “new blight”. However, a February 2011 report from the California Legislative Analyst’s Office confirmed that there is “No reliable evidence that redevelopment increases regional or statewide economic development”, which of course includes claims of job growth
The argument is also made that JEDI agencies have limited powers to take private property for private use by favored developers, because eminent domain taking is only done when “blight” findings can be made. However, the history of California redevelopment agencies is a history of massive abuse of the “blight” finding process.
In addition, the JEDI Initiative actually waters down even the loophole infested blight findings that previously existed. Under the JEDI Initiative, a neighborhood can be found to be blighted, if the unemployment rate in the locality or county is in excess of the national or statewide average. That currently constitutes all of Fresno County, which in February had a higher unemployment rate than the national average. So did all of California.
If redevelopment agencies successfully fixed blighted neighborhoods, they ought to get the job down in a reasonable time. In Fresno, that certainly did not happen. Time and again, project areas were merged, and “redevelopment plans” were extended. The initiative assumes that the new JEDI entities will be even less effective than the prior redevelopment agencies. What the prior agencies failed to do in 30 years, the new JEDI agencies are now to be given 40 years to complete, a 25% extension of the time to wield their powers. This includes adding 40 years to the life of any redevelopment plan that was otherwise about to expire before the redevelopment agencies were terminated.
The Institute for Legal Justice has provided a new report that details more fully the problems with the JEDI Initiative and the abuses of property rights by redevelopment agencies. It can be found at http://www.ij.org/california-redevelopment-release-3-25-2014.
No one (except perhaps those who benefit from an insider’s political power and influence) should have any reason to support the return of redevelopment agencies, in any form. Withhold your signature from this ballot initiative and withhold construction of this second Death Star.
Jeff Reid is a former Fresno City Manager, a former member of the board overseeing the wind down of Fresno’s RDA, a Fresno real estate attorney and the Secretary of the Lincoln Club of Fresno County.
* A line used in every Star Wars movie.