Video: Local Civic Leaders Protest State's Raid on Redevelopment Funds

Bay City News — Elected officials from a number of East Bay cities think a state budget measure that will eliminate or reshape local will be an economic disaster for the state.

Speaking at a news conference Wednesday at a housing project near BART's Coliseum station in Oakland that was built with redevelopment funds, Emeryville Mayor Nora Davis said Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature "should consider what they've done to the economic stability of the state."

Davis said Emeryville "would still be a decaying dump" if it had not received state redevelopment funds that changed it to what she described as "a vital, sustainable city" that's home to many businesses and developments. Davis alleged that in cutting funding to local redevelopment agencies to save $1.7 billion annually, "Sacramento is saying stop to economic development."

Union City Mayor Mark Green, president of the Association of Bay Area Governments, said the plan to cut redevelopment funds "is the worst decision Sacramento has made" in the 20 years he has been involved in local government.

Green said redevelopment funds have helped convert slaughterhouses and abandoned industrial and commercial facilities to more productive uses. He said redevelopment funds have also helped build affordable housing complexes in Union City and other cities and complained that cutting redevelopment funds "will be a huge hit on affordable housing."

San Ramon Mayor Abram Wilson said redevelopment funds have helped clean up blighted areas in his city and said it is "ludicrous" for the state to take away such funds.

Hayward City Councilwoman Barbara Halliday agreed, saying, "It's a really idiotic thing" to cut funding for redevelopment.

But state Finance Department spokesman H.D. Palmer said Brown agrees with a report issued by the nonpartisan state Legislative Analyst's Office earlier this year that says there's no reliable evidence that redevelopment agencies improve overall economic development in California.

Palmer said Brown believes that the private development that occurs in redevelopment project areas often would have occurred even if the areas were never established and there is little evidence that redevelopment projects attract business to the state.

The League of California Cities, the California Redevelopment Association and the cities of San Jose and Union City filed a lawsuit with the California Supreme Court on Monday that the redevelopment plan passed by the Legislature and signed by Brown violates a state Constitutional amendment approved by state voters last year to protect local tax revenues from being taken by the state.

The suit asks the state Supreme Court to issue a stay suspending all or parts of the measure by Aug. 15. However, Palmer said state officials believe their plan is legally sound.

Among the other elected officials who participated in the news conference today were Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, Pittsburg Vice Mayor Ben Johnson and Concord Vice Mayor Ron Leone.