Long-Awaited Death of California Eminent Domain Abusers Continues
Reason Online (blog) Tim
Cavanaugh | January 12, 2012
A Los Angeles government
agency with a long history of fraud, theft, graft, blight, abuse, corruption
and failure is winding down quickly, and there may be no way state or local
officials can rescue it.
The
Community Redevelopment Agency of Los Angeles
(CRA/LA) will cease operations and lay off 192 government employees at the end
of this month, under terms laid out in a law signed last year by California
Gov. Jerry Brown and upheld in December by California's supreme court.
CRA/LA board
member Madeline Janis, with characteristic
self-dramatization, confirms the glorious news that she will be out
of a job come February 1. Janis, who has managed a comfortable existence as a
union lawyer and anti-business activist, concedes that she will lose only
power, not money. But she sheds hilarious tears for the CRA employees who must
now find other ways to drain $109 million a year (the projected cost to the
city of taking over CRA's blight-creating tasks) from
taxpayers.
Rescue from the city does not appear to be in the cards.
Nor does rescue from Los Angeles County.
A county politician, who has his own two-decade history of involvement with a large failed CRA
project run by a corrupt local developer, concedes as much to the L.A. Times:
"The
liabilities associated with redevelopment in the city of Los
Angeles are just too big for the county to absorb," said
Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, a former Los
Angeles city councilman.
Readers know
I will not believe the CRA is dead until I can
refuse to piss on its smoldering ashes. So please note that State Sen. Alex
Padilla (D-Pacoima) is already trying to slide through a bill that would delay
the termination of the Golden
State's redevelopment
agencies (RDAs) until April 15.
But that
train may (just may) have left the station. Although RDAs remain
favorites of politically connected developers, chambers of commerce
and lawmakers from both parties, the California Redevelopment
Association's lawsuit attempting to block the new law ended in a decision
that destroyed the rescue package Brown and other Democrats had cobbled
together for them. Under this plan, RDAs would have been able to lay dormant
for a few years and return to destroying wealth in the future. By suing, the
RDAs ended up negating their own rescue package.
The suit
also exhausted the patience of Brown and probably other Democrats, all of whom
have no appeal from the broken condition of city, county and state finances
throughout California.
And it exposed the arrogance with which thugs like Janis have been operating
for decades. This is an appropriate end. RDAs do not deserve a decent
burial.
http://reason.com/blog/2012/01/12/long-awaited-death-of-california-eminent