Four years after approving legislation that ended the anti-blight redevelopment program in California, Gov. Jerry Brown on Tuesday signed a bill giving local agencies a way to pay for similar projects.
Assembly Bill 2, by Assemblyman Luis Alejo, D-Watsonville, authorizes local governments in economically depressed areas to use certain tax revenue for public works and affordable housing improvements and to help businesses.
The new agencies can be formed by individual cities or counties or as joint powers operations, and can issue bonds, acquire land and construct facilities within areas that meet the criteria of high unemployment and crime rates, and physical deterioration.
They also can capture some of the higher property taxes that result from improvements – with more restrictions than the old redevelopment program – and must spend at least 25 percent of that revenue on affordable housing.
The new agencies would not be quite the cash cows that their predecessors became, because they cannot take property taxes that otherwise would have gone to other local governments – unless they agree – or to schools.
The new entities, like redevelopment agencies, could be formed without votes of those living and owning property in proposed project areas unless they register significant opposition. And they would retain the highly questionable, sometimes misused, power of redevelopment agencies to seize private property and provide it to favored developers.
http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/dan-walters/article36495630.html