Less than a week after joining other communities in suing Sacramento for owed monies related to last winter’s outlawing of the state’s Redevelopment Agencies, everything turned out peachy – $14.6 million peachy – yesterday for City Hall.
To be delivered in full – the amount City Hall sought – on schedule, by tomorrow, the due date.
Once California’s 400 Redevelopment Agencies were massacred by the state legislature, effective last Feb. 1, tax increments that formerly had flowed to City Hall were to be channeled into the state government’s coffers.
Cities were told to be creative.
Now, for the first period since Agencies were vanquished, at least certain cities can breathe as they did in the pre-death days.
“The importance of this development,” said Mayor Andy Weissman, “is that the Successor Agencies will have funding available to meet their legal obligations, including repayment of bonds.”
In the midst of a courtroom hearing yesterday on the lawsuit to recover tax increments, monies that would have accrued to the city if the Agency had not been killed off, drama intervened.
Martin Cole, Asst. City Manager, explained this morning:
“The Auditor-Controller for Los Angeles County came into the hearing and told the judge, ‘There is no need to issue a temporary restraining order in this case because we are going to pay Culver City and the other plaintiffs all they are entitled to.’”
The ultimate pivotal decision, Mr. Weissman noted, was rendered by the state Dept. of Finance.
Despite jubilation over this victory, communities still have not been told how much development authority they will be permitted to retain in the wake of the loss of the Agencies.
No one knows when, much less what form, that directive will take.
Yesterday’s verdict, said Mr. Weissman, “only applies to former Agency obligations.”
He said that finances linked to Redevelopment Agency prize projects such as Parcel B and the Expo setting, Washington/National, are a separate subject for another time.
