Culver City’s soft-spoken state Senator, Curren D. Price Jr., holds an unambiguous, previously unknown, position on the future of redevelopment agencies, and that stance set off an explosion yesterday afternoon when it reached the point person at City Hall.
While Gov. Brown struggles to get his master budget stroke — abolishing the agencies — out of the Assembly, where he has been stuck a week on one Republican vote short, the Senate has not yet cast ballots.
Nevertheless, Sen. Price told the newspaper that, in spite of lobbying by City Hall, he is going to side, unequivocally, with the governor.
“We need to have a total budget solution,” the senator said. “In this case, I think it is going to include eliminating redevelopments.”
Why?
“Because it means $1.7 billion more in revenue going to Sacramento. Now we need to make sure there is a successor agency that will address some of the shortcomings that were evident in previous redevelopment programs. Better oversight. More restrictions.”
Vice Mayor Mehaul O’Leary, Chair of the Culver City Redevelopment Agency, was perplexed at first by Sen. Price’s response.
The More He Thought About It
“For weeks,” said Mr. O’Leary, “we have lobbied Sen. Price and his staff at every opportunity. We have done everything we can to make sure he knows our position, that redevelopment agencies should not be abolished.”
After a serene start, the Vice Mayor just was heating up.
“They are lost in Sacramento,” he scolded. “They don’t have a way of fixing the budget without pulling back any pots of money that are out there,” and Mr. O’Leary’s voice rose. “Killing the redevelopment agencies does not fix the structural deficit. This doesn’t make sense to me.
“Fix the deficit first. Then you can pull back any money you want.
“They are not going to the core of the problem. They are not businessmen,” said Mr. O’Leary, who takes pride in his grasp of savvy in commerce.
“The legislators don’t know what they are doing. I am just sick of it, sick of listening to them.
“I am hopeful that on the back end of killing redevelopment, after taking what they believe is a pot of money, that they will at least look at the parts of redevelopment that were of value and bring back some sort of structured redevelopment agency.”
Several Differences
The question was put to Sen. Price: What configuration would a new “redevelopment” agency take?
“Well, the configuration would be controlled by the locals as opposed to by the state,” he said.
If reborn redevelopment agencies would no longer be eligible for property tax revenue, how would they be funded?
“That is part of the discussion, how this new structure is going to work,” said Sen. Price.
What is the senator’s suggestion?
“I think priority should be given for low-income housing,” he said. “Elimination of blight, but they probably will have to be more specific about what that entails.”
