After Mehaul O’Leary, Chair of the endangered Redevelopment Agency, returned home last week from a round of meetings with government officials in Sacramento, he received the most encouraging news to surface in days for municipal governments.
Tony Rice, City Hall’s lobbyist in Sacramento, relayed word that Darrell Steinberg, President Pro-Tem of the state Senate, doubts an immediate freeze would be placed on activities of the redevelopment agencies in the event Gov. Brown wins his battle to eliminate them.
After noting how many California communities have been furiously scrambling to prevent agency funds from streaming into state coffers if agencies are disbanded, Mr. Steinberg told the Sacramento Bee it is “not a constructive move” for cities to rush money out the door to thwart Gov. Brown's budget proposal.
“I don't anticipate emergency legislation,” Mr. Steinberg said, “because I think we’re six weeks away from an actual budget vote. I think that I'd rather not have that difficult debate twice. I think we'll have it once.”
Mr. Steinberg concentrated on the $1.7 billion in redevelopment funds that the governor wants to help balance the 2011-12 budget. Such a bundle, he said, is “obviously crucial.” Meanwhile, Mr. Steinberg said he is “open to sitting down with the redevelopment agencies” to discuss the death plan.
Mr. O’Leary, who doubles at City Hall as the Vice Mayor of Culver City, first heard the governor speak last Thursday at the California Legislative Black Caucus breakfast. He came away baffled.
“His mood at the breakfast was very casual and jovial,” Mr. O’Leary said. “In one sentence, he threw the Redevelopment Agency under the bus. First, he set out to show the decline in the level of education across California. He said it disturbed him because we are taking from the poor and giving to the rich — although I do not have any idea what he meant by that.
“ ‘What better idea,’ he said, ‘than taking the redevelopment money and giving it to the schools.’ That is what he believes he will be doing.
“I don’t know if Gov. Brown has a grasp on the ultimate effect of what he is trying to do in eliminating redevelopment agencies.”
Mr. O’Leary returned to Culver City convinced that his colleagues around the state will shove back hard against the governor’s attempt to dissolve the agencies.
“I believe we are going to put up the kind of fight that the governor never imagined,” Mr. O’Leary said. “The rallying cry is even greater than he could have assumed.
“There is a lot of suspicion about the direction he is going. One reason is, so much of his campaign funding was from teachers’ associations. Now is planning to take redevelopment money away from them. Then what?”
