During his two four-year terms on the City Council, Steve Rose wrestled with dozens of Redevelopment Agency projects, and now he has a tart message for Gov. Brown, who, with a club in each hand, is trying to dissolve the agencies from San Diego to Yreka to channel more money into Sacramento.
“When the governor was the mayor of Oakland, I guess he didn’t run his Redevelopment Agency the way we in Culver City run ours,” Mr. Rose said.
“It is my understanding that while he was the mayor, he used the Redevelopment Agency to revitalize neighborhoods.
“I believe the main reason he is pushing to kill agencies now is a quick-fix attempt to solve fiscal issues in Sacramento. But meanwhile, he is turning his back on the long-term growth that would be created by the agencies.”
As the longtime CEO of the Culver City Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Rose speculated that the California Redevelopment Assn. and the League of California Cities, both of whom took Mr. Brown to court last month, “have a very good chance” of prevailing.
A preliminary ruling is anticipated any day.
But City Hall still will be obligated to send a wallet-crunching $12 million payment to Sacramento by next May — what Agency members here call “hush money” — regardless of the verdict.
And the wheelbarrows holding the hush money will get a good workout in the next few years, because this fight is going to be a long slog.
“If the California Supreme Court determines this law is unconstitutional,” said Mr. Rose, “then the case starts working its way through the federal process, which takes a few years. Then let’s say the Redevelopment Agency case is upheld and the state has to refund the money. I assume it would take another 20 years of small payments for the state to cover the full amount owed to us.”
(To be continued)
