Brown
Friday, July 20, 2012 – 09:00 p.m.
Is Governor Jerry Brown’s cash grab to help balance California’s budget having unintended and unforeseen consequences?
You bet it is.
And he didn’t even see it coming and, more importantly, really doesn’t seem to care either.
Brown’s move to convince the legislature to rip away redevelopment cash flow from cities and other local entities is beginning to cascade in a very negative fashion.
That is municipal bankruptcy!
The city of Stockton has already filed for chapter 9 bankruptcy protection. The city of San Bernardino is in the process of doing so.
A few days ago the city of Compton, with a projected $5 million in bills due in August and only $3 million cash available, put out the warning flag that it may go bankrupt within the next month or so.
Yes. This really is only the tip of the iceberg.
It’s really no secret in California government circles that cities, in order to pay for core services, had been using redevelopment property tax increment to augment their respective general funds. Whether the cities were wrong in doing so is for a later discussion. The fact is they did it.
Now that Brown, with the assistance of the democratically-controlled state legislature, has cut-off that funding source many cities are scrambling to cut expenses and seek out new revenue.
But with so many hurdles to raising revenue, particularly that of a voter approval requirement, cities are in a no win scenario.
If one doesn’t believe more bankruptcies are on the way, think again.
Many California cities were already in the electric chair. Brown just pulled the switch.
Brown is mud or is mud brown
Cities had no dog gone reason to go on bond spending spree to encumber as many RDA $$$$$$$$$$ on projects. Their brash behavior bit them in the ass.
Jon Coupal had a recent report showing Prop 13 did not have a negative effect on local taxes. Gov Brown era 1978 fed the beast by taking state responsibility for funding schools and giving local govt backfill cash called ERAF.
Cities being the corrupt creatures they are never reformed govt. Still paying people to go out and hawk food stamp eligibility. Still doling out the peoples tax money to cronies. The usual folk.
The aftermath of bad govt, cronyism, and bestowing huge unfunded pensions is bankruptcy. The narrative HJTA is unable to get out is taxes need to be increased only if necessary to support core municipal services. HJTA has the facts that housing bubble created pension bubble.
Read today, that Mayor of Trenton, New Jersey, is as openly corrupt as they come. Yet recall failed to get adequate registered signatures.
By the way, Bruce the crook, from Vernon, Ca, found dead in the waters of Angel Island has a wife, so only a 40 percent savings on his obsence pension. Sorry innocent wife,
Brown, I am proud of you on this issue. Keep up the good work.
Brown is still mud. If he could tax the mud you have, he would. And then mandate that only unions are allowed to dig a hole and fill it up. shovel-ready!
A lot of these rouge city and JPA RDA’s, now Successor Agencies, have dug their own graves by budgeting-in inter-agency transfer$ to run the operations and supplement general fund spending.
This former-RDA “fun-money” now has turned into an Obligation $chedule for payments to the State/ Counties for redistribution… what do they say about “digging a hole” and when to stop or keep digging (to China?)
This is the ultimate “shovel-ready” scenario for all the loco-al politicians and bureaucrats, all that Moonbeam ” Governator of the RDA and quite possibly all of CA as we know it” Brown has to do is throw dirt on top of the RDA coffins that he has placed in each of these holes.
Each and every loco-al municipality’s “spending sprees” are now DOA and “shovel ready”, especially the JPA RDA’s set-up to redevelop the military bases/ airports in San Berdoo and Victimville (what an iceberg, or more like a graveyard!)
The best legislation in decades was to evaporate redevelopment agencies and the corruption that followed the players. Thank you Governor.
still mud
ANON#8…..stop being a sore looser. Everyone knows that those RDAs were stewing pots of corruption. Your defense of them and your sour grapes towards the governor for rightly eradicating such dens of inequities portrays you as being one of the beneficiaries of the ill gotten gains RDAs provided to political cronies…..The gravy train is over!