As with so many trends, the use of tax-increment financing for redevelopment began in California. Since being created here in 1952, this vital aspect of redevelopment has spread to 48 other states. And yet if Gov. Jerry Brown's current budget proposal passes, it may very well die in the state where it was born.

It is not going quietly.

In the two weeks since Brown announced his intention to eliminate redevelopment in California as part of his proposal to cut the state's $24 billion deficit, what used to be a relatively obscure system intended to eradicate blight has been thrust into tumultuous debate.

What would life be like in California without redevelopment?

An 11-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has thrown out the court's 2009 decision that invalidated the City of Goleta's mobile home rent control ordinance. This time, the court ruled the ordinance was not an unconstitutional taking of property because the mobile home park owners who brought the challenge acquired the property long after ordinance was in effect. 

The Second District Court of Appeal has upheld a determination by the Department of Industrial Relations that required public improvements in a master planned community project to abide by prevailing wage laws. The court further ruled that Mello-Roos proceeds are "public funds," and that once a project is deemed a "public work" under the Prevailing Wage Law, all public portions of the project are subject to the law – including those public improvements that are privately financed.

The parts of a Kern county mining project are decidedly not greater than – or a substitute for – the whole, as far as the California Environmental Quality Act is concerned. 

The clamp on local governments in California grows only tighter and tighter.

The number and detail of state mandates continues to increase. The ability to raise revenue continues to decrease. The amount of litigation never decreases. Redevelopment is in doubt. Keeping a city or county out of financial or legal trouble seems to get more difficult every year.

Those were the implicit – and sometimes explicit – messages during the UCLA Extension Land Use Law and Planning Conference in Los Angeles last Friday. As always at the conference, expert practitioners and analysts reviewed last year's lawmaking, rulemaking and courtroom activity, and speculated about the year ahead. It was difficult to detect many rays of light for cities or counties.

While redevelopment might once have been considered a key weapon in the War on Poverty, redevelopment officials now find themselves gearing up for a different kind of battle. They rallied the troops today, laying out a strategy for opposing the elimination of redevelopment in order to help close a $24 billion budget gap. 

Even though the recession has brought construction in the Central Valley nearly to a standstill, one of the world's largest suppliers of building materials appears bullish on the region. Cemex Construction Materials, LP, has proposed an aggregate mine on a 2,036-acre site in Fresno County, inciting protest from both environmentalists and local Native American tribes.

When Proposition 84 passed in 2006, it reflected a booming economy. Providing $5.4 billion for clean water, parks, and open space the measure was seen as an important way to protect the state's natural resources at a time before many were worried about $28 billion deficits or maxing out the state's bonding capacity. 

Prop. 84's primary focus is on waterways and water management. However, it also includes a relatively tiny set-aside for innovative planning that is proving to be a godsend to planning departments that are suffering unprecedented budget cuts (see CP&DR Insight Vol. 25, No. 5, March 2010). 

When organizers of the UCLA Extension Land Use Law and Planning Conference sponsored sessions on ethics in previous years, yawns and frequent checking of cell phones was the overwhelming response.

They expect a far more engaged audience this year for the session titled "Unringing the Bell: When Land Use Decision Making and Ethics Collide."

The dissolution of redevelopment agencies may be the biggest bombshell that Gov. Jerry Brown dropped on the land use community. But it is not the only one. He is also targeting the Williamson Act, Enterprise Zones, and fire safety in order to help close the state's $28 billion deficit. 

Enterprise Zones

Like redevelopment project areas, Enterprise Zones are intended to stoke economic development in disadvantaged areas. However, rather than using tax increment financing and being orchestrated by a public agency, Enterprise Zones simply confer tax credits and other financial incentives on businesses that set up shop within the zones. 

As expected, the budget proposed today by Gov. Jerry Brown calls for the wholesale elimination of redevelopment agencies.  This dramatic move would free up roughly $5 billion in annual tax increments that redevelopment agencies control and would redirect those increments to fund a range of local services. 

The proposal has set off what will likely be an ongoing debate over the value of redevelopment as it has been implemented in the 59 years since California voters approved a constitutional amendment allowing the use of tax increment financing to combat blight. 

The Town of Mammoth Lakes has been ordered to pay more than $32 million for violating a development agreement.

In upholding a jury's award of damages to the developer, the Third District Court of Appeal made clear that local government agencies are treated like any other private contracting party when it comes to development agreements and can be held liable for damages if the agency breaches the agreement.

The City of Sunnyvale's analysis of a road improvement project's traffic and related impacts based on predicted conditions in 2020 violated the California Environmental Quality Act's requirement to compare a proposed project with existing conditions.