California is usually full of surprises. But we at the California Planning & Development Report -- like almost everyone else involved with California land use -- already know what the story of the year is.

The recession has hindered the production of affordable housing in California – even while it has heightened the demand for affordable housing. Yet cities in California are increasingly moving away from affordable housing requirements.

If California's redevelopment agencies vanish on July 1, as Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed, it's clear the task of mending the state's blighted neighborhoods will likely grow more complicated. Less obvious is the fact that California's effort to clean up the Earth's atmosphere may grow more difficult as well.

Voters will face only a handful of local ballots March 8, and the slate is mercifully light--and concentrated in Southern California. After a November election (see CP&DR Vol. 25, No. 21 Nov. 2010) packed with some of the most contentious local and statewide questions in recent memory, next month's smattering of project approvals and parking spats likely comes as welcome relief. The biggest local question surrounds the would-be city of Jurupa Valley, which will vote to become yet the newest city in the Inland Empire, a region that is maturing in fits and starts.

As debates and hearings over the fate of redevelopment have raged on, the Governor's Office has been drafting legislation that would eliminate redevelopment much as the governor has proposed. A strongly worded preamble lays out the case for the governor's position, and, in anticipation of potential legal battles, it claims that "the Constitution does not explicitly state that redevelopment agencies must exist and, unlike other entities such as counties, does not limit the Legislature's control over that existence." 

Proposition Thirteen.

There, I said it. But I'm not the only one uttering those words during the ongoing discussion of the State of California's enormous budget gap. Just maybe, we can no longer ignore the elephant in the room.

The state's fiscal problems are as big as an elephant, and the reasons for them are legion. But, make no mistake, the largest contributor to those problems -- by far -- is the system created by and in reaction to Prop 13.

I'm sure that by now plenty of people would be willing to kill redevelopment just to put an end to the ping-pong match of debate that has surrounded the governor's budget proposal. While all very civil and often enlightening, it's a debate that has relied on a handful of studies against redevelopment (most prominently Michael Dardia's 1998 PPIC study, "Subsidizing Redevelopment in California") and a single study in favor of redevelopment (the California Redevelopment Association's 2009 study, based on earlier work by the private firm Time Structures [doc]).

After meeting, apparently unsuccessfully, with Gov. Jerry Brown several weeks ago to ask him to back off of his plan to eliminate redevelopment, the mayors of the state's ten largest cities are reportedly lobbying for a compromise. The mayors' plan would preserve revelopment while also generating $1.7 billion to help offset the state's deficit. That is roughly the amount of property tax increment that the governor hoped to recover by doing away with redevelopment entirely. 

Don't start dreaming about that downtown loft just yet.