A developer building a housing development on the site of the closed Fort Ord Army post in Monterey County was required to pay prevailing wages to construction workers, a state appellate court has ruled.

The California Court of Appeal, Sixth District, held that deeds for property acquired from the City of Marina Redevelopment Agency required the purchaser/developer to pay prevailing wages to construction workers, because the deeds incorporated a master resolution that explicitly mandates payment of prevailing wages. 

In addition, the appellate court ruled that the plaintiffs who filed the lawsuit were entitled to $73,167.50 in attorney's fees.

As the clock ticks down to an imminent -- but as yet unscheduled -- vote on Gov. Jerry Brown's budget proposal, localities and their respective redevelopment agencies have been taking frantic evasive measures to try to shield funds and properties from liquidation and transfer to the state. 

If Gov. Jerry Brown gets his way in the Legislature in the coming days, he and the state will face a conundrum to make a Zen master's head spin: Is it illegal to transfer funds from agencies that no longer exist?

The governor has thus far been unyielding in his effort to eliminate the state's redevelopment agencies. In doing so he hopes to recoup up to $1.7 billion to help offset the state's estimated $26 billion deficit. Negotiations are ongoing at the Capitol, with a handful of Republican legislators--the so-called "GOP 5"�still in discussions with the Democratic governor. A vote is expected any day now. 

The debate over the fate of redevelopment has called into question the usefulness of redevelopment in places such as, say, Coronado or Palm Desert. But there is no doubt that blight still infects large swaths of the state's major cities -- and that those cities are deeply concerned about the fate of their redevelopment agencies. 

In response to the release of a draft bill that would make the elimination of redevelopment official, the mayors of the state's nine largest cities today sent a stern letter [.pdf] to Gov. Jerry Brown asking him once again to reconsider his intention to eliminate their redevelopment agencies -- along with nearly 400 others across the state. 

Throughout the now eight-week battle over the fate of redevelopment, both sides have issued claims about the efficacy -- or lack thereof -- of redevelopment but have relied on scant data to do so. Today the empirical analysis of redevelopment has, according to the office of State Controller John Chiang, become quite a bit clearer. 

Five weeks ago Chiang initiated a limited-scope review of redevelopment and today released findings that are highly critical of redevelopment. Among other criticisms, the findings directly contradict claims that redevelopment is responsible for the creation of hundreds of thousands of jobs -- because, according to the report, agencies have done little, or nothing, to track job creation. 

With apologies to Sir Isaac Newton, we may finally find out what happens when an irresistible force runs headlong into an immovable object. 

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.

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.

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."