Redevelopment Resurrection?

Redevelopment money isn't free or painless, it has to come from somewhere, and it's always from the same source.  The new and improved California version is called, "Infrastructure Financing Districts,"  but it still runs on TIFF tax funds.  For some reason people keep forgetting TIFF is a tax, it just looks like debt to be paid later with someone else's money, and taxpayers secure the debt with their property. Only it's their money and property and they don't get to vote on it.  Clever, since government knows the public would not vote for most of the projects they get into.   See link to "Proposed 'New City'...." for one example of how California got itself into its financial mess.  No idea is too big or too small not to spend OPM on.

Proposed ‘New City’ Banks on Resurrection of Salton Sea

Redevelopment Resurrection?

Jerry Brown signals the return of abusive local agencies in a limited form. 

City Journal,  23 May 2014  By Steven Greenhut

Sometimes the right things happen for the wrong reason, such as when California governor Jerry Brown signed budget legislation in 2011 to shut down the state’s ham-fisted redevelopment agencies. Brown’s opposition to redevelopment had nothing to do with fidelity to private-property rights or disdain for eminent-domain abuse; it was a fiscal expedient to find money in a tight budget year. The agencies had siphoned 12 percent of the state’s budget annually from traditional public services—public education, firefighting, and the like—and directed it toward local economic-development projects. They also distorted local economies, subsidized developers, and abused property owners. Now that the state’s budget outlook has improved at least superficially, the agencies could make a comeback.

Continue reading this article at :  City Journal

USC offers the podcast below and offers it for education on California (and Oregon?) financial situation.  There are good points made, but I do not have enough information to endorse the entire podcast.  Is this scenario predictive of where America is headed with a tax-and-spend political system?  We're already on the path.  

Listen to Podcast of interview with James V. Lacy, author of "Taxifornia: Liberals' Laboratory to Bankrupt America".
http://www.city-journal.org/mp3/2014-02-05-Boychuck-Lacy.mp3