SB 470 was advanced by Long Beach City Hall with virtually no public input on how it would impact taxpayers and neighborhoods in former Redevelopment areas. City Hall got what it wanted: a bill that fails to provide the public with serious checks and balances over how City Hall will spend public money from selling to developers -- at below market prices -- properties acquired with public funds that were supposed to eliminate blight in our neighborhoods.

Instead of returning to the areas the funds were supposed to help, the money can be spent virtually anywhere in Long Beach for virtually anything that a Council majority accepts.

Sen. Wright and Assemblywoman Lowenthal, both of whom I consider friends, have in this writer's opinion made a major error in handing Long Beach City Hall these powers without ensuring us -- at a grassroots level -- some oversight and control in what's done. Somehow, I doubt these veteran state lawmakers would do this if asked to carry a bill affecting some industry or special interest group. Why would they automatically do this when it's OUR interests as residents and taxpayers that are at stake?

SB 470 will have especially deep impacts in Long Beach, where previous City Halls declared nearly half of the city "blighted" to put it into "Redevelopment." Today, everyone can see the unbalanced results: downtown interests got what they wanted, while Central and North Long Beach residents -- who were handed years of promiuses -- are now forced to rely on a City Council majority (acting as a Redevelopment "Successor Agency") which kept us out of drafting process of SB 470 and doesn't want us involved now.

As crafted by City Hall, SB 470 gives the public no meaningful checks and balances, apart from a "public hearing" where Councilmembers can ignore us for 180 seconds each while text-messaging their friends, writing thank you notes or talking on the phone, and then smile at us as they vote against our interests.

SB 470 creates a mechanism that, like Redevelopment, offers properties at a discount to City Hall favored developers, without even the minimal neighborhood protections that were part of Redevelopment. There's no requirement the revenue be used to benefit the impacted area. There's no requirement that there be some public advisory process (like PACs) in the process. Instead, residents may get three minutes at the speakers' podium before being told to sit down and be quiet.

In my opinion, if the Governor doesn't veto SB 470, it will invite a period similar to the "Boss Tweed" days of the 1880's when everything was up for sale to City Hall insiders.

SB 470 wasn't conceived in a vacuum. It was birthed as another closed door "Back Room" deal that will shortchange state taxpayers -- with below market sale proceeds -- and then shortchange local residents by shifting the money away from their neighborhoods in North, Central, and West Long Beach where Redevelopment was supposed to fight blight. Instead, SB 470 enables City Hall to spend the money anywhere for nearly anything, leaving "blight wastelands" (areas that need the most help) in its wake.

This shoudn't be acceptable to those of us who've spent more than seventeen years in the Redevelopment trenches. We've seen how our City Hall funneled huge sums downtown and adopted a major "Downtown Plan" with economic components that won't produce economic growth for Central, North or West project areas. We now know that city officials and our state lawmakers have brought the Governor a bill that would directly affecting our neighborhoods without even bothering to ask us what we thought.

If Governor Brown doesn't veto SB 470, the 40+% of Long Beach that was part of Redevelopment, where poverty and unemployment is highest, can now be told to "eat cake." Money from the Top of the Town can be sent Downtown for an elaborate "Downtown Plan," or even a new Civic Center, while we in North Town are given strip malls on the Atlantic corridor. (Like a new North Long Beach Fire Station, a new North Long Beach library won't bring property tax revenue or new jobs, and won't bring a major major commercial anchor or facility to create synergy in the area.)

No coffee shops, no computer cafes with coffee and WiFi. No Applebys, Lucy's, or any other eatery where families can sit down together for a meal in North Long Beach. No cleaners or other community connected services where blight ridden neighborhoods were promised improvements, but possibly low income housing to replace displaced North Long Beach property owners who were moved out for the sake of...blight removal.

So, what can we do about this? Email Governor Brown at this address. Urge him to veto SB 470. Do it now before you forget. Tell him it lacks check and balance protections for taxpayers. Tell him it fails to protect residents and taxpayers in former Redevelopment areas.

And tell him the sad truth: it was advanced by Long Beach city officials and carried by Sacramento lawmakers without meaningful public input. That public input would have demanded protections for residents of former Redevelopment areas. Failing to include those protections is a particular threat now in Long Beach, where officials declared nearly half the town "blighted" for promised benefits that never materialized under Redevelopment, and may never do so under SB 470.