LongBeachReport.com | LBReport.com | Redevelopment/"Enterprise Zones" vs. Schools

(Feb. 8, 2011) -- "Saving $1 billion," headlined Councilman Robert Garcia's website, a fatuity echoed by others in portraying the biggest controversy in recent state history -- Redevelopment vs. Schools -- as if there were only one taxpayer side...when there are actually at least two taxpayer sides.

Governor Brown has said, in essence, that the choice is between the status quo on Redevelopment/Enterprise Zones or maintaining current funding levels of Schools (unless state lawmakers or others come up with something else).

A number of thoughtful editorial writers grasp this, among them:

LATimes.com: Michael Hiltzik: "Time to shine a harsh light on California's Redevelopment Agencies".
SacBee.com: Senior Editor Dan Morain: "Unlikely Ally For Brown's Big Fight"
LAObserved.com: Bill Boyarsky: "Controller Chiang: Show me the money".
And today (Feb. 8), SacBee.com editorializes in favor of abolishing "Enterprise Zones" (click here).

Of course for City Hall, there is only one side: City Hall's side. But that doesn't mean that for taxpayers, there's only one side.

Regardless of how one comes out on the merits of the issue, LBReport.com refuses to pretend that there's only one taxpayer side to this story...and we refuse to downplay the taxpayer aspects of the Schools side of this story.

What the LB City Council has done, in saying it's protecting local Redevelopment tax dollars -- when in our opinion it's covering up LB City Hall's use of RDA blight fighting money to fund what should be General Fund basic city services -- could (with other city halls) cost CA taxpayers millions into the billions that could otherwise be used to maintain school funding at current levels.

That's very much a taxpayer issue in Long Beach and throughout the state.

We take the point that years of Sacramento abuses -- in our opinion stemming from a lack of serious check and balances invited by rigged elections in Dem Gerrymandered districts -- have ultimately brought CA to this point. Handing the state legislature more money doesn't ensure that money will end up in schools. But if it doesn't, new state lawmakers elected from redrawn non-Gerrymandered districts could end up out of job.

We have no sacred cows under the statehouse dome or in the City Council Chamber in this. To us, this is a taxpayer/consumer issue. Taxpayers -- and in this case parents and their children -- are the victims here, not LB elected officials...and especially not those locally who told voters to elect and reelect Sacramento officials that they now blame.

If the state legislature balances its budget by cutting school funding, and that precipitates cuts in LB schools, we urge LB voters citywide -- especially those with children in schools and homeowners who care about schools because they affect property values -- to recall what LB Councilmembers did in "saving $1 billion" so those Councilmembers could claim to be providing services while "balancing" LB's budget from Redevelopment...at the cost of LB schools.

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