Daily News Editorial: Like other cities, it's time for LA to seriously reform employee benefits

WHEN the dust finally settles in the battle sparked by Gov. Jerry Brown's proposal to disband California's redevelopment agencies - and claim the billions of dollars that goes into them - the only winners will be those who wage the war between state and local governments. Namely, the lawyers and the lobbyists.

It surely won't be the public who wins, no matter how the squabble ends. Indeed, the taxpayers are almost guaranteed to lose in the tussle over the state's 398 redevelopment agencies. At the very least, it will result in the loss of the public money spent since January fighting Brown's redevelopment raid proposal. At the worst, it will throw cities into chaos and cause widespread economic injury as projects already under way fall into limbo.

And we get to pay for it all.

The California Redevelopment Association and California League of Cities, on behalf of their member cities, struck back at the governor's proposal with a well-funded campaign that includes press conferences, an interactive website (protectourlocaleconomy.com), radio ads and massive lobbying of legislators and journalists. If that barrage doesn't work, redevelopment agencies are prepared to hit the state with lawsuits.

It's hard to say exactly how much this has, or will, cost the public. The CRA and League are associations funded by cities like Los Angeles, and lobbying for the redevelopment agencies is one of the

things they do for their dues. But it's clear there are other costs, as well.

L.A., which has the state's largest redevelopment agency, CRA/LA, has the most to lose in this fight. Last week, the City Council approved requests by CRA/LA to, among other things, pay a special communications consultant $50,000; pay the California Redevelopment Association $27,220; extend contracts with 19 law firms for unspecific legal needs and pay two law firms $700,000 "for advice and potential litigation related to proposed redevelopment legislation" as well as represent the agency in existing litigation filed by the LAUSD and the Los Angeles Community College District (more lawsuits that siphon off more public money into the pockets of lawyers).

Surely, many other cities across the state are taking similar steps.

The Daily News has supported the concept of ending or retooling the state's redevelopment agencies. The efficacy of redevelopment zones has long been a source of debate. While there's evidence that the agencies have done some economic good in depressed areas of cities, they've also funneled millions of dollars in public money into sweetheart deals for connected developers. As well, the application of the definition of "blight" has been liberally applied, allowing cities more money and more power over public land than they ought to have.

But what's becoming clear is that this fight isn't about ending a program with questionable results, at all. It's a money grab of the $5 billion in annual tax revenue that local redevelopment agencies collect. That's 12 percent of statewide property tax revenue.

Worse, the legislation that the governor has put forward to dismantle the agencies does it by essentially throwing them over a cliff. Nor is it as simple as it seems. The redevelopment projects aren't simply going to disappear, and someone's got to oversee them. As such, the governor's plan must create oversight boards for every single state agency. Where's the sense in that?

To be sure, the opposition by the state's redevelopment agencies is somewhat self-serving. The governor's proposal would dissolve them at the end of June, dumping thousands of people out of their nice city jobs. Still, they've got a strong point that this is not the right way to eliminate a government program decades in the making.

Indeed, if the elimination of an ineffective tool were the objective, rather than that $5 billion, the intelligent approach would be to gradually end redevelopment zones by prohibiting any new ones. Existing projects would slowly come back onto the tax rolls over the year and the redevelopment experiment would slowly fade away. The transition would be slow but orderly, an incremental process with the state getting a larger share of tax money every year. But that's not the proposal on the table, and what is, is hard to swallow.

Meanwhile, the taxpayers will continue to foot the bill until this debate is resolved. That could be soon, if the governor drops his plan, or it could come after months of litigation that only siphons more public money into private pockets.

There's no doubt that it is time for California to reassess redevelopment zones and reconsider their continued existence - but not like this. This proposal has devolved into a messy fight that's likely to cost the public without accomplishing anything meaningful.

A Los Angeles Daily News editorial. To read more editorials from the Daily News, go to www.dailynews.com/opinions.

Sara Foster Michelle Branch Esther Cañadas Cinthia Moura Ashley Tisdale