California Community Redevelopment Agencies Annual Report Issued

July 01, 2006 | By PACIFIC LEGAL FOUNDATION

by Timothy Sandefur

The annual report on California's redevelopment agencies has been published, and it's available here. (It'll take a while to load; it's 696 pages long!)

There are 422 redevelopment agencies in California, operating 760 redevelopment project areas. Redevelopment agencies received a total of $7.3 billion in funding from federal, state, and local sources, including sales taxes and property taxes. They spent $6.3 billion, and although they don't specify statewide how much of that was spent on land "acqusition" (the euphemism often used for eminent domain), the report does break it down by county.

So San Jose (which has the most abusive redevelopment agency in the state) spent $6,354,946 on "real estate purchases" and another $45,688 on "acquisition expenses," in addition to $1,314,585 in relocation payments to people who were ejected from their property. In all, San Jose spent $327,054,287 on redevelopment in 2004-2005. That's more than a dollar for every man, woman, and child in the United States, or a stack of one dollar bills more than 20 miles high.