Santa Rosa's redevelopment agency on Monday grudgingly agreed to make a $2.7 million payment to the state to keep the agency alive, a state requirement one board member called "outrageous."
The agency board voted 5-0 to make the payment to prevent the agency from being dissolved Oct. 1. The recommendation heads to the City Council Tuesday.
But board member Helga Lemke said she would vote for the measure only with "great reluctance."
"I don't like being blackmailed," Lemke said.
Lemke said she would have had more respect for the state's leaders if they had just eliminated redevelopment entirely instead of allowing them to make "voluntary" payments to avoid elimination.
"I think it represents a new low for the state of California, the governor and the Legislature," she said.
A budget deal passed in June abolished redevelopment agencies with one law, and then with another created a lifeline agencies could use to stay alive if they paid their share of $1.7 billion this year and gave up additional property tax revenue in the future.
The payment allows the city to preserve $40 million in projects and programs for Santa Rosa, a figure that represents the value of all current and pending redevelopment projects.
Dave Gouin, the city's director of economic development, likened the first law to the "kidnapping" of redevelopment and the second as the "ransom."
Gouin said state officials appear to have watched and waited as the various redevelopment agencies scrambled to tie up their funds to protect them from a state budget grab, and then wrote the law to nullify those actions.
"It's basically bulletproof," Gouin said. "It unwinds everything we've done."
Even though elimination wouldn't happen until October, Assistant City Attorney Mike Casey said acting now makes sense because it allows the agency to get back to work.
"Right now we have no authority to do anything at all," Casey said.
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