Last week, I reported that Governor Brown addressed 400 or so city officials who had gathered in Sacramento. He walked into a room full of people who disagreed with at least one portion of his budget, and defended it.

That was Wednesday. On Saturday, it became apparent that he hadn’t won over the group, but I don’t think anyone really thought he would. 

Instead, hundreds of city officials held a press conference at the Sacramento Convention Center, calling the proposed elimination of Redevelopment Agencies a “non-starter” and a move that could damage cities for “decades to come.”

Steve Pinkerton, the Manteca City Manager, maintains a blog. On that website, he chronicled how the press conference proceeded, who spoke, and highlighted a scary fact:

Redevelopment Agencies and the funds they control, employee 300,000 people. If the Governor’s Budget is approved, they’ll be unemployed come July.




From Steve Pinkerton’s Blog:

At a press conference this morning at the Sacramento Convention Center, hundreds of California mayors, city council members, local business and labor leaders joined forces to denounce the Administration’s proposal to abolish redevelopment agencies.

Wednesday, Gov. Jerry Brown addressed many of those same city officials during a luncheon at the League’s New Mayors and Council Members Academy. During that meeting, the Governor asked city officials to reconsider their objections but did not address the specific concerns city officials have raised regarding his plan.

League Executive Director Chris McKenzie was joined at today’s news conference by Sacramento Council Members Angelique Ashby and Steve Cohn, Jeremy Smith with the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California, Michael Ault, executive director, Downtown Sacramento Partnership and Alan Hersh, senior vice president, McClellan Business Park.

Read the full post here.