Jennifer Muir over at Total Buzz reports that the OC Board of Supervisors has decided to join in a lawsuit against the State of California to reclaim the redevelopment funds the State took from local governments to fund education.
County to sue state to reclaim redevelopment cash
Orange County plans to join a group of counties and cities in suing the state of California to block the state from raiding its redevelopment reserves.
Supervisors voted 4-1 in a closed session meeting today to join the lawsuit, which challenges a grab of $20.5 billion from local redevelopment agencies to balance the state budget.
Los Angeles County will handle up-front costs for an outside attorney and provide its own in-house counsel, SupervisorJohn Moorlach said. It’s unclear how much the lawsuit would cost Orange County, Moorlach said. Also not immediately clear is which other agencies are joining the case.
“We don’t think what the state is doing is constitutional,†Moorlach said. “And if we don’t participate and the lawsuit prevails, we still lose our portion of redevelopment reserves.”
Gosh, that sounds awfully familiar to the rationale used by the Board of Supervisors, led by Moorlach, to challenge the constitutionality of Deputy Sheriff Pension Benefits that has cost OC taxpayers more than $2 million.
The hypocrisy however was not in the Board’s rationale, but rather in the resolution they issued Tuesday recognizing October 4 – 10, 2009 as “Lawsuit Abuse Awareness Week.â€
Oh the irony. Oh the hypocrisy.