COMMUNITY REDEVELOPMENT BEAST MUST BE SLAIN; STADIUM PAYOUTS SQUANDER TAXPAYER DOLLARS.

Byline: LOCAL VIEW By Joel Fox

THE ancient art of alchemy is finally successful in modern California.

How else can you explain why a city the size of Carson, with an annual budget of $40 million, can reportedly offer $180 million to support the building of an NFL stadium?

Certainly, the city is not going to go without police protection and other services for 4-1/2 years while the $180 million is paid off. No, there's a trick used by the Carson Conjurers - my suggestion for the name of the football team if it comes to be - to make this money appear.

Alchemists created their magic formula choosing from their periodic elements table the symbol CRA, which stands for Community Redevelopment Agency. CRAs are state-authorized agencies created after World War II to help clear away blight and build low-income housing.

However, CRAs have grown wildly like an uncut vine over the last couple of decades. Redevelopment agencies are popular with local officials because they can raise vast amounts of money through debt without voter approval. All this is done with little knowledge or understanding about the process by the public.

Here's how community redevelopment works:

Community Redevelopment Agencies are created to redevelop blighted areas. Apparently blight, like art, is in the eye of the beholder. The definitions of what constitutes blight are loose enough to allow the affluent desert community of Indian Wells, with an average household income of $210,000, to create two separate redevelopment areas to control blight.

There probably is little debate that the toxic landfill in Carson proposed for the football stadium site is blighted.

Once a redevelopment agency has been established, the agency has the power to sell bonds and create debt without voter approval despite the requirements in the state constitution, which demand the people's acquiescence with most increased state and local government debt.

The CRA bonds are secured by something called tax increments. These tax increments are property taxes, which are paid on the new improvements on the land above the amount of property tax collected for the land and structures before redevelopment.

As an example, if taxes on a property are $1,000 before redevelopment, and $3,000 after a new improvement has been built, the additional $2,000 in property taxes would stay with the redevelopment agency to pay off the debt and other agency operations.

CRAs also have the power to give money back to private developers in the form of cash grants and tax rebates.

Seems like a good plan to clean up blight, but here's the rub: By being diverted to the redevelopment agency to pay debt, the property taxes don't go for their traditional uses such as schools, counties and special districts. The Los Angeles County Fire Department has estimated it has been shorted $16 million annually in property taxes in redevelopment diversions.

When local government and school district coffers are not replenished because of the property tax diversion to redevelopment agencies, they go looking for new revenues elsewhere. That usually means the taxpayers have to dig deeper into their pockets. Last year the county Fire Department put a tax increase on the ballot, which passed.

It is not only the local taxpayers who pick up the tab for CRA bonds. Because the bonds are tax-exempt, they are subsidized by federal taxpayers.

New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan introduced a bill a couple of years ago to deny the use of tax-exempt bonds for sports stadiums. Proponents of using stadiums to redevelop run-down areas argue that the economic benefit from the new facility and surrounding new businesses will more than make up for diverted or increased tax revenue. However, there is no solid proof of economic improvements. A Congressional Research Service study released around the time the Moynihan bill was introduced said new-stadium proponents generally exaggerate the economic benefits of stadiums.

One good thing about the high-profile bid to build the Carson football stadium with redevelopment cash will be the education of the public on redevelopment issues. Redevelopment agencies are shadowy governments that have gone far afield from their original, intended purposes and need a bath in the sunlight.

Respected former Sacramento-area Assemblyman Phil Isenberg recently told a meeting of the California Redevelopment Association to ban the use of redevelopment money for sports stadiums. He warned that one good horror story or misuse of redevelopment authority could trigger a move toward curbing redevelopment power.

Could be that headline-grabbing stadium in Carson is just the ticket.