Suspected NFL ploy gets sacked in Sacramento

Quick as a wink, a bill to extend the City of Industry's (pop. 800) redevelopment program by 10 years has turned into a high-stakes game of political football, with accusations that the hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue will actually be used to lure an NFL team, Patrick McGreevy reports.

Pushed by developer Ed Roski Jr., who wants to build a stadium on 600 vacant acres he owns there, the city had asked for power to divert $820 million in property tax revenue from basic government services and use it for development subsidies instead.

But county officials, complaining that much of the money would come from their already tight budget, blitzed state lawmakers with letters and phone calls demanding that they vote against the city's proposal.

Hours before it was scheduled for its first hearing, state Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles), who had gutted an unrelated bill of its original content and replaced it with Industry’s bid, pulled it from consideration.

Roski's a billionaire developer whose company and employees gave more than $1 million to California candidates in the last five years. Among the recipients? Legislators, including Romero, who are involved in the contested bill, a.k.a. SB 1771. That bill started life as a program to teach imperiled homeowners how to weather the current mortgage crisis. Now it seems to have the NFL's emblem all over it.

More on the twists and turns in Patrick's full story.

Photo: Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times

Comments

[Frank]

I bet they made that decsion based on jelousy because LA is way better and popular than Sarcramento. Haters!