The California State Controller's Office has released its anticipated review of 18 select redevelopment agencies, and the report is a blistering shot at the local agencies.

The report found reporting flaws, substandard audits, questionable payment practices and an inappropriate use of affordable housing funds. The report also found no clear methodology or data to measure job growth.

More over, the report echoed one of the most prominent criticisms leveled against redevelopement agencies - massive differences in how cities define blight.

Blight is at the core of redevelopment decisions. Before redevelopment officials can wield their extraordinary powers of property tax increment funding and eminent domain, they must determine if an area is blighted. The definition of “blight,” and how redevelopment officials apply it in specific local settings, is the pivot around which the redevelopment debate turns.

By playing fast and loose with the definition of blight, many California cities have managed to turn all sorts of areas into redevelopment zones, thereby making them vulnerable to eminent domain for private development. The recent SCO audit echoes the lose definition of blight implemented by cities.

The report found that one city, Palm Desert, spent public money meant for improving slums and blight on a luxury golf course. Near San Diego, Coronado's redevelopment area covers every privately owned parcel in the city, including multimillion dollar beachfront homes.

The report follows Gov. Jerry Brown's proposal to eliminate redevelopment agencies in an effort to help balance the budget. There are about 400 such agencies in the state, and they are funded largely through tax increment financing. In this method of financing, the agencies essentially siphon off an area's annual growth in property tax revenue -- money that would otherwise go to schools, counties and other services -- and use the funds to help subsidize development in the area. In turn, the state reimburses local school districts for the lost revenue. It's that annual cost the governor is hoping to eliminate.

To read the report visit: http://sco.ca.gov/Press-Releases/2011/03-2011_RDA_Review.pdf

Courtesy of the Cato Institute....

Or a new beginning altogether? Bill Whittle walks us through American labor history, focusing closely on the progressive movement’s salad days from 1890 to 1920 to argue that the world has changed so much as to make progressivism an anachronism. The Second Age, industrialization, required massive amounts of labor corralled into centralized production centers and cities in order to succeed. The labor movement (and progressivism) arose to combat the mercantilism of the robber barons that controlled industrialization, but those models won’t work in the modern economy, which rewards decentralization and rapid, small-scale innovation.

The unions can’t win in Wisconsin or anywhere else in the long run, Whittle says, because they’re defending a model that has long since disappeared:

Yesterday Gallup reported that only Nevada and New Jersey have a worse job market than California. Now California's economic image is suffering yet another blow as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce rated it in the bottom tier of states in the friendliness of its laws to business investment.

California was placed in the bottom of three tiers in a nationwide review of state business laws for the chamber by Seyfarth Shaw LLP, a prominent employment and labor law firm.

The chamber noted that California's and Massachusetts' laws are so unique that the law firm has published employers' handbooks just for those states.

"California has a large and diverse economy environment for new job creation," the chamber's report says. "The state is known for its persistent budget woes and debt, high taxes, and complex employment laws and regulations. The unemployment rate in California was 12.4 percent in late 2010, well above the national average."

The report listed specific factors in the state's "poor" ranking along with Massachusetts, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin. They include: "hostility towards non-competition agreements," complex and "elaborate" wage and hour laws, anti-discrimination laws that go beyond those of the federal government, tight privacy laws, personal leave laws that go beyond the feds and a ban on "use it or lose it" vacation rules.

The full U.S. Chamber of Commerce report can be found here.

Following up on yesterday's headline from the GAO that duplication in Government programs costs taxpayers at least $100 billion, the following clip from FoxNews discusses how to cut back on government and tackle entitlements....

California, which is still mired in its worst recession since the Great Depression, has the nation's third-worst job market, according to a new nationwide survey by the Gallup.

Only Nevada and New Jersey are in worse shape when it comes to creating new jobs, Gallup said, adding, "Despite an overall improvement in job market conditions, five states in the bottom 10 during 2008 and 2009 were also on the list in 2010: Nevada, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and California. These states continue to suffer from the housing crash and financial debacle that was part of the recession."

What Gallup fails to mention is that California continues to suffer from runaway spending in addition to a budrdensom regulatory and tax environment that smothers businesses and entrepreneurs - all of which are the primary causes of California's current economic debacle.

Energy- and commodity-producing states such as North and South Dakota and Alaska and Washington, D.C., have the best job creation climate these days, Gallup found, while perpetually depressed Michigan showed the most improvement in 2010, thanks to the revival of its auto industry. Other industry-heavy states also showed sharp improvements.

The results came from interviews with nearly 200,000 adults across the nation, asking them about whether their employers are expanding or contracting payrolls. Overall, positive job creation responses outweighed negative ones by 7 percentage points.

The Gallup report is another dose of bad economic news for California, which has shed well over a million jobs since the recession began, has a stubborn 12-plus percent unemployment rate, owes the federal government more than $10 billion for unemployment insurance loans, and faces a state budget deficit or more than $25 billion.

The full Gallup report is available here.

The federal government hosts 47 job-training programs, 44 of which overlap. It runs 80 programs for the "transportation disadvantaged."

Another 82 programs spread across 10 separate agencies endeavor to improve teacher quality -- something hundreds of local school districts are already focused on

These are just a few of the findings in the blockbuster report on government waste and inefficiencies released by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office today.

The report identifies billions of dollars in potential savings if Congress just had the will to streamline initiatives that target politically popular causes.

GAO’s 345-page report (PDF) was initiated more than a year ago when Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) forced a 94-0 Senate vote on the issue. Now, each year GAO must identify federal programs, agencies, offices and initiatives with duplicative goals and activities. It’s up to Congress to act, but given the recent desire to cut spending, there is no shortage of waste — at least $100 billion, according to Coburn’s estimate.

“This report also shows we could save taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars every year without cutting services,” Coburn said. “And, in many cases, smart consolidations will improve service.”

Some of GAO’s most egregious examples of government waste highlighted by Coburn’s office include:

•Twenty agencies operating 56 programs dedicated to financial literacy. GAO and agencies can’t estimate what they cost.
•The federal government runs 80 economic development programs at four agencies at a cost of $6.5 billion.
•The Department of Transportation spends $58 billion on 100 programs run by five agencies with 6,000 employees that haven’t evolved since 1956.
•Fifteen federal agencies administer more than 30 food-related laws.
•At least five departments, eight agencies and more than two dozen presidential appointees oversee $6.48 billion related to bioterrorism.

GAO’s conclusions repeatedly cited a lack of coordination between agencies. For example, the U.S. Department of Agriculture secured responsibility for monitoring catfish in the farm bill, splitting seafood oversight between USDA and Food and Drug Administration, according to GAO.

“Considering the amount of program dollars involved in the issues we have identified, even limited adjustments could result in significant savings,” GAO concluded in the report.

Coburn, who recently exposed fraud and mismanagement at federal job-training programs, has promised to keep a close eye on government waste.

“GAO has identified a mother lode of government waste and duplication that should keep Congress busy for the rest of the year,” he said.

Exit Note: If House Republicans still aim to fulfill their Pledge to America promise of cutting $100 billion, all they would need to do is eliminate the duplicative government programs pointed out in the report.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has taken sharp exception to President Barack Obama's criticism of the Republican Governor's proposed emergency legislation that would limit collective bargaining agreements affecting most public employees.

On Monday afternoon, Walker respnoded to comments President Obama made earlier in the day about the protests in Madison. JSOnline reported:

I’m sure the President knows that most federal employees do not have collective bargaining for wages and benefits while our plan allows it for base pay. And I’m sure the President knows that the average federal worker pays twice as much for health insurance as what we are asking for in Wisconsin. At least I would hope he knows these facts.

Furthermore, I’m sure the President knows that we have repeatedly praised the more than 300,000 government workers who come to work every day in Wisconsin.

I’m sure that President Obama simply misunderstands the issues in Wisconsin, and isn’t acting like the union bosses in saying one thing and doing another.