"The California Report" on KQED today takes on the subject of redevelopment and Jerry Brown's plan to eradicate hundreds of redevelopment agencies in the state. We've already wondered if the cuts are going to stand, or if this is not just politicking on Brown's part in order to reign in a program that has gotten a bit out of hand, or strayed from its purpose. The argument is that redevelopment has become a too enormous and ill-defined funnel for tax dollars, many of which are just going to to development (of stadiums, say) and not toward eradication of blight.

"Many other states have redevelopment but California's redevelopment dwarfs other states' by a wide margin," says Maryanne O'Malley of the legislative analysis office. "And it's not because we have so much blight in California." It's because redevelopment agencies have more leeway and political support in using redevelopment for growth.

Critics of Brown's plan are quick to say that this is an argument for reform, not eradication. And why kill a deeply entrenched program that's been around for more than a generation when the net gain in tax dollars is going to be relatively small -- since most redevelopment dollars are already spoken for. In Davis, for example, of their $10 million in annual redevelopment dollars, only about $250,000 would be available to hand back to things like education and police, because the rest is tied up in affordable housing administration and debt service on already built redevelopment projects. It also remains unclear who would administer and deal with all this existing investment if the redevelopment agencies and their employees went away.

Listen to the full report below.