I had been pondering how to commemorate the demise of local redevelopment agencies in California with last week's state Supreme Court ruling, but today's Wall Street Journal did it for me.  There were about 400 cities and towns in California that had such agencies out of a total of 482.  It was basically a scam to get other cities and towns to pay for their redevelopment projects.  Burlingame never had one.

The decision frees some $1.7 billion to fill big holes in California's budget this year…. In the absence of the kind of viable development that naturally emerges from a dynamic private economy, (local) officials turn to schemes like this to force-feed new real estate into their communities.

So that $1.7 billion goes back to Sacramento.  Normally I would look at that as a bad thing, but in this case it much better than the alternative.  Chalk one up for the responsible cities and towns like ours.