By Dan Walters, Sacramento Bee

Redevelopment is dead after more than six decades as a multibillion-dollar government economic development tool.

Or is it?

As the decree to kill redevelopment takes effect, the Capitol is buzzing with efforts to bring it – or something like it, or some substitute – back.

Gov. Jerry Brown nixed redevelopment advocates’ efforts to delay its execution by 10 weeks, supposedly to give the 400-plus local agencies more time to make an orderly shutdown, but in reality to keep it alive in hopes of a reprieve.

“I don’t think we can delay this funeral,” Brown said, making it clear that he’d veto any extension bill.

Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, who had voted for redevelopment’s death sentence last year, popped up with Senate Bill 654 to let cities retain the low-income housing funds that redevelopment agencies had amassed, rather than having them distributed to schools and other local governments.

If enacted, it would hold back $1.4 billion, eating into money that Brown wants from redevelopment’s demise by shifting their funds to school districts.

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