City of Brentwood v. Campbell
Annotate this CasePlaintiff City of Brentwood filed a petition, in its own right and as the “successor agency” to its former redevelopment agency, for a writ of mandate to dispute administrative rulings of real party in interest Department of Finance. The Department, in reviewing an audit, determined that “tax increment” distributions the Brentwood redevelopment agency had made to Brentwood before the redevelopment agency’s dissolution in February 2012 (made pursuant to five agreements executed after January 2011 between Brentwood and its redevelopment agency for various redevelopment projects), were agreements specifically excluded from the definition of “enforceable obligations” of a former redevelopment agency. As a result, the Department directed Brentwood to retransfer these amounts to the trust fund that benefits the “taxing entities,” which, after successor agencies have satisfied former redevelopment agency obligations, were entitled to distribution of the tax increment under the Great Dissolution in lieu of the former redevelopment agency. The Department also rejected the inclusion of payments for these projects as enforceable obligations of the Brentwood redevelopment agency in the “Recognized Obligation Payment Schedule” (ROPS) for payments due in July to December 2013 (ROPS IV) that Brentwood had filed as the successor agency. The trial court denied the petition in April 2014; Brentwood appealed. On appeal, Brentwood argued article XIII, section 25.5, subdivision (a)(7)(A) of the California Constitution precluded the Legislature from retroactively excluding the five agreements at issue from the definition of enforceable agreements. Alternately, it claimed that the Legislature did not intend to include these types of agreements in the exclusion, or that the agreements come within an exception to the exclusion for transfers of money in exchange for goods and services. Lastly, it argued that the disapproval of the inclusion of payments under these agreements from ROPS IV violated the contractual rights of third party beneficiaries of the agreements, and the Department should also have been estopped from disapproving them because previous inclusions of these agreements in an ROPS was not a subject of challenge. Finding no reversible error, the Court of Appeal affirmed.
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.