City of Bellflower v. Cohen
Annotate this CaseIn two cases consolidated for oral argument and decision, the Court of Appeal was faced with a facial constitutional challenge: whether the statute allowing withholding of sales and use tax revenues and property tax revenues violated Proposition 22 (2010), which prohibited the state from reallocating, transferring, or otherwise using revenues from taxes imposed or levied by a local government solely for the local government’s purposes. Under the redevelopment dissolution law, the Legislature directed that a dissolved redevelopment agency’s funds not needed to meet enforceable obligations must be turned over to the county’s auditor-controller for distribution to local taxing entities. After the California Supreme Court found that dissolving the redevelopment agencies was an appropriate exercise of the Legislature’s constitutional power, the Legislature enacted Assembly Bill No. 1484 providing what to do if the successor agency or sponsoring agency of the former redevelopment agency did not turn over those funds to the county’s auditor-controller. One method of enforcing the turnover was for the Board of Equalization to withhold sales and use tax revenues to which the sponsoring agency was entitled, and another was for the county auditor-controller to withhold property tax revenues to which the sponsoring agency is entitled. The Court of Appeal concluded that the statutes were unconstitutional to the extent they allowed the state to reallocate, transfer, or otherwise use tax revenue belonging to the local government.
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