Well, it was a few weeks in coming, but today Jerry Brown announced that he is cancelling the sale of state buildings.
California will not go through with its controversial plan to sell state buildings then lease them back to help plug the budget deficit, Gov. Jerry Brown announced this morning.
The proposed sale of the California Supreme Court headquarters in San Francisco and ten other buildings would have raised $1.2 billion for the state. But Brown said the plan was short-sighted and would have cost taxpayers billions to lease back those buildings over a 35 year period.
“The sale of the buildings really didn’t make much sense,” Brown said at a news conference at the Capitol.(SF Chronicle)
Who says elections don’t have consequences? This is one very real difference. Had Whitman won the election, you can bet your bottom dollar that the sale would be marching forward.
On a grander scale, this is a step towards a more realistic, and less gimmicky budget. Despite the fact that this will add some additional debt to the short-term pile, this is clearly the right decision for the long term.
This is really great news for the state.
I was embarrassed for California every time I thought of this thing going forward, especially if it was against what the incoming gov. would have wanted. Great to see he had the authority (apparently!) to call it off. Now, about finding another Billion…
…he does the same for the Orange County Fairgrounds boondoggle.
In the movie It’s A Wonderful Life, George Bailey pleads with his neighbors not to sell to Potter. He warns them that Potter is using their fear and desperation to enrich himself, not to help them.
The building sale was a shock doctrine, sell to Potter ploy.
Thank goodness Governor Brown stopped this exchange of assets for liabilities.
Were the buyers ever identified? Chances are nothing criminal was done, but it sure looks like the deal was sleazy.