The biggest loser

The Sacramento Bee has a database where you can check how much your city - or local redevelopment agency - stands to lose due to state budget cuts. SacBee

Is the auto mall going extinct?*

Two of the most prized possessions for a California city are a big box store and an auto dealership. Many a redevelopment-agency loan was made to first attract and then keep these revenue generators in town.

But the economic downturn has sucked the life out of many big box stores, and sent a few into bankruptcy. But worse for cities is the loss of dealerships, which generate the sales tax needed to keep city services going. So the news out today that ailing GM and bankrupt Chrysler will eliminate hundreds more dealerships is staggering.

Chrysler told a bankruptcy court it plans to close 789 dealerships nationwide; GM is expected to close as many as 2,600. Already California has lost 145 dealerships and it's not clear exactly how many more will go. The LA Times reports:

Throughout the state, local governments are struggling to keep their auto dealerships alive, because most have become reliant on the big-ticket sellers to provide a steady stream of sales tax income.

Since Proposition 13 limited California property taxes in 1978, many cities have encouraged the construction of malls and other retail uses that bring in sales taxes to fund the municipal budget.

Car dealerships are now among the biggest generators of tax revenue.

*Update: Three San Fernando Valley dealerships are on the chopping block, the Daily News reports.

Saturday shorts

Cops create zone of silence around Scientology retreat in Riverside

This town ain't big enough for the two of us

Reason magazine's Matt Welch rants about whining newspaper journalists (warning: several straw men were harmed in the writing of this column)

City life causes attention deficit disorder

The new taxes

California law prohibits law enforcement agencies from setting quotas for how many traffic tickets they write, but weak budgets further weakened by not-so-clever borrowing schemes will, I predict, turn many California cities into speed traps in 2009. It should also be a lucrative year for privately run parking enforcement companies, which promise to "maximize revenues" for cash-strapped cities.

Don't think cities would do anything so egregious as boost ticket writing to offset falling revenues? Ask a scientist (emphasis mine):

Thomas A. Garrett, an assistant vice president at the St. Louis Federal Reserve, knew he deserved to be ticketed while on vacation in Pennsylvania a few years ago. But, he wondered, are traffic tickets purely about public safety? Or are other factors at play? Many motorists probably have wondered the same thing sitting on a highway shoulder waiting for a citation. But Garrett turned it into a scholarly pursuit. He decided to conduct a study.

What Garrett and a co-author discovered provides yet another reason to hate a recession.

Traffic tickets go up significantly when local government revenue falls, they found. Their study showed for the first time evidence of how "local governments behave, in part, as though traffic tickets are a revenue tool to help offset periods of fiscal distress."

I once uncovered a memo written by the then-police chief in Claremont that said patrol officers needed to write a minimum number of citations each month as part of their performance evaluation. That was a no-no. Most city police departments avoid stating a number, but make citation writing a part of a broader performance evaluation.