Landowners Get Help From State in Kern County Dispute

The state has intervened in a Kern County land dispute that centers on how and when the government can declare an area urbanized and blighted.

A Kern County Superior Court judge last week allowed Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer to file a friend-of-the-court brief in support of a lawsuit that claims a state statute designed to help revive decaying urban areas is instead being used in a rural land grab by California City officials.

In 2003, California City annexed 15,000 acres, or 26 square miles, under the California Community Redevelopment Law and condemned part of it for a Hyundai auto proving ground that could add as much as $600,000 to the town’s small tax base. The $65-million test track began operations in January.

About 100 miles northeast of Los Angeles, California City is home to about 10,000 people and covers 204 square miles. Most of it is vacant, home to Joshua trees, tortoises, sunflowers and ground squirrels.

The city, California’s third-largest in land area, didn’t grow with the annexation. County authorities required it to give up an equal amount of land elsewhere.

The city placed the annexed property within the borders of its redevelopment agency’s planning zone, arguing that the land, mostly empty desert, fit the definition of blighted and urbanized land under California redevelopment law.

The redevelopment agency then invoked eminent domain -- the right of the government to condemn private property for public use -- requiring 202 property owners to sell their empty tracts.

An appraiser hired by the city valued the land at about $1,000 an acre. Seventy-four owners sold the land for near that price.

Of the 128 remaining parcels of condemned land, the city acquired 109 through settlement. Fourteen more are in the final stages of settlement negotiations. Five are not settled and not negotiating.

The redevelopment agency purchased the land using funds provided by Hyundai. The automaker had approached California City in late 2001, saying it wanted to build a 4,500-acre proving ground within a two- or three-hour drive from its design center in Irvine.

The city annexed land close to Highway 58 and Edwards Air Force Base and gave up land near the county’s tortoise preserve. Hyundai then bought almost 3,000 acres from Catellus, a real estate company that sells former railroad property.

This was not the first time the city had annexed land -- it added 15,000 acres through annexation in the late 1980s, Mayor Larry Adams said -- but it was the first time California City had condemned land.

The city’s contention that the land is blighted and urbanized is being challenged in a lawsuit brought by Norman L. Neilson, an Oxnard resident who, according to his attorney, June Ailin, owns land in Kern County near California City.

Five other California City landowners, whose land was added to the redevelopment area in 2003, are also listed as plaintiffs in the suit.

The attorney general’s brief supports their suit, asking the judge to invalidate California City’s addition of the 15,000 acres -- an area larger than Pasadena -- to its redevelopment area.

The city is allowed to file a response to the brief by Sept. 9. The trial is scheduled to begin Sept. 20.

Because little case law exists about the definition of “urbanized and blighted” in a rural context, the case would set a state precedent if it went to the Court of Appeal and the court published an opinion, said Ailin and Teresa Schilling, a spokeswoman for Lockyer.

When land is added to a city’s redevelopment area, additional property tax revenue goes to the agency instead of being shared with counties, special districts and the state.

According to Lockyer’s brief and Ailin, the Legislature’s intention in approving the redevelopment law was not to increase cities’ tax revenue by adding vacant land to their redevelopment areas.

In addition, the brief says, vacant land should not be included in a redevelopment project area if it is as large as the 202 lots in question in California City, most of which are 2.5 acres or larger, some as big as 640 acres.

“The law was not intended to deal with large, vacant rural areas,” Ailin said. “This area is not urbanized. It’s not blighted.

“The only reason California City expanded this redevelopment project area using eminent domain is so that Hyundai wouldn’t have to go deal with the property owners itself,” she said.

Ailin said California City was defending its annexation by citing a provision in the state redevelopment law that says an area can be considered urbanized and blighted if it meets certain conditions. Among them: that 80% of the area has subdivided lots of irregular form and shape that are of inadequate size for development.

She said the land in question doesn’t meet that criterion.

But California City officials said their actions are legal and that they resent the attorney general’s involvement.

“His purview is to interpret the law, not to make snide comments about what cities do or don’t do,” Adams said. “And if he thought the law was a bad law, he should have changed it when he was a senator.”

Adams said city officials anticipated that the condemnation of land would be controversial but were baffled by the opposition to a project that generated nearly 50 full-time and 50 part-time jobs.

The attorney general’s brief said this case is the first major development in eminent domain law in California since the U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision in a Connecticut case affirmed the government’s right to condemn private property for business redevelopment.

Critics of the high court decision in Kelo vs. City of New London say it trumps many rights of private property owners. Under the ruling, local governments can seize private homes, businesses and land for development if it betters the community economically.

But attorneys for both California City and the plaintiffs said the attorney general was inaccurate in linking the Supreme Court decision with this case because it doesn’t center on the use of eminent domain. Instead, they say, the question is whether vacant, rural land can be called urbanized and blighted.