I guess it was about to happen sooner or later: Seeing the rising public anger and the increasing number of anti-URD bills in the Idaho State Legislature, Urban Renewal Agencies (URAs) around the state are banding together to form a massive lobbying effort in the 2011 legislative session. Their goal: To halt any reform demanded by citizens who recognize the failed efforts and outright corruption of urban renewal in Idaho.

From an article in the Idaho Statesman:

[The] Legislature is no longer swayed by presentations from city officials about the benefits of projects conducted through renewal agencies. Lawmakers want to hear from the business owners who were helped as result of urban-renewal projects.

I read this as the URDs are going to be parading before the Legislature those crooks and cronies who have been given your property tax dollars to underwrite their for-profit ventures.

Here in Coeur d’Alene, your property tax dollars have gone to help big developers create a glut of empty condos and office towers. The overbuilding, encouraged by the LCDC, inflated property values and added kindling to the affordable housing crisis.

Since the economy tanked, we’re left with an overbuilt and empty market. Developers, urged by the LCDC to build bigger and better and promised the payback of property tax dollars, are bankrupt. Yet the LCDC is off the hook, whistling past the graveyard.

Where is the economic boom?

Where are the jobs?

The blame for this scam lies squarely with the elected officials who form these URDs. All over Idaho the game is now known: What could be a useful tool is being hijacked and abused by clever and greedy businessmen in cahoots with bought-and-paid-for elected officials in local government.

Urban renewal benefits the few at the cost of the many.

This. Must. Stop.