Oakland (Special to ZennieReport.com) – The Alameda County Grand Jury wrote a 2025 Report that’s an enraging study in nothing less than forgetting what makes up the economics of cities. The report explains that the reason Oakland can’t issue bonds is fiscal mismanagement. But after that, the Alameda County Grand Jury forgets to consider where the tax revenues used to pay for bond debt come from: economic development and economic activity. To cut to the chase, Oakland’s current problem stems from the fact that since 1999, Oakland has not prepared or implemented an economic development plan.
Think about it. Most of Oakland’s post-World War II history has been marked by a series of economic development events bringing jobs and revenue. The Port of Oakland’s construction and growth brought jobs and revenue. The Oakland Coliseum turning Oakland into a World sports capital also brought jobs and revenue to places like the Oakland Airport Hilton (which is closed now).
The Oakland Redevelopment Agency greenlighting the giant nine-block Oakland City Center and beating San Francisco in the competition for the Federal Building formed today’s Downtown Oakland. And that was matched by the new post-quake Oakland City Hall Plaza in 1995, and just next door. Then, from 1995 to 2000, North Downtown Oakland saw the expansion of the Kaiser / Ordway Center with new office buildings.
But since 1998 and the election of Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, which brought his housing-only 10K Project to bring 10,000 market-rate housing units to Downtown Oakland, the number of revenue-generating economic development projects slowed to a near-trickle, while then-Mayor Brown’s vision of “elegant density” drove up the number of expensive, high-rise housing offerings, but with no retail component to capture more sales tax revenue for the Oakland General Fund.
Then Jerry Brown Killed California Redevelopment Law In 2011
Then, when Mayor Brown was again elected as California Governor, he wasted no time in killing the number one economic development device that built Oakland: California Redevelopment Law and tax increment financing. And with that, Jerry Brown took away Oakland’s ability to “off-load” some City of Oakland labor costs onto the Oakland Redevelopment Agency, an action that resulted in smaller budget deficits.
And so started the gradual decline of available revenue with respect to city expenses. Then, The Pandemic and Oakland’s non-economic development response caused the closing of scores of small businesses and restaurants like the popular Luka’s Taproom, where I and many regulars celebrated major events like the reelection of Barack Obama as President in 2012.
On January 8th, 2022, in Zennie62Media’s Oakland News Now Blog, I wrote (https://oaklandnewsnowblog.com/lukas-taproom-restaurants-closure-a-city-of-oakland-business-retention-failure/) “Oakland has forgot how to do business retention, and that glaringly high level of ignorance has been on full display during The Pandemic”. And that was part of this section of that post:
Oakland Failed Luka’s Taproom Big Time Just As Its Failed Thousands Of Businesses
Look, this is from someone who’s first job out of Berkeley’s City Planning Grad School was with the Oakland Redevelopment Agency in 1987: Oakland has forgot how to do business retention, and that glaringly high level of ignorance has been on full display during The Pandemic. Rick and Maria have suffered through this going months without full income, and were massively harmed when the State and Local Governments ordered business closures without compensation.
Given that Maria helped Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf on her May 23, 2020 “Mayor Of Oakland Economic Recovery Council”, for the Pandemic, the work of the group was not to get money to business, but to make a damn plan that would sit on the shelf. I said that’s what would happen when the idea was presented (read the post “Mayor Of Oakland Economic Recovery Council Shows She Doesn’t Get The Immediacy Of Our Problem”), and it did occur (and the videos of the meetings are all here at Oakland News Now), and Oakland has suffered for it, like this episode with Luka’s.
Oakland’s Failure To Use Tax Increment Financing To Get Money To Businesses And Keep Its Sports Teams Wrecked Oakland’s Economy
“Cities are the engines of national economic development and global development, contributing to more than 80% of global gross domestic product (GDP)”, according to a research report called “Unlocking The Potential Of Cities: Financing Sustainable Urban Development” by the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, Inc. Since that’s the case, we have to ask why Oakland has taken its eye almost entirely off catalyzing economic development?
The answer is in Oakland’s over-politicized process of policy formation that has been fueled by the Strong Mayor System Jerry Brown got Oaklanders to back, along with making him Mayor of Oakland, in 1998. It wasn’t enough to elect Jerry, but Oakland also adopted Brown’s arguably anti-major economic development philosophy.
Brown fired then Oakland City Manager Robert Bobb for trying to build a downtown ballpark for the Oakland A’s in 2003. Prior to that, Brown did little to help Oakland’s bid to host the 2005 Super Bowl until after I successfully got Oakland into the finals for that event in the year 2000. In all, Brown set the tone for a politically-motivated form of piecemeal urban development that had little interest in helping businesses grow and thrive in Oakland.
Oakland Lost Three Major Sports Teams And Billions Of Dollars Of Investment
From 2015 to 2025 Oakland lost all three sports teams, Warriors, Raiders and Oakland A’s, representing $10 billion in value, and the Oakland Airport saw a passenger volume drop of 30 percent between 2022 and 2025. The death of economic development in Oakland caused the reduction in revenue from purchases, taxes, and fees, leaving City Staffers not familiar with how to respond to the problem (let alone how to recognize it) to start shifting deck chairs on the Titanic, and pointing fingers at developments that were really a symptom of the larger economic development failure, and not the cause.
And all of this myopia is evident not just in Oakland City Hall, but The Alameda County Grand Jury itself. The politically-focused nature of policy formation in Oakland renders reports like the one by the The Alameda County Grand Jury as nothing more than gossip fodder for the next round of finger-pointing. It stops when the finger-pointers get together and plan an economic development response, and a large-scale one.
But to date, that has not happened, and it doesn’t seem to matter if it’s former Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, recalled Mayor Sheng Thao, or current Mayor Barbara Lee, or the Oakland City Council itself. An Oakland City Council too willing to brag about its collective youth, but not display the bold plans and energy that come with it. All we hear is that the City, which is sitting on billions in potential tax increment financing revenue, is out of money.
The politicians run to Washington and Sacramento for hand-out-level help, when the giant injection of investment that tax increment financing can cause is either ignored, or evaluated by rank amateurs completely inexperienced in TIF, and with uncomfortable ties to traditional municipal investment bankers who like to get cities drunk on money from a city’s general fund. This is where Oakland is, and The Alameda County Grand Jury’s report offered no real way out.
Stay tuned.