Covarrubias

Nominal plaintiffs Claudia Covarrubias, Veronica Alvarado, Rebecca Rivas, and Lucila Gomez brought this action against Michael Cohen, in his capacity as the Director of the Department of Finance (the Department), in order to compel the Department to approve the City’s continued payments of set-asides from “tax increment”—the increase above the tax base level attributed to redevelopment (City of Brentwood v. Campbell (2015) 237 Cal.App.4th 488, 492, fn. 4 [ 188 Cal.Rptr.3d 88 ] (Brentwood))—to the fund for subsidized housing in the City’s redevelopment project area that was previously mandated under redevelopment law (Health & Saf. Code, §§ 33334.2, subd. (a), 33334.3, subd. (a), 33334.6, subd. (c), 33670). Plaintiffs argued these come within the definition of “ ‘[enforceable obligation^]’ ” (§ 34171, subd. (d)(1)) of the City’s former redevelopment agency because the entirety of the set-asides to be paid over the life of a redevelopment project was due ah initio, and thus survived the abolishment of tax increment in the “ ‘Great Dissolution’ ” in 2012 (Brentwood, at p. 491). The trial court ruled that the strictly statutory obligation to make set-asides accrued on an…