Fresno has never been good with details

We shouldn't be surprised that city of Fresno's leaders didn't know there would be problems with redevelopment law as they were trying to help Donald Trump put together the Running Horse deal. From Mayor Alan Autry on down, this administration isn't very good with details. Now it seems the Autry administration is trying to divert the blame for the Running Horse problems to the city's Redevelopment Agency. That's not good.

Clearly, Redevelopment Agency officials have bungled this issue, too But let's get past the blame game, and get this deal done in a way that makes this a better city. The finger-pointing at City Hall isn't helpful. There are a lot of people collecting taxpayer-financed paychecks who should be very embarrassed.

The public doesn't care if the Redevelopment Agency is under the City Council, or Autry's administration. Residents see this as another City Hall failure. But this mess again raises the issue that Redevelopment should be under the administration, and not the council. The current arrangement creates an environment of unaccountability. The Running Horse issue is just more evidence that there are structural problems in Fresno's Redevelopment process.

Here's our editorial today giving The Bee's opinion on this issue.

This is part of the editorial:

City officials and Trump representatives alike seemed surprised when they learned that it would be difficult -- if not impossible -- to turn the project site in southwest Fresno into a redevelopment area. That's difficult to fathom. Much of the Running Horse land is rural, but the law allows no more than 20% of any redevelopment area to be undeveloped. In addition, the designated area must be clearly blighted.

It's hard to imagine that city staffers and Trump's legions of high-paid experts didn't know that.

Mayor Alan Autry and City Manager Andy Souza complained that the Redevelopment Agency didn't alert them to the potential obstacle until it was too late. Come on. The agency prepared a map back in 2003 -- when Autry was mayor and Souza was assistant city manager -- that indicated it was unlikely the area could legally be designated for redevelopment.

Singling out the Redevelopment Agency as somehow to blame for the latest collapse of the Running Horse deal suggests that the agency and its director, Marlene Murphy, are being set up to take the fall if the deal is permanently killed. That's unfair, to put it mildly.