Covarrubias v. Cohen
Annotate this CaseNominal plaintiffs Claudia Covarrubias, Veronica Alvarado, Rebecca Rivas, and Lucila Gomez sued 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) to the fund for subsidized housing in the City’s redevelopment project area that was previously mandated under redevelopment law. Plaintiffs argued these came within the definition of “ ‘[e]nforceable obligations’ ” 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 ab initio, and thus survived the abolishment of tax increment in the “ ‘Great Dissolution’ ” in 2012. The trial court ruled that the strictly statutory obligation to make set-asides accrued on an annual basis and accordingly expired when the Great Dissolution took place; the set-asides therefore were no longer enforceable obligations of the redevelopment agency. It entered judgment in favor of both the defendants and the real parties in interest. Finding no issue with that judgment, the Court of Appeals affirmed.
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