Vol. 18 No. 06 Jun 2003

San Francisco International Airport officials will celebrate the opening of a new Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) train connection this month while lamenting the delay of an unrelated plan to expand runways.

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A specific plan for a slice of northern Monterey County that has long been seen as a potential growth area could be released this summer. However, the second version of a Rancho San Juan specific plan is unlikely to settle long-running disputes over how the area between the City of Salinas and the unincorporated community of Prunedale should develop.

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The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has turned back a San Diego developer’s broad attack on the Endangered Species Act as an unconstitutional exercise of federal power.

Rancho Viejo LLC argued that the federal government had exceeded the authority granted to it by the constitution’s Commerce Clause, and the developer pointed to two recent Supreme Court decisions striking down laws because they exceeded Congress’s authority under the clause.

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The Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency was correct to require a supplemental environmental impact report (SEIR) for a billboard proposed within a redevelopment project area, the Second District Court of Appeal has ruled.

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Whoever said that art imitates life has not visited one of Southern California’s neighborhood cybercafes, where, according to some planners and police, the reverse is true. It is in these mainly blue collar, immigrant enclaves where video games and youth culture have combined into a lively and sometimes violent activity, thereby creating the state’s latest LULU (locally undesirable land use).

In predictable fashion, cities are responding with ordinances, and businesses are fighting back through the court

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What began as an effort to prevent desecration of Native American sacred sites morphed this spring into a profound change in California’s mining regulations, a change potentially so costly to mine operators that industry representatives predicted it would bring an end to one of the state’s signature commercial activities: Gold mining.

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The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has approved a revised environmental impact report for the proposed Newhall Ranch development in the hills just west of Santa Clarita.

The revised EIR was required because a Kern County judge in 2000 found the original study lacking.

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An environmental impact report for a dairy in Madera County has survived a challenge from an organization that fights dairy expansion in the Central Valley. The Fifth District Court of Appeal rejected arguments that the EIR’s handling of endangered species issues, project alternatives and cumulative groundwater impacts was inadequate.

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A city clerk did not have authority to throw out a zoning initiative petition based on evidence she received that the petition had been improperly circulated, the First District Court of Appeal has ruled.

The city clerk’s role was ministerial, and she did not have the authority to consider extrinsic evidence about how the initiative’s backers circulated the measure, the court held.

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Like the lonely woodcarver Geppetto in the story of Pinocchio, boosters of "town centers" hope that the instant shopping streets will be accepted as the genuine article.

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