Vol. 19 No. 10 Oct 2004

Measures that would impose sales taxes for transportation dominate local ballots around California this November. Five counties are attempting to get voter approval for local-option sales taxes for the first time, while another five counties are seeking extensions of existing taxes.

The elections demonstrate the growing growing importance of local, general taxes for funding transportation projects. However, the two-thirds vote requirement makes the revenue source far from certain.

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A complex deal that would prevent large-scale development of the Hearst Ranch on California’s central coast is nearly complete. But the deal that will preserve the 82,000-acre ranch does not satisfy many members of an environmental community that has fought Hearst Ranch development plans for decades.

While environmental groups dislike the deal, there is wide support for it among ranchers, farmland advocates, area residents, and San Luis Obispo County officials and business leaders.

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A bill that would have required cities and counties to prepare economic impact reports for proposed big box stores that sell groceries received a veto from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

During a flurry of activity in September, the governor also rejected a bill that would have created a pilot brownfield cleanup program and a measure making minor amendments to the California Environmental Quality Act. Schwarzenegger signed two other brownfield bills, and measures endorsed by environmentalists.

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A state appellate court has rejected the City of Malibu’s argument that the state Legislature could not require the California Coastal Commission to adopt a local coastal program (LCP) for Malibu. The court also ruled that the Coastal Commission-prepared LCP is not subject to a local voter referendum.

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The Court of Appeal has again upheld a public agency’s dismissal of project alternatives as economically infeasible, even though the project’s environmental impact report did not include an economic analysis. The ruling is the third published decision in two years in which a court has said that an economic analysis does not have to be part of an EIR.

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In an imagined conversion, two security spies consider the design of Dos Lagos, a new project in the City of Corona.

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In a ruling with potential implications for development projects impacting wetlands, streams and lakes subject to federal jurisdiction, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld an injunction against a development in suburban Phoenix that environmentalists challenged based on the Clean Water Act.

Although the court did not rule on the merits, the court did indicate that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers needed to consider more of the 600-acre subdivision than simply the 66 small locations, total

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This month's selection of In Brief items includes Nut Tree redevelopment, a shopping center referendum in Glendale, campaign contibution restrictions for Ventura County developers, and competition for a cargo base in the Inland Empire.

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There is no more peculiar animal in California housing than the mobile home park. It’s a place where residents own their dwelling but rent the land on which the dwelling is located. The dwelling is theoretically moveable, but it’s not going anywhere. So the landlords and the residents are stuck with each other -- and in a constant struggle that involves government regulation, property rights and California's sticky affordable housing problem.

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Fifteen years after the Loma Prieta earthquake caused a portion of the Bay Bridge to collapse, no one knows for sure when a seismically safe replacement will be built or how to pay for the job.

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