Blogs

Like nearly everybody, I awoke last Wednesday morning to ghastly images and video of the Haitian earthquake. Anybody who lives along the California coast – and that’s about 80% of the state population – is likely to have respond to this event with a combination of pity, fear, sadness and possibly a bit of what psychologists call “the guilt of the survivor.”

What if the judges are getting it wrong? What if they don’t understand the law?

People don’t usually pose such questions in public. But I’m willing to risk it and to ask out loud: Does the Sacramento-based Third District Court of Appeal issue the wackiest California Environmental Quality Act decisions?

The weather report for commercial real estate is bad, according to The New York Times, which reports rapid falls in value in local office buildings. In California, the weatherman is predicting flurries of half-empty office buildings and shopping malls to fall on Golden State cities during the next two years.

Ask the people in Cincinnati about the wisdom of building publicly funded stadiums for major league sports teams.

The close of one year always induces predictions for the coming year. Putting one’s forecast in print – even virtual print – is a dangerous business. But I can’t help myself.

All of sudden, or so it seems, a stadium mania has overtaken California. The dreams, schemes and honest-to-goodness plans for football and baseball stadiums are coming so fast that it’s difficult to keep track of them.

I concede this list could be outdated at almost any moment, but here goes:

Which comes first, the car culture, or the infrastructure for cars?

The Regional Targets Advisory Committee reached agreement on basic principles that the California Air Resources Board should adopt in implementing SB 375 and setting land use/transportation targets for greenhouse gas emissions reductions. But if a panel discussion at an SB 375 event in Ontario last week is any indication, the individual RTAC members are still having a big of a hard time getting past their own agendas.

As the full weight of SB 375 starts to become evident, divisions on the state board charged with implementing the legislation are coming to the forefront. Some members of the Air Resources Board (ARB) are welcoming what they see as an opportunity to overhaul land use planning and remake cities, while others see the state intruding into an area where it is not wanted and has no experience.

The environmental impact report for the huge Sacramento rail yards redevelopment project was upheld earlier this month by Superior Court Judge Lloyd Connolly.

Two lawsuits over the EIR were filed – one by a group of environmentalists and one by Westfield, which owns Downtown Plaza not far from the rail yards. Both suits claimed Sacramento did not adequately address traffic and air impacts.