Valery Pilmer, a former San Bernardino County land use services director, pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of stealing a public document. Under the plea agreement with the county district attorney's office, Pilmer was sentenced to 300 hours of community service and retired from county employment effective October 15.
Pilmer was indicted earlier this year on four felony counts relating to hiding, altering or destroying public records and lying about it in a sworn statement. The charges stem from the district attorney's long-running investigation of Rail-Cycle, a proposed Mojave Desert landfill. (See CP&DR, March 1999, December 1997, October 1997)
Pilmer's attorney, Dennis Kottmeier, told the San Bernardino Sun that Pilmer did nothing wrong and that she accepted the plea agreement simply to get the matter behind her. Pilmer had been on administrative leave since the indictment.
Meanwhile, the Rail-Cycle case — which allegedly involved fraud, wiretapping, burglary and other illegalities in an attempt to win approval for and open the landfill — appears to have bogged down. Some or all charges have been dismissed against four employees of project proponent Waste Management and a contract county worker. Also, a Superior Court judge ruled that prosecutors allowed their key witness to lie to a grand jury.
When 5.7 million people say they want to shield local funding from grabbing hands – as they did in November -- that should be the end of the story. At least, that's what California's redevelopment agencies would hope after this annus horribilis in the redevelopment world.
In Year Three of the Great Recession, it's comforting to think that California has heard all the bad news it's going to hear. Or at least we're so accustomed to bad news, that we've stopped getting depressed by it. As a result, many of this year's top stories come with silver linings.
The no-growth vs. slow-growth vs. build-everything debate has become a faint murmur, since not much of anything is getting built anyway. What is getting built, though, is generally pleasing to the smart growth crowd.
Fans of infrastructure development have surely cheered the progress on projects like High Speed Rail and Los Angeles Metro's 30/10 Initiative. Then again, skeptics may be assuring themselves that these projects will never get built.
A major residential and resort development on the Tejon Ranch has won unanimous approval from the Kern County Board of Supervisors. The project, known as Tejon Mountain Village, is proposed to have 3,450 housing units, two golf courses, 750 hotel rooms, a resort and extensive highway commercial development on about 5,000 acres east of Frazier Park.
Forced into negotiations by the state Legislature, the City of Walnut has dropped its lawsuit contesting the adequacy of an environmental impact report for a proposed professional football stadium and 3 million-square-foot entertainment complex in the neighboring City of Industry.
A project that had become a California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) lightning rod has apparently died. Nestlé Waters North America notified the McCloud Community Services District that it is dropping plans to convert a closed lumber mill in Siskiyou County into a water-bottling plant because it is building the facility in Sacramento instead.
A draft "California Climate Adaptation Strategy" recommends that development projects and locations be reconsidered in light of rising sea levels, greater potential flooding and higher temperatures.
California's farm and grazing lands decreased by 275 square miles from mid-2004 through mid-2006, according to the state Department of Conservation. A total of 81,000 acres of prime farmland were lost to urban development or other changes, the greatest decrease in prime farmland since the state started the farmland mapping and monitoring program in 1984.
A former San Joaquin County political operative who was convicted of corruption in 2005 has had five of 17 guilty counts thrown out by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The appellate panel overturned counts of attempted extortion against Monte McFall but upheld conviction on 12 counts of extortion, mail fraud and witness tampering.
The future of Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) service in the South Bay became less clear in March, as a projected revenue shortball and litigation struck planned BART extensions.
The Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) has released a new report in which it urges less reliance on state general obligation (GO) bonds to fund infrastructure improvements. The report, "Paying For Infrastructure: California's Choices," recommends reducing the voter requirement for local bonds from two-thirds to 55%, more user fees and expanded experimentation with public-private partnerships.
The state's system for regulating water quality is failing, according to the Little Hoover Commission. In a recent report, the investigative panel concluded the current system managed by the State Water Resources Control Board and nine Regional Water Quality Control Boards lacks transparency, consistency and accountability, and that the system does not demonstrably improve water quality.
