Should Californians vote to "protect our homes," or should they vote against a "taxpayer trap?" This, in a nutshell, is the campaign about Proposition 90, the property rights initiative on the ballot in November. >>read more

A plan that would overhaul the San Diego Bay waterfront in Chula Vista with a convention center, large hotels, as many as 2,000 housing units in towers up to 17 stories tall, and extensive parkland may be headed toward final approval after more than three years of work. >>read more

Changes to redevelopment law that are short of sweeping but still significant enough to stir the industry won legislative approval this year. The measures tighten blight requirements, ease challenges to redevelopment decisions and potentially limit use of eminent domain, but the bills do not go as far as originally proposed. >>read more

Preservationists have won at least a temporary victory regarding a big-box home improvement store that is proposed for the site of an historic IBM building in San Jose. >>read more

A local agency formation commission may impose as a condition on its approval of the incorporation of a new city the requirement that voters support a general tax funding the new city, the attorney general's office has concluded. >>read more

The California Supreme Court has recently accepted two land use cases and ordered an appellate court decision regarding fees to be depublished. >>read more

Lake Berryessa, a 30-square-mile federal reservoir in the hills northeast of the more famous Napa Valley, may be California's most secret lake. But a new land use and management plan could change that by promoting a more high-end tourist activity than the lake has seen in the past. >>read more

- AB 1387 (Jones). Expands a CEQA exemption for urban infill to projects of up to 100 units with a minimum density of 20 units per acre. The projects also must be within half a mile of a transit stop and comply with the local circulation element. Signed by governor. >>read more

The Bush administration brought its efforts to change environmental regulations to California in September, when high-ranking appointees conducted "listening sessions" in Redding and Colton - two of 24 informal hearings across the country intended to carry out a 2004 executive order calling for "cooperative conservation." >>read more

A Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rules that recall petitions need not be circulated in multiple languages, while a referendum in SF is declared invalid because it did not contain the entire redevelopment plan. An eminent domain action has been dropped by Yolo County to acquire farmland and open space while in Del mar, after fifteen years of planning, restoration of San Dieguito Lagoon has commenced. >>read more