Proposition Thirteen. There, I said it. But I'm not the only one uttering those words during the ongoing discussion of the State of California's enormous budget gap. Just maybe, we can no longer ignore the elephant in the room. The state's fiscal problems are as big as an elephan

I'm sure that by now plenty of people would be willing to kill redevelopment just to put an end to the ping-pong match of debate that has surrounded the governor's budget proposal. While all very civil and often enlightening, it's a debate that has relied on a handful of studies

After meeting, apparently unsuccessfully, with Gov. Jerry Brown several weeks ago to ask him to back off of his plan to eliminate redevelopment , the mayors of the state's ten largest cities are reportedly lobbying for a compromise. The mayors' plan would preserve revelopment whi

Don't start dreaming about that downtown loft just yet.

Reports indicate that Gov. Jerry Brown will name Ken Alex director of the Governor's Office of Planning and Research. If confirmed, Alex will succeed Cynthia Bryant, who served under former

I have published so many corrections in my journalism career that I now write the correction along with the story. To wit: The following story is all made up. There is no draft EIR for the downtown football stadium yet. Yet few readers are aware that I possess the flawless crysta

This is how far out of whack things have gotten in Sacramento: Jerry Brown is now the one who sounds sane. Earlier this week, Brown canceled the planned sale of 11 state-owned office complexes to a group of private investors calling themselves, ironically enough, California First

Quick: what economic sector most reminds you of Los Angeles? Hollywood? Aerospace? Yoga? According to sports and entertainment giant AEG and a certain pastoral insurance company, it's none of the above. Last week AEG announced that Los Angeles' nonexistant downtown football st

In advance of the Feb. 9 Senate Governance and Fi­nance Committee hearing on the fate of redevelopment, the Legislative Analyst's Office has produced an extensive briefing paper encouraging senators to ask some hard questions about Gov. Jerry Brown's proposal to eliminate redevel

A few weeks ago, I had a good time taking apart anti-anti-sprawl critic Wendell Cox's self-referential analysis supposedly showing that highly regulated metropolises have higher housing costs because they are highly regulated. (" Wendell Cox's Voodoo Economics .") In sum, Cox con

Governor Jerry Brown's "State of the State" speech last night was probably so familiar that you might have thought you'd written it yourself. He outlined, in remarkably plain terms, the crisis that the state faces and, unlike his predecessor, took an adult approach to bipartisan

The constitution mandates that we build highways, but not bike lanes. So says Duncan Hunter, a freshman Republican congressman from suburban San Diego. I'm not making this up. A short interview with Hunter, a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, posted