You all know how this one goes: A project raises a new concern, so the city adopts a new ordinance after the project is approved – and then tries to apply the ordinance retroactively to the project that caused all the ruckus.

Despite a budget deficit so large that it triggered the first gubernatorial recall in California history, the administration of Gov. Gray Davis has shown scant interest in stimulating the economy. But with the chaos in Sacramento – and the fact that elected officials have a smaller and smaller role to play in actually shaping the state’s budget – it may be that no California governor can devise an effective economic development strategy.

In light of a similar ruling by the California Supreme Court in a case from San Diego, the First District Court of Appeal has ordered Cal State East Bay to revisit the question of offsite traffic mitigation in the environmental impact report for its long-range master plan. As the Supreme Court did in San Diego, the court ruled that Cal State cannot simply declare mitigations infeasible unless the state legislature appropriates funds specifically for that purpose.

San Bernardino County is not entitled to the return of $9 million in loan principal to the former county redevelopment agency, even though the funds were not tax-increment revenues and had come from the county's general fund, the Third District Court of Appeal ruled Monday.

A state appellate court has ruled that financial incentives the City of La Mirada provided to Corporate Express violated a state law intended to prevent cities from poaching sales tax-generating businesses from neighboring jurisdictions.

A couple of weeks ago, the satirical newspaper The Onion reported that the City of San Francisco was looking to relocate because its current location had become too expensive. Funny though this was, I expected the follow-up story to focus on the economic development incentive package being put together to keep San Francisco where it is.

The City of Newport Beach improperly permitted a councilmember who was openly opposed to a bar's permit to appeal the planning commission's decision granting the permit and to vote on the permit appeal, the Fourth District Court of Appeal has ruled. The appellate court also ruled that the trial court should not have granted the city a preliminary injunction to block the bar from operating under the permit approved by the planning commission.

For 10 years now, cities and counties have struggled with the question of how to deal with the potential for “urban decay” in an environmental analysis under the California Environmental Quality Act. But a new appellate ruling involving a Dollar General store in the unincorporated community of Joshua Tree appears to take the pressure off the CEQA analysis of urban decay somewhat – especially if the only evidence for urban decay is the speculative musings of business owners afraid of losing business.

Of all the sustainable communities strategies adopted under SB 375, none has been so contentious in court as “Plan Bay Area,” the regional plan for the Bay Area devised by the Association of Bay Area Governments and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District.

The division of one parcel into four noncontiguous pieces via eminent domain does not automatically create four legal parcels and permit the landowner to avoid the Subdivision Map Act, the First District Court of Appeal has ruled.

Reversing a trial court judge, the Second District Court of Appeal has denied an anti-SLAPP motion against a developer who has engaged in a long-running legal dispute over negotiations to bring a National Football League team to Carson.

A citizen group may yet be able to file a Brown Act lawsuit against the City of San Diego, challenging its past practice of permitting public comment on only day day of its weekly two-day city council meeting, according to a new ruling by the Second District Court of Appeal.