The agenda for this month's Coastal Commission session, which starts tomorrow, calls for one big bookend and a lively pile of locally debated items. The bookend is the Santa Monica Mountains Local Coastal Plan (LCP). After decades of false starts and uncertainty, and a stormy April approval of the policy-level Land Use Plan (see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3474), the July agenda calls for finally sewing up the LCP by approving its final local implementation ordinances. If and when that work is done, Los Angeles County will finally receive delegated authority over coastal building permits in the steep, expensive and environmentally fragile canyon country above Malibu. Fewer issues remain to resolve than in April. The staff recommendation calls for a thicket of changes to the Local Implementation Plan (LIP) but many are procedurally required to resolve settled matters, simply because the LIP draft currently before the Commission is still the one that LA County submitted before the Commission made changes at its April hearing. Areas to be reconciled include a "special compliance program" spelling out a relatively gentle process to bring the mountains' long-established equestrian facilities up to Coastal Commission code. The agenda item is 15a on the Thursday calendar currently at http://coastal.ca.gov/mtgcurr.html. Because nothing coastal is ever particularly over, there's a Malibu LCP amendment on the same part of the agenda. But it's comparatively a minor one. More significantly, an LCP amendment in Ventura would allow for new development on the 11-acre waterfront "Triangle Site". Commission staff are recommending major changes to the proposed amendment on several Coastal Act compliance grounds, with special concern for keeping some coastal overnight visits affordable. The staff report does not mention specific hotel development plans but does say the proposal would allow a 210-room hotel to be built, and calls for a $1.8 million mitigation fee based on that room count. Development plans for the site have been debated locally for years. Elsewhere on an agenda packed with small intense items, Google is proposing an office building remodel in the city of Venice; the Santa Monica Place Bloomingdale's wants to turn space on its third floor into a movie multiplex; and Commission staff want Donald Trump's golf course in Rancho Palos Verdes to scale back its 70-foot flagpole (see http://bit.ly/1zn7QoU). Strategic Growth Council meets July 10 on cap-and-trade funds The League of California Cities notes at http://bit.ly/1jm08qB that the Strategic Growth Council will open discussion in a July 10 meeting on how to allocate the $130 million in cap-and-trade funds that it was given to administer under the 2014-15 state budget. The agenda, at http://www.sgc.ca.gov/docs/July_10_Council_Agenda.pdf, includes an action item on delegation of powers. A brief staff report describes the statutory framework for the allocations at http://www.sgc.ca.gov/docs/Agenda_Item3_AHSC_Admin_Staff_Report.pdf. It notes that applicable law requires half of all Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities funds to be used "to provide housing opportunities for lower income households." A brief staff recommendation calls for the SGC to delegate powers to the state Department of Housing and Community Development to "implement the housing, transportation and infrastructure components of this program," and to delegate program components involving agricultural land preservation to the state Natural Resources Agency or Department of Conservation. The recommendation concludes: "This implementation will include, but not limited to, working with the Council to develop program guidelines including grants and loans, evaluating applications, preparing agreements, monitoring agreement implementation, reporting and amendments." For prior coverage of the cap-and-trade budget agreement see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3509. Westlands Water District contracts found exempt from CEQA California's Fifth Appellate District approved the Westlands Water District's 2012 renewal contracts with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, saying the changes they represented were exempt from CEQA review sought by environmentalist challengers. Per the decision's text, Westlands serves 600,000 acres of San Joaquin Valley farmland and has held rights over about 1 million annual acre-feet of federal Central Valley Project water. The case is North Coast Rivers Alliance v. Westlands Water District . The July 3 ruling is at http://www.courts.ca.gov/opinions/documents/F067383.PDF. Cupertino General Plan amendments out for review Proposed General Plan and housing element updates for the city of Cupertino are available for comment through August 1. Mercury News coverage is at http://bit.ly/1md0IpV and the plan revision site is at http://www.cupertinogpa.org/. Goals of the housing element include energy conservation and encouraging mixed-use development to work toward the city's Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) goal of 1064 housing units at different levels of affordability. Issues at the most recent study session in April included whether second units at existing single-family houses are an appropriate way to meet affordable housing goals, or what can be done to encourage mixed-use development and construction of small, affordable apartments. A staff commentary said only 31 second units had been built in Cupertino in the past seven years. San Pablo Avenue plan goes to hearings An Oakland Tribune report at http://bit.ly/1lRMNRf sets the stage for tomorrow night's public meeting on the draft EIR for the San Pablo Avenue Specific Plan. A collaborative effort between El Cerrito and Richmond, the plan would call for landscaping, polishing and pedestrian/bike amenities along 2.5 miles of commercial corridor.   San Joaquin COG approves transportation plan The Stockton Record has details at http://bit.ly/1mFODuJ on an $11 billion transportation plan adopted by the San Joaquin Council of Governments. Following new sustainability requirements, the plan proposes to protect 10,000 acres of prime farmland, add bike lanes, improve sidewalks and expand transit. The Regional Transportation Plan can be viewed under "Programs" at http://www.sjcog.org/DocumentCenter/Index/20. Moscone Center expansion nearing approval A plan to expand San Francisco's Moscone Center and environs, mostly upward along Howard Street, has SF Chronicle reviewer John King encouraged about recent plan revisions at http://bit.ly/1mbGo37. However, minutes from the June 5 Planning Commission meeting say John Elberling of the community development nonprofit TODCO told commissioners to "mitigate or litigate" pedestrian safety aspects. The current plan would raise heights and densities but would humanize streetscapes, at least by comparison with earlier designs. Moscone Center is part of the Yerba Buena complex occupying the large city blocks north and south of Howard Street between Third and Fourth Streets in San Francisco's downtown South of Market neighborhood. The complex at present invites approach only from a few directions, mostly through its landscaped northeastern corner at Mission and Third. It presents less welcoming walls to the public along much of its perimeter. When those walls were built, they faced into poorer parts of South of Market. While the neighborhood still harbors residents at many income levels, Moscone Center is now at the center of San Francisco's tech-driven real estate boom, and the Fourth Street subway extension is under construction along its west edge. The SF Business Times described commercial hopes for the expanded convention facilities at http://bit.ly/1n350NX. More recently Andrew Ross of the SF Chron 's editorial page did the same at http://bit.ly/1znmLj8. A city tourism press release said construction was expected to begin this December: http://bit.ly/1mde45H The Planning Commission reviewed but did not vote on the plan June 5. Minutes from that hearing, with a link to detailed agenda packet materials, are at http://www.sf-planning.org/index.aspx?page=3857. The comment period closed June 16. The official expansion site is at http://mosconeexpansion.com/. Direct links to the EIR are at http://www.sf-planning.org/index.aspx?page=1828. The Yerba Buena Neighborhood Consortium, which includes TODCO, had posted criticisms of the original Moscone Center expansion plan at http://bit.ly/1s2753s, including an argument that the plan did too little for existing pedestrian safety and sidewalk crowding. TODCO's own less specific proposals for the area, including Moscone Center, are at http://www.todcocentralsomacommunityplan.org/our-plan/. TODCO's role is historically resonant because it owes its creation to the 40-year-old conflict over demolitions of low-income and last-resort housing at the Yerba Buena site, which had been San Francisco's Skid Row. The organization now primarily owns and works with affordable housing properties but it also has taken a role urging protections for existing low-income residents in the city's transportation-focused "Central SoMa Plan" for the South of Market area from Moscone Center west to Sixth Street. (See http://www.sf-planning.org/index.aspx?page=2557.)  A separate group, Save Yerba Buena Gardens, posted a statement this week at http://www.saveyerbabuenagardens.org/ saying it may seek signatures for a ballot measure protecting the public park that was built as part of the site's 20th-century redevelopment on the north side of the Yerba Buena complex. And as you've probably heard by now: The Oakland City Council will vote July 29 on whether to take the new Oakland A's Coliseum deal. Council members are divided on whether to approve the plan, and local officials disagree on whether the Council even has power to stop it. The plan won approval from the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Authority board after owner Lew Wolff threatened to take his team elsewhere. For San Francisco Chronicle coverage see http://bit.ly/U1HDMf. Legislators are still negotiating possible revisions to the much-criticized $11 billion water bond measure, first drafted in 2009, that is still scheduled to appear on this November's state ballot. The statutory deadline has passed for new November ballot measures, but the Bee reports in a helpful background piece at http://bit.ly/1stbs4g that waivers are possible to swap in a fresher, possibly more popular proposal. The Mercury News reported at http://bit.ly/1kyGqmk that the city of Milpitas has won a court ruling that will delay construction of a trench for the BART transit extension into Silicon Valley. The city opposes the transit project's proposed closure of a major local artery, Dixon Landing Road. The State Water Resources Control Board has already taken up administration of the state's drinking water under authority transferred to it from the Department of Public Health by a state budget bill. For materials on the transition see http://www.swrcb.ca.gov/drinkingwater/index.shtml. Per the Association of California Water Agencies, long-term drinking water administrator Cindy Forbes has been transferred from the old office to the new one, now to serve as deputy director of the State Water Board's Division of Drinking Water. (See http://bit.ly/1nbt8Rt.) Business groups and legislators campaigned intensely in early July against a fuels element of the California cap-and-trade program that they call a hidden gas tax. See http://bit.ly/1lCAgkK for San Bernardino Sun coverage of an Ontario press conference last week. The Sacramento Bee at http://bit.ly/1vmj4FA has more on the industry lobbying origins of the campaign.

A planning change to reconfigure San Jose Airport for more corporate jet traffic does not need full environmental review under a state appellate case newly ordered published. The planning document challenged by Citizens Against Airport Pollution (CAAP) was approved by the City Council in 2010 as the eighth addendum to the EIR for San Jose's Airport Master Plan. It responded to projections for slower growth in the airport's cargo and passenger capacity than previously expected, and changed the planned use of a 44-acre area from air cargo facilities to general aviation "in order to accommodate the forecast that large corporate jets will comprise the majority of general aviation". Further, it called for modifying two taxiways to better accept corporate jets. City staff argued there would be no new significant environmental impacts beyond those addressed in previous planning rounds. CAAP claimed the modified plan needed assessment in a supplemental or subsequent EIR because it called for construction work affecting "noise, air pollution and... burrowing owl habitat". The group additionally argued new rules on greenhouse gases (GHG) and climate change assessments had not been properly applied. In a three-judge opinion authored by Justice Patricia Bamattre-Manoukain, the Sixth District Court of Appeal upheld the trial court's findings and its rejection of the environmental challenge. The trial court had found air and noise impacts from the most recent iteration of the plan were no worse than envisioned in previously approved versions and, in the appellate court's paraphrase, "the effects of greenhouse gases do not constitute new information that could not have been known at the time the 1997 EIR was certified as complete." It had found effects on the owl habitat from the proposed work on the taxiways (again in paraphrase) "could be mitigated, and therefore the severity of the previously identified impact on the burrowing owls would not be increased." The court declined to rule on the city's claim that CAAP had failed to exhaust its administrative remedies, where CAAP claimed the addendum process was not sufficiently formal to offer remedies to exhaust. The process amounted to meetings hosted by the city, followed by a notice of determination, while CAAP had responded with letters making "general comments" only. On the noise standard issue, the court followed Santa Teresa Citizen Action Group v. City of San Jose , 114 Cal. App. 4th 689 (2003) and Citizens for Responsible Equitable Environmental Development (CREED) v. City of San Diego , 196 Cal. App. 4th 515, 532 (2011) for the rule that an EIR must be conducted initially if there is substantial evidence for significant environmental impact -- but after environmental review has been conducted, "the statutory presumption flips in favor of the developer against further review." At that point, said the court, the question becomes whether the record contains substantial evidence for a finding that the proposed changes are *not* substantial enough to require a supplemental EIR. Thence the court found substantial evidence for the eighth addendum's conclusion that the new changes would not result in substantial noise impacts. CAAP argued for a fresh assessment of GHG emissions based on new legal requirements added in that area since the 1997 EIR and 2003 Supplemental EIR. The appellate court saw no need, noting that awareness and regulation of the GHG problem dated back to the 1970s. The court dealt with other air quality matters briefly, noting a finding that daily aircraft operations were actually projected to decrease from 2010 to 2027. The parties agreed on one definite impact: the new plan would cause the loss of four acres of burrowing owl habitat. But again flipping the presumption, the court found substantial evidence that the changed construction plans, as mitigated under an existing plan, would not make enough difference to call for a supplemental EIR. The city's 1997 "Burrowing Owl Management Plan" called for designating four substitute acres as "owl management area," moving previously created artificial owl burrows away from the taxiway work, and using one-way doors to keep owls from becoming trapped in their burrows by construction. CAAP argued, however, that even more detailed owl habitat mitigation plans had been found inadequate in San Joaquin Raptor Rescue Center v. County of Merced , 149 Cal. App. 4th 645 (2007). The court said that case "did not involve review of an EIR addendum and is otherwise distinguishable." The airport case is CAAP v. City of San Jose , available at http://www.courts.ca.gov/opinions/documents/H038781.PDF The decision was first made public June 6, then ordered published July 2. The publication order cited requests from the real estate law offices of Remy, Moose, Manley, LLP and Nossaman Guthner Knox, and from the Silicon Valley Leadership Group.

California's rethinking process for transportation impact assessments under SB 743 is still waiting for a formal proposal from state officials. The July 1, 2014 deadline for publication of a new draft standard from Governor Brown's Office of Planning and Research (OPR) came and went without the expected new document. Siddharth Nag, OPR's legislative coordinator and legal counsel, wrote in response to an inquiry: "The draft is not quite ready for release, but we hope it will be in coming weeks." He confirmed it would be possible to sign up for immediate notification of the draft's release by joining a listserv linked from OPR's SB 743 Web site at http://www.opr.ca.gov/s_sb743.php. The American Planning Association San Diego had scheduled a presentation on the revision process, but circulated an email about possible rescheduling that said, "We have been informed by OPR that the revised transportation metric guidelines will not be available in time for our event scheduled for July 11, 2014 (The legally required release date was July 1, 2014.)" A SPUR San Jose event on the issue was still scheduled for July 17 as of this writing. (See http://www.spur.org/events/2014-07-17/what-auto-los-reform-means-san-jose.) To date, the main public OPR statement on the subject is a "preliminary evaluation" of possible new metrics that the office issued last December at http://www.opr.ca.gov/docs/PreliminaryEvaluationTransportationMetrics.pdf. In that text, OPR staff said they were posting the document early to invite preliminary comment though no proposal was required until July. Almost a hundred public comment responses are posted at http://www.opr.ca.gov/docs/SB743_PublicComments_INDEX.pdf. Last year's SB 743 legislation required the Office of Planning and Research (OPR) to post an initial draft by July 1, 2014 of an alternative standard to measure transportation impacts under CEQA. The new standard must depart from the Level of Service (LOS) approach, which has been criticized as outdated, crude and even harmful because it focuses on avoiding auto traffic congestion. In its posted materials about the mandate, OPR begins by arguing a case against the LOS standard, saying LOS-based project reviews and mitigation designs work to the detriment of other transportation goals such as improving access by foot, bicycle or bus or reducing overall travel distances. Per the law's text (at http://bit.ly/1lM4qY8), OPR's July 1 deadline was to propose "criteria for determining the significance of transportation impacts of projects within transit priority areas. Those criteria shall promote the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, the development of multimodal transportation networks, and a diversity of land uses. In developing the criteria, the office shall recommend potential metrics to measure transportation impacts that may include, but are not limited to, vehicle miles traveled, vehicle miles traveled per capita, automobile trip generation rates, or automobile trips generated. The office may also establish criteria for models used to analyze transportation impacts to ensure the models are accurate, reliable, and consistent with the intent of this section." The December "preliminary evaluation" prominently considered switching over to the "Vehicle Miles Traveled" (VMT) standard, saying travel distances were easier to predict than congestion levels and that mitigation approaches focused on reducing VMT would do more to promote bicycle, foot and mass transit methods of travel. The VMT choice is thought to be the most likely, but the December document also invited discussion of other standards: Automobile Trips Generated, Multi-Modal Level of Service (including LOS ratings for transit, walking and biking), Fuel Use,  and Motor Vehicle Hours Traveled. Further, it suggested some areas could be placed categorically under a "presumption of less than significant transportation impact" category to allow new development in central areas already well served by transit. A June 26 explanatory article by the SPUR organization, posted at http://www.spur.org/blog/2014-06-26/can-new-law-free-cities-car-oriented-development, says some cities including San Francisco and San Jose are already moving away from the LOS standard. It suggests smaller and more rural cities may however seek to retain LOS because it suits more rural areas better and replacement approaches may be expensive to adopt. The SPUR article and OPR's SB 743 Web page identify the CEQA Guidelines Listserv as the place to subscribe for notification of the new standard. The sign-in form is available in the OPR listserv menu at http://www.opr.ca.gov/s_e-lists.php. The same list allows subscription to an additional listserv for SB 743, described as providing "information about Alternatives to LOS," but it's not clear how the two lists may overlap.

In San Francisco parking news in June, a startup tried to auction public parking spaces, activists sought CEQA review of a proposal to re-authorize free parking on Sundays, new data appeared on variable-rate parking, and drivers peeved at "transit first" policies were collecting signatures for a November ballot measure. No, really: in late June the City Attorney's office told a startup company, MonkeyParking, to stop auctioning public parking access to the public: http://www.planetizen.com/articles/node-70046. CityLab 's Eric Jaffe looked at some new data on the city's SFPark variable-rate meter system and found that in many ways it successfully rations parking by raising its price, reducing the amount of circling in search of spaces. However, he presented additional data from academic researchers Daniel Chatman and Michael Manville suggesting that, while the meters did successfully control overall occupancy by discouraging those willing to pay less, the result didn't guarantee that a space would be open when someone willing to pay for it wanted one: http://bit.ly/1mpUJOe. In a separate SFMTA proposal that a spokesman described as "part of our efforts to make parking in San Francisco more efficient overall," the city was considering charging at meters even if drivers or their passengers had disability placards: http://bit.ly/1luEAlO. And remember the CEQA appeal of the repeal of Sunday parking meter charges? The dispute is still going. As of mid-June the Planning Department and SFMTA argued that allowing free parking on Sundays wasn't a CEQA-reviewable decision, as recounted by Aaron Bialick of SF Streetsblog at http://bit.ly/1mg7FHD. The Board of Supervisors took the same position June 17 by voting to endorse CEQA exemption for the whole SFMTA two-year budget, including the Sunday meter repeal. For Bialick's account of the meeting see http://bit.ly/1qMvzKh. The legislative tracking page for the item is at http://bit.ly/1jFiAVN. Whether court action will follow remains to be seen. The Sunday parking issue, together with other SF parking restrictions, was becoming a cause not just for bike, pedestrian and environmental activists but for a car drivers' pushback group, Restoring Transportation Balance in San Francisco. It has been greeted with sarcasm from several quarters (including SF Streetsblog at http://bit.ly/1mSrCEo), but the conservative Potrero View neighborhood paper was cheering for the group at http://www.potreroview.net/feat10582.html and the group itself, with a home page at http://www.restorebalance14.org/, was working to gather signatures by July 7 for a local ballot initiative petition. The initiative would mandate free Sunday parking, condition new and variable-rate meters on a local neighborhood petition process, freeze city parking rates for five years, and increase representation for "motorists" in SFMTA governance. (A similar fed-up drivers' group in Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Parking Freedom Initiative, was working toward creation of a ballot measure according to its Web site at http://www.parkinglosangeles.org. While it appears there's no definite ballot measure text yet, KPCC reports the group has begun to get some policy traction with Mayor Eric Garcetti: http://bit.ly/1jFmjm8) After all of which, you'd be surprised how many street parking spaces there really are in San Francisco. Aaron Bialick decided to count them. He found that, lined up end to end, they would run 900 miles, exceeding the length of California's coastline: http://bit.ly/TzKE6G.

With a budget passed, California's Legislature has turned to policy committee reviews of bills and to negotiations over a water bond facing a July 3 deadline to be finalized for November voters. So this roundup takes a look at June legislative developments other than the budget that are of interest in land use and city planning. As discussed in last week's coverage, especially http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3509, a budget bill has been passed and signed, and it includes some policy measures such as a new power for the Coastal Commission to impose fines for violations of coastal access rights. (See SB 861 at http://bit.ly/1na4EDS.) Six measures are now on the November 2014 ballot, including the water bond bill placed on the ballot in 2012 and Governor Brown's bill for a state "rainy day fund" reserve. For current versions of the November ballot measures, see http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/ballot-measures/qualified-ballot-measures.htm and news coverage at http://lat.ms/1iNQQmC. Thus far the Legislature has failed to agree on a new water bond proposal to replace the 2012 version, as discussed in last week's news briefs at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3518. But an advocacy analysis by the California Economic Summit said negotiations for a different water bond were still in progress. See http://bit.ly/1qdJRV0. The LA Times was reporting negotiators meant to propose a new replacement bond package to the Assembly Appropriations Committee July 1. See http://lat.ms/1pG7LLb. As a function of legislative deadlines, every bill that is still officially making progress in the current session has been passed by its house of origin and by a policy committee in the other house. So, for example, AB 1537, to redefine Marin County as "suburban", has been passed both by the full Assembly and by the State Senate's Transportation and Housing Committee. Following is a review of June fates of bills relevant to land use and city planning. (For descriptive notes on many of the bills' provisions see our prior discussions at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3498 and http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3503.) Bill standings, end of June 2014: SB 1439 , the Ellis Act restriction bill to slow San Francisco evictions, was defeated narrowly in the Assembly housing committee and Sen. Mark Leno, its sponsor, announced he would not press the bill farther this session. For more see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3518. SB 2372 , the business property transfer restriction earlier viewed as a breakthrough toward possible Prop 13 reform, is still formally a live bill but may have lost liberal supporters. SB 1021 , also a property tax tweak at the edge of Prop 13's application, failed in committee. See our separate report at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3521. AB 1537 , to redefine Marin County as "suburban" rather than "metropolitan" for housing element purposes, passed the Senate Transportation and Housing Committee 8-1 on June 25. It goes to Appropriations next. The bill would reduce the default housing density for Marin County local housing elements from 30 units per acre to 20 units per acre. The Marin IJ at http://bit.ly/1x2WZi6 and the latest legislative summary at http://bit.ly/1lrbdAY cited an argument for the bill that default densities of 30 units per acre were interfering with negotiations to build affordable housing at all. Arguments against the bill include that housing element planning processes are free to adopt other densities, and that exemption from the 30-unit default density might set a bad precedent of relaxing standards designed to promote affordability. (On that last issue see Ethan Elkind's May 27 commentary at http://bit.ly/1qLpvln.) As argued by former Marin Assembly member Vivien Bronshvag, the measure is pushback against ABAG requirements viewed as imposed arbitrarily on a regional rather than locally suited basis: http://bit.ly/1mM1que. The Sustainable Cities Collective reported at http://bit.ly/TIxhAw that although Marin County housing stock grew by just 0.25%, Marin County towns gained population by about 1% in 2013 (excluding unincorporated areas, which grew more slowly). For more background from May see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3503. SB 968 , for public access to the disputed Martins Beach, was approved 7-1 in the Assembly Judiciary Committee June 26, but in significantly weakened form. The Mercury News reported that the original bill called for the State Lands Commission to make a forced purchase of the access road if owner Vinod Khosla wouldn't open it, but the current bill only calls on the commission to consider buying it. The news report attributed the change to lobbying by former Assembly member Rusty Areias, now with California Strategies and representing Khosla. See http://bit.ly/UJxiVZ.The bill's author, Sen. Jerry Hill of San Mateo, told the paper, "This keeps the bill alive and keeps the conversation going." (For legislative history see the CACities page at http://bit.ly/1vqgONB -- the official page may not be fully updated.) The case has drawn wide attention meanwhile, including a recent feature news writeup in the New York Times at http://nyti.ms/1z3t0s7. The Surfrider Foundation's lawsuit in San Mateo County Superior Court on the same issue is currently set for trial July 16. Briefs in the matter can be viewed at http://openaccess1.sanmateocourt.org/openaccess/civil/default.asp under Case No. CIV 520336. One particularly remarked brief, filed by attorneys for Khosla's LLCs in early June, reaches back to an 1859 land case interpreting application to the site of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo for authority against Surfrider's claim of access rights under the Coastal Act. SB 270 , to ban single-use carryout bags, has amended the provision mentioned at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3481 that encourages local governments to pass their own plastic-bag bans before the state-level one comes down. The current bill withholds state-level preemption from local plastic bag ordinances that go to a first reading before September 1, 2014 and are adopted by September 1, 2015. Localities recently banning plastic bags include: The city of LA, where a prior ordinance just took effect for small grocers: http://lat.ms/1lFAEU6 Davis passed a ban in late June, and Sacramento Bee coverage notes bans now exist in 110 California jurisdictions, including bans within the year by Chico, Truckee, South Lake Tahoe, Palm Desert, Palm Springs, Desert Hot Springs and Nevada City: http://bit.ly/1vpVcRl The League of California Cities has been noting cities working on bans, including Encinitas: http://bit.ly/1pFDGeG and Martinez: http://martinezgazette.com/archives/15028 The city of San Jose and creekside cleanup activists each say they're seeing less plastic bag litter since the city's bag ban took effect in 2012. See http://www.sanjoseca.gov/index.aspx?nid=1526.  AB 2130 was signed by Governor Brown just three days before the mandatory effective date of a public health bill that would have required all food handlers to wear protective gloves -- even bartenders and sushi chefs. Assemblyman Richard Pan brought the measure to undo his own earlier bill. See http://bit.ly/VBch0d. For last year's tongue-in-cheek commentary and background from Josh Stephens, see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3438. SB 69 , to replace Vehicle License Fee revenue for four newly created municipalities, including Jurupa Valley, was still moving and still appeared to have a chance. For details on this compensation bill for new towns stranded by 2011 budget cuts, see our recent news feature at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3515. AB 1521 , similar to SB 69, would replace funding that was expected as of 2011 for recent annexations to existing cities. Itw as approved by its first Senate committee but with a revised funding formula. See http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3516 and, for the recent amendments, http://bit.ly/1qCEuQQ. AB 1513 was still moving through the Legislature on a public safety track but tenant advocates feared it could be bad for tenants' rights in housing. The bill would create a pilot program in Lancaster and Palmdale allowing an owner of residential property labeled as "vacant" to resume possession of it "by declaration" in an expedited, police-enforced 48-hour process. The process would place the burden on occupants of the property to prove they had rights to be there. It's presented as an anti-squatter measure but tenant advocates fear it could be used to short-circuit the procedural guarantees of the eviction process in conventional landlord-tenant relations. See the final item in prior legislative briefs at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3498 for some concerns on this unusual bill. The June 23 Senate committee analysis explains the concerns further with some intensity, breaking into anxious block capitals at several moments. See http://bit.ly/1iooOZ2. AB 2145 , to change rules on community choice aggregation for clean electrical power, dropped a provision that would have required individual electricity customers to opt in to clean power rather than being automatically enrolled. The Santa Rosa Press Democrat at http://bit.ly/1mfIsgE attributes the change especially to advocates for the existing Sonoma Clean Power community-choice aggregation utility. The opponents' site at http://www.no2145.org celebrated removal of the provision but criticized others that remained, and looked toward a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing in August. The bill, sponsored by the Coalition of California Utility Employees, is supported by PG&E, San Diego Gas & Electric, significant organized labor groups and a few chambers of commerce. The opponents (a longer list) are mainly city governments, small utilities and environmental groups. The state legislative page for the bill is at http://bit.ly/1p5rUqk. SB 1199 , to designate almost 37 miles of the Mokelumne River as "wild and scenic," passed the Assembly Natural Resources Committee June 23 in a version previously amended to adjust the affected area around EBMUD's Pardee Reservoir and to defer to upstream water districts' rights and projects. These amendments did not resolve a further question about the bill's future that was raised earlier this season in a news analysis by East Bay Express co-editor Robert Gammon (http://bit.ly/1qduHzh). Writing back in May, Gammon suggested that EBMUD might push to condition the scenic designation on what he termed a "poison pill": a requirement for a community approval process (in addition to legislative approval) that would fail if agreement couldn't be won from conservative local officials upstream. The bill appeared to have achieved Assembly Natural Resources passage June 23 without picking up such provisions. A June 24 statement on the vote by the Foothill Conservancy, which has campaigned for scenic designation, was celebratory in tone but said sponsor Loni Hancock "has pledged to work with the opponents of the bill on amendments to address their concerns." See http://bit.ly/1iUn3Ja. AB 2293 , to impose added insurance requirements on "ride-sharing" services, passed the Senate Insurance Committee June 25 in what Patrick Hoge of the SF Business Times called a "significant defeat" for the Uber and Lyft services. The bill would require Internet-dispatched car services, defined as "Transportation Network Companies," to carry defined levels of liability insurance coverage for drivers while they have their phone apps turned on waiting for calls, in addition to coverage already required by law for drivers who have actually accepted calls. The legislation responds in part to a tragedy last New Year's Eve in San Francisco, when an Uber driver who was between calls struck and killed a six-year-old girl, Sophia Liu. Witnesses at the June 25 hearing included Sophia Liu's mother, Huan Kuang, who was also injured in the crash. Outside, cab drivers picketed in support of more regulation. For details see http://bit.ly/1x90bZo and http://bit.ly/1z3ZD9c. The Insurance Committee legislative analysis of June 23 at http://bit.ly/1iPRGjl is especially detailed. KQED has a more detailed but earlier discussion at http://blogs.kqed.org/newsfix/06/17/2014/Uber-Lyft-Insurance-crack-down. It includes description of AB 612 , a bill on permit conditions for drivers such as drug testing that would imitate current requirements for taxi drivers. Bills also in play The following bills were also passed by their policy committees, hence are still alive in the session. Many of these were previously profiled in our May and June legislative analyses. (Bill information, including legislative analyses, is at http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/.) SB 1424 , City of Martinez tidelands transfer. SB 2135 , affordable housing priority for surplus public land AB 2104 , overriding HOA landscaping rules to save water AB 2493 , post-Redevelopment release of $750 million in project funds to cities. SB 1129 , post-Redevelopment cleanup AB 2280 , re-create some elements of Redevelopment with a housing emphasis AB 1404 , allow and require San Francisco Redevelopment's successor agency to rebuild over 5000 affordable housing units lost to the city through "urban renewal" demolitions 1955-1975 AB 2417 , provide CEQA exemptions for "purple pipe" distribution of recycled water AB 1739 & SB 1168 , groundwater management: see ACWA comment at http://bit.ly/UJPNtd AB 2453 , Paso Robles water district governance by a locally controversial "hybrid" board structure SB 1077 , pilot program imposing auto tax based on miles traveled AB 1999 , state historic rehabilitation tax credit -- see League of CA Cities tracking page at http://bit.ly/1r9uezM Gut-and-amends Two bills that were originally written for post-Redevelopment purposes are now gut-and-amends directed toward other goals: AB 2292 was originally proposed as a quasi-Redevelopment bill, to expand infrastructure financing districts (IFDs) specifically for Oakland's Coliseum City, Howard Terminal and Oakland Army Base sites, all of which were already development targets. However, the June 11 State Senate Governance and Finance Committee approval was for an amended bill that replaced all references to the three sites with authorization for IFDs to fund broadband communications network facilities. AB 2549 , originally to create a local commission on Milpitas' post-Redevelopment funding losses, passed the Governance and Finance Committee as a gambling control measure.

Two bills and a lawsuit that sought to limit Proposition 13's restriction of commercial property taxes were failed or flagging as of late June. The Sacramento Bee 's Dan Walters reported at http://bit.ly/UMvc7E that AB 2372 was losing momentum as it entered the State Senate. The bill had been hailed earlier as a breakthrough compromise to close a Prop 13 commercial property tax loophole. But Walters wrote that lobbyist Lenny Goldberg, representing the California Tax Reform Association, pulled support from the measure June 25, the same day it passed the Senate Governance and Finance Committee. Goldberg, he wrote, had been a key party to a compromise announced in May that brought together perennial opponents and defenders of Prop 13 to support the bill. The bill, by Assemblymembers Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, and Raul Bocanegra, D-San Fernando Valley, would block a method of avoiding reassessment for property tax purposes when business real estate changes hands: instead of transferring the property formally to a new owner, control over the owning entity is divided among a new group of people or entities, invoking an existing definition of corporate reorganization that currently exempts such transactions from reassessment. The bill would impose reassessment if 90% or more of the ownership interests changed hands within three years -- though successive amendments have narrowed its application. For prior coverage see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3494 and the Socketsite real estate blog at http://bit.ly/1qpbGeF. Walters quoted Goldberg's withdrawal letter to Assembly sponsor Tom Ammiano as saying the bill did not "provide real reform" because it would not apply retroactively to the kinds of exemption it was meant to stop and would allow too many other ways around reassessment. Walters suggested that, if the measure failed, it might strengthen the possibility of a ballot initiative for a "split roll" giving different tax treatment to residential and commercial properties. Also in June, the LA County Assessor's challenge to a version of this type of transaction was defeated in Ocean Avenue LLC v. County of Los Angeles . The Second District Court of Appeal found on June 3 that reassessment was not triggered when three entities closely linked to Michael Dell of the Dell computer company acquired ownership of the LLC that holds the Fairmont Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica. (The June 23 committee analysis of AB 2372 at http://bit.ly/1i0mbN1 mentions that outcome specifically, saying "more than $1 million" in tax liability was saved.) The Second District issued orders slightly revising the decision and publishing it as of June 24. See http://bit.ly/1m0Wn8C. For a detailed analysis of the case -- written on the assumption that AB 2372 was likely to pass --  see the Pillsbury law firm's site at http://bit.ly/1k3I7Id. SB 1021, a measure allowing limited higher commercial parcel taxes that was criticized by opponents as a "split roll" proposal, still had prospects when Walters' article on AB 2372 went to press, but the Assembly Revenue and Taxation Committee rejected it 4-1 the same day. On June 26 the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers' Association crowed on Twitter, "Yesterday SB 1021 was defeated... changed how education parcel taxes are assessed for tens of thousands of properties. Victory for #prop13." (https://twitter.com/HJTA/status/482283390432198656). For the bill's formal history see http://bit.ly/TIgFcl. For more detail and links see our prior coverage at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3494.

A coalition of San Francisco tenants' groups has won the needed four votes from county Supervisors to place an "anti-speculation tax" initiative on the city and county municipal ballot in November. The initiative, which would impose a 24-percent tax on investors who sell rental housing within five years of purchase, is the latest attempt of long-time city residents to beat back the waves of rising rents and housing values in what has become the nation's most expensive housing market. The anti-speculation tax may carry an extra emotional charge for some of its supporters: a similar proposal was one of the last projects of legendary gay rights activist and San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk before he was assassinated in 1978. The umbrella group campaigning for this November's ballot measure, known as the Anti-Displacement Coalition, includes the San Francisco Tenants' Union, Causa Justa/Just Cause, Eviction Defense Collaborative, Housing Rights Committee, and the Chinatown Community Development Center. However sympathetically we may view the frustrations of working-class and middle-class people facing rapidly rising housing prices, it seems unlikely that either the initiative process or other political efforts can control gentrification and runaway real estate speculation. Part of the reason is the law and another part concerns the nature of cities and investment cycles.  Although nobody can predict elections, it is plausible, if far from certain, that the anti-tax initiative could squeak through in November. The city population has a plurality of renters, most of whom are unable to move from their rent-controlled units into other rental properties; in San Francisco, a one-bedroom unit can command $3,500 in monthly rent. Even for a non-lawyer like the present writer, the anti-speculation tax seems unworkable. One does not have to be a glassy-eyed supporter of property rights to realize that a 24-percent tax on a private investment is onerous. Even if foes of gentrification can see a clear public purpose in punishing short-term investors, the law probably does not. Then there's the equity issue: Why would housing investors be subject to a punitive tax, while owners of other forms of investment real estate would not share a similar burden? How would the law handle cases of mixed-use developments that combine housing with retail, office, childcare and health clinics? For example, would the law require the owner to pay a full 24 percent of the sale proceeds of a mixed-use property? Or could the owner negotiate a partial payment, based on some arcane formula, such as the percentage of the total square footage devoted to housing, perhaps, or the percentage of income that the rental housing units contribute to the total cash flow? And then there would be loopholes for people who inherited property and wanted to liquidate their estates within five years. What would stop those heirs from forming limited partnerships with real estate investors? And so on. Even if the law survived a constitutional challenge, which is unlikely, it would be full of loopholes as a piece of French lace. The deeper problem is the nature of cities. Cities are dynamic places where change is axiomatic. The dirty secret is that cities live on money. Successful cities are those that are able to attract a steady flow of investment in private homes, rental housing, commercial space and public areas. In a sense, cities are fossil records of the periods of greatest investment, because those periods are when the greatest amounts of construction and re-construction occur. And current levels of investment, like it or not, make the difference between San Francisco and Detroit. In a perfect world, cities would experience just enough investment to maintain property values while discouraging neighborhoods from deteriorating into slums. But investment is not rational, and the current phenomenon of investment in Bay Area housing is a case in point. This is an overheated housing bubble. Bubbles do not last. Real estate is cyclical by its nature: Bust follows boom every four or five years; the prolonged recession in recent years was a rare exception. Long-time Bay Area residents will recall that the Dot-Com Boom, the boom that promised to change the rules of the economy forever (alas for days gone by!) was followed by the Tech Wreck. That collapse in values left many offices and storefronts suddenly empty South of Market, together with tens of millions of square feet of office space in throughout the Bay Area and Silicon Valley. People lost their jobs or could no longer afford to live in the Bay Area. At one point, San Francisco residential vacancies approached 10 percent. The same fate awaits the current tech-driven housing bubble. Something will inevitably spoil the run-up in prices. For starters, technology is mercurial. Apple, Google, Oracle and Adobe, inconceivable as it sounds, may all lose market share and pull back at some time in the future. Intel and Microsoft, formerly viewed as bulletproof, have already lost ground; Blackberry and Nokia, market leaders in their time, are much diminished. Does anyone remember that Cisco Systems was the highest cap stock at one point? Beyond the fortunes of technology, a national or global recession could dampen the market. So could, God forbid, the unexpected shifting of continental plates. The only certainty is that the market will cool and values will drop somewhat. It's true that San Francisco has been Manhattanized and that the social cost is high. So far, it's proven difficult or impossible to legislate a certain kind of urban quality, at least in America. The law seems largely indifferent to urban quality, which can mean different things to different people. (Personally, I'm attracted to messiness, crowding and near-insoluble infrastructure problems, but I realize this is a personal taste.) Alas, the trickle-down theory, justly maligned in macro-economics, may be applicable to cities: Where there's money, there are exciting shopping streets, exciting new buildings and preservation, and hot new districts. And bountiful tax proceeds bring in public money for museums and parks. In short, cycles of reinvestment and disinvestment are the cost of remaining a money-center city. As in nature, the presence of too many nutrients for one species may cause one part of an ecosystem to grow too quickly, to the detriment of a balanced system. That overgrowth, in turn, brings about a correction over time. The process, which may appear chaotic from short range, may look more orderly from a distance. It's true that the San Francisco of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo has become a theme park for the rich. I'm not particularly happy about it. On the other hand, I haven't booked a hotel room in Detroit for a long time.

"Walkable urban places" or "WalkUPs" became an instant buzz word with the release in June of a new report by LOCUS, the real estate development and investor advocacy organization of Smart Growth America. As discussed on the CityLab (formerly Atlantic Cities ) site at http://bit.ly/T7maRu, the report said 558 WalkUPs exist in the 30 largest U.S. metro areas. It focused on demand for more such areas, saying they tend to have higher GDPs per capita and house more young college graduates, and office space within them "commands a 74 percent rent-per-square-foot premium over rents in drivable suburban areas." The report is at http://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/locus/foot-traffic-ahead/. San Jose approves Diridon Plan for Caltrain/HSR hub The San Jose City Council has approved a plan for a 250-acre transit terminal complex in downtown San Jose, intended most immediately to anchor the Caltrain from San Francisco, and eventually to welcome both a BART extension and the statewide High-Speed Rail line. The plan calls for massive office, commercial, residential and hotel space. The plan is at https://www.sanjoseca.gov/index.aspx?NID=1743. Streetsblog SF reported at http://bit.ly/TetxX8 that the final version adopted requirements that press the nearby SAP Center sports arena to reduce spectators' reliance on cars, and included, as a goal, the much-debated restoration of nearby Los Gatos Creek as a public amenity. The Silicon Valley Business Journal has details at http://bit.ly/1vUIE6G. Statute of limitations bars college tree-cutting protest California's First District Court of Appeal ruled June 17 that community college administrators were within their rights to have more than 200 trees cut down on the College of San Mateo campus. In an opinion heavy on procedural history, the court found the challenge brought by Citizens for a Green San Mateo was time-barred because the group did not raise it until they saw the trees being cut, by which time 30-day and 180-day deadlines to object under Public Resources Code  § 21167 had passed. The case is Citizens for a Green San Mateo v. San Mateo Community College District . The online docket is at http://bit.ly/1pydQF3, opinion at http://www.courts.ca.gov/opinions/documents/A137612.PDF. San Mateo Daily Journal coverage is at http://bit.ly/1jdLiN8 and detailed legal discussion by Miller Starr Regalia's "CEQA Developments" blog is at http://bit.ly/1l7f8CW. SF utility boxes exempted from CEQA The First District issued a publication order May 30 for its April ruling upholding CEQA exemptions for 726 AT&T utility boxes to be installed on San Francisco sidewalks. The case is San Francisco Beautiful v. City and County of San Francisco , opinion at http://www.courts.ca.gov/opinions/documents/A136546.PDF. Water bond vote fails; reconsideration likely With the June 26 deadline for legislative ballot measures approaching, the SB 848 water bond proposal by Sen. Lois Wolk failed to obtain a two-thirds majority in the California Senate on June 23. The LA Times has details at http://lat.ms/Tsj5vF. The day before, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg told interviewer Conan Nolan on the LA area's KNBC-TV (http://bit.ly/1sy3xq9) that polling showed a bond measure would fail with voters if it funded a north-south transfer of California water through the Delta tunnel project, so he was advocating for Wolk's measure, which funded other types of projects. The Association of California Water Agencies predicted reconsideration and further negotiations would follow. See http://bit.ly/1pcBYkE. Online, the Maven's Notebook weblog and its linked Twitter account are following the issue closely. Capitola may adopt General Plan update The city council in the coastal town of Capitola holds a hearing July 26 to consider adoption of its proposed General Plan Update. The Santa Cruz Sentinel reports at http://bit.ly/1v2yv5F that emphases include the 41st and Bay Avenue commercial corridors, tensions between new and old development, parking and sustainability. See http://www.plancapitola.com/ for details. Stockton starts General Plan update process Stockton's City Council has authorized the start of a two-year general plan update process as the city recovers from its 2012 bankruptcy. Officials said the focus would be on economic development downtown and in the south of the city. See http://bit.ly/1l7AyQk for details from the Stockton Record and http://bit.ly/1nCyJwb for the city's planning process documents. SB 1129 post-redevelopment cleanup bill still in play The Assembly Local Government Committee has passed Sen. Steinberg's SB 1129, a bill to help successor agencies make new commitments to projects and use bond proceeds once they have received findings of completion from the state. For the League of California Cities analysis and tracking page, see bit.ly/R32Jc8. The official bill tracking page is at http://bit.ly/1yKvf3y. San Francisco's Ellis Act bill fails in committee After squeaking through the State Senate, Sen. Mark Leno's SB 1439 bill to restrict San Francisco evictions under the Ellis Act was defeated June 18 in the Assembly. On June 24, Leno publicly said he would abandon the bill for the current session but would probably bring it back next year. (See http://bit.ly/1lnX507.) The bill had appeared to enjoy massive support from venture capital investor Ron Conway and members of his Sf.Citi tech industry civic coalition, as shown by the long lists of tech business endorsements appearing in legislative analyses at http://bit.ly/Pp54wc. The bill was generally opposed by rental landlords' organizations and the California Building Industry Association. For more details see the San Francisco Chronicle at http://bit.ly/1q5rfrV. Milpitas settling its redevelopment disputes The city of Milpitas is reportedly near settling its especially difficult post-redevelopment disputes with the State Department of Finance. The City Council approved a settlement June 17 calling for the city to pay over $41 million to the state and make sales and transfers of properties whose ownership had been uncertain in light of disputed relations among the state, city, and successor agency. The Mercury News has details at http://bit.ly/1lOzeHS. New challenges to Sacramento arena plan With some previous lawsuits recently disposed of, new opposition to the Sacramento arena proposal has surfaced. The Sacramento Bee reports at http://bit.ly/TfUHN6 that opponents brought a CEQA challenge to the project in early June, questioning the constitutionality of SB 743, which provides special environmental review concessions to the project. The Bee reported at http://bit.ly/1nCDLc8 that housing and environmental advocates were considering a separate lawsuit to seek larger mitigation contributions to housing, transit and small business.

Citing to sweeping, venerable core case law on the civil rights of individuals in public places, the Ninth Circuit on June 19 overturned Los Angeles' Municipal Code Sec. 85.02 statute against use of vehicles for habitation. The ruling in Desertrain v. City of Los Angeles potentially reduces city governments' control over the uses and appearance of public spaces. On the other hand it enhances the ability of people who have lost conventional housing to use their vehicles for some of the purposes of a home, rather than face the riskier, more stereotypically "homeless" situations of lugging possessions by hand on city streets or relying fully on institutional shelters and services. The Ninth Circuit opinion, by Judge Harry Pregerson, found the Los Angeles ordinance unconstitutionally vague on the grounds that "Plaintiffs are left guessing as to what behavior would subject them to citation and arrest by an officer," and that the ordinance encouraged arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement against homeless people. The opinion reviewed the circumstances of four plaintiffs cited and arrested for allegedly living in their cars during a Venice-area enforcement campaign in fall 2010. (Seven plaintiffs are named in the caption, but a footnote explains that some received parking tickets while parked with disability placards, and the parties agreed those tickets were a mistake.) In all of the described cases, the cited parties kept possessions in their vehicles, but two slept in their vehicles at night only while parked on private property by permission. A third, warned against sleeping in his car, "then began sleeping on the sidewalk, which is legal," and at times slept in a shelter. The fourth, when arrested, insisted he was not sleeping, but was told "that sleeping is not the only criteria for violating Section 85.02." The opinion further recounted evidence of conflicting understandings among city officers about the meaning of the ordinance. It said that while legitimate health and safety issues were raised about the conditions in which vehicle campers were living, "some of the conduct plaintiffs were engaged in when arrested -- eating, talking on the phone, or escaping the rain in their vehicles -- mimics the everyday conduct of many Los Angeles residents." It concluded that the law "is so vague that it fails to give notice of the conduct it actually prohibits," and as interpreted by city police, was "incompatible with the concept of an evenhanded administration of the law to the poor and to the rich that is fundamental to a democratic society." The opinion quoted at length from Papachristou v. City of Jacksonville , the exceptionally literary 1970 Supreme Court opinion by Justice William O. Douglas that overturned, as void for vagueness, old-style vagrancy laws that formerly authorized arrest for statuses such as unemployment and for ill-defined offenses such as "loitering". Pregerson was joined in the opinion by Judges Marsha S. Berzon and Morgan Christen. Their decision overturned a 2011 district court ruling that had backed the city and arresting officers in cross-motions for summary judgment. As a threshold matter, the Ninth Circuit found it proper to consider the plaintiffs' vagueness challenge to the ordinance, raised in the Plaintiffs' motion, although they did not raise the vagueness aspect of their constitutional argument until after filing their first amended complaint. The local district court had refused to consider the merits of the vagueness challenge. Mark Ryavec, head of the Venice Stakeholders Association, and a campaigner against campers on Venice streets, complained to the Los Angeles Times , "It leaves people who are mentally ill, criminally inclined or lethal on your doorstep and removes any possibility the police can do anything about it." The decision does not necessarily grant blanket permission to sleep in vehicles in all circumstances. Vehicular residents are potentially affected by many laws, including parking restrictions, vehicle codes, and disorderly-conduct statutes that prohibit many kinds of living activities on public property. It remains to be seen how much Desertrain may hold back the use of such additional measures. However, the case has already been recognized as having important effects throughout California. William Abrams, a consulting professor at Stanford who has represented vehicular residents in Palo Alto, told a local paper he thought the holding "will apply completely if we were to have to go to court" over Palo Alto's ordinance against vehicle sleeping. Activist attorney Carol Sobel, who represented the plaintiffs, told the KPCC radio station that since her clients did not sleep in their vehicles on public property, the case for them was principally about the ability to use vehicles on a public street in the daytime without being singled out for having certain kinds of property in their vehicles. She said in the radio interview that all four of her clients had been arrested under the invalidated statute, which was defined as a misdemeanor, and two lost their vehicles to towing. Asked whether tolerating vehicle habitation created sanitation concerns, or whether it reduced pressure to provide real housing, she said the answer to needs for sanitation and for housing wasn't to put people in jail. Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer told the press he would not appeal the decision but would seek to redraft the ordinance instead. He told the LA Times, "We need to make a break from the past ... and commit ourselves to grappling with the issues that create homelessness in the first place." Links: Ninth Circuit Desertrain opinion: http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2014/06/19/11-56957.pdf Papachristou v. City of Jacksonville : http://laws.findlaw.com/us/405/156.html LA Times : http://lat.ms/1nRqyz4, http://lat.ms/T3Akmm KPCC (SoCal Public Radio): http://bit.ly/1j4mW8G AP: http://bit.ly/1nwDyHr Guardian (UK) : http://bit.ly/1roYtQq Palo Alto Weekly : http://bit.ly/1lKKzsw Wall Street Journal : http://on.wsj.com/1rd9DYp

A companion measure to SB 69 is making its way through the State Legislature to help cities that, like Jurupa Valley , were hit by the 2011 budget cuts just when they had agreed to serve new areas, though with respect to annexations rather than incorporations. AB 1521, sponsored by Assemblyman Steve Fox (D-Palmdale), would benefit cities that, as of 2011, had recently completed annexations of inhabited county lands and had been expecting state support for their increased service levels. It would commit state General Fund money to reinstate fee allocations that previously came from vehicle license fee (VLF) funds. Lobbyist Jason Gonsalves, who represents several Riverside County cities, said the new legislation would provide $4 million a year to cities to pay for service costs in those recently annexed areas. AB 1521 differs from SB 69 in offering a future source of revenue for ongoing costs, as opposed to SB's 69 narrow focus on making up for past cuts to four Riverside County cities. "It's not to restore funding lost, but to give them a way to cover services in areas they annexed," Gonsalves said. VLF funds were taken from the cities in 2011 when the state sought new sources of revenue to pay for prison realignment. At the time, many of the affected cities responded by cutting public safety costs. A legislative analysis of the new bill said $4 million in cuts affected a number of cities, including Chico, San Ramon, Santa Clarita, Temecula, Fontana, San Jose, Porterville, Tulare and Visalia, that had annexed inhabited areas. The measure might also encourage other cities to do infill annexations, Gonsalves said. Although it would raise funding for cities throughout the state, AB 1521 hasn't won the support of the influential California State Association of Counties. According to legislative summaries it does have support from several city governments and county LAFCOs, and from the League of California Cities. AB 1521 passed the Assembly in May and goes to a State Senate Governance and Finance Committee hearing on June 25.

California's youngest city, which has fought for survival since its formation, is still in critical condition, but lately there are signs it has moved off life support.     Jurupa Valley, a Riverside County city of 95,000, was expecting death by disincorporation earlier this year because it could not replace a lost source of funding for new towns. But the city has been able to postpone plans to disincorporate for another year due to increased tax revenue and budgetary changes. And hopes have emerged for its longer-term future via state-level efforts.     The City Council voted to disincorporate in January 2014, with the expectation that within two years they would complete the first official unmaking of a California city since the 1970s. (See prior CP&DR coverage in the December monthly issue and online at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3427.) But now, city officials are saying they have enough money to last until the third quarter of 2016, when the city's payments for services are due to Riverside County.     The city is still looking to Sacramento for its longer-term salvation, hoping state legislators will approve a key bill and that Governor Jerry Brown will sign it into law. Local efforts to win Brown over have begun, including organizing schoolchildren to write to the Governor's dog.     What does all this mean for other California communities that want to incorporate? It means that the state hasn't completely righted itself following financial troubles that hit hard in 2011, and while something may be done for existing new towns, there is still not enough funding to help new cities get started.     "There's no mechanism to incorporate unless residents want to vote to immediately tax themselves," said Jurupa Valley City Councilwoman Laura Roughton.     In the halcyon days of old, cities could count on state Vehicle License Fees (VLF) to help pay some of their initial costs as they were created, before they developed their own tax bases to fund services. Those funds were wiped out for new towns in 2011 when Brown had the money diverted to prison realignment via that session's SB 89.     Jurupa Valley was hit hardest in 2011. The effective date of its referendum vote for incorporation fell two days after SB 89 went into effect, taking away expected revenue. "The rules were changed midgame, and it's amazing that it all happened," said Roughton. "The other three cities all got at least one payment. We didn't get any."     If the current appeal to Sacramento feels like deja vu, there are good reasons. It's similar to an earlier legislative dance involving the Governor. Jurupa Valley and other new towns also sought state rescue money in 2012 under AB 1098, which Brown vetoed. A further attempt via SB 56 died in the Legislature in 2013. Nothing is certain this year either but the current proposal comes out of a different financial picture and is limited to aiding a few existing new towns -- factors that may give it a better chance of becoming law.     Roughton said cityhood has been good for Jurupa Valley, despite all the financial hurdles. The city controls local land use, and its streets are cleaner, she noted.     Formation of cities helps the state meet other goals, such as providing affordable housing and creating density, said Dan Carrigg, legislative director of the League of California Cities. Incorporated cities also provide public safety improvements and planned communities, said Chuck Dalldorf, spokesman for Sen. Richard Roth, D-Riverside. Roth sponsored SB 56 and is the sponsor of the current bill to aid new towns, SB 69.     "If there's not a solution (to funding new cities), it's unlikely there will be incorporation again in California," Carrigg said.      Four cities in Riverside County, including Jurupa Valley, incorporated around the time when VLF funding was cut off in 2011. They were left with huge debts, and had to cut services deeply. The other three cities, Eastvale, Menifee, and Wildomar, have also been active in the last few years' efforts to recover money from the state that they planned on using for incorporation.     This year the state's fiscal health has improved, and passage of Proposition 30 in 2012 injected $6 billion into the state's budget annually. Government leaders in Riverside County pointed to those events as reasons they might get state money to help them out of their financial mess.     A related reason has to do with reduced competition for funds.     In 2011, SB 89 created new claims on the VLF money by taking it away from new cities and giving it to counties to handle prison realignment, where state prisoners were returned to county jails as a way to decrease overcrowding. So when the AB 1098 proposal in 2012 sought to transfer VLF revenue back to new cities, it created competition for the same money that counties needed for realignment. Groups such as the California State Association of Counties opposed the bill. "We were concerned about undermining realignment revenues," said Jean Hurst, a lobbyist for CSAC.     But as of the November 2012 election, Proposition 30 wrote into law that the VLF money would go to counties, Hurst said. The ballot measure allocated VLF funds to "public safety services" including realignment, so any fresh effort to help new cities had to be made separately from the use of VLF funds. SB 69 proposes to help the new cities out of the state's General Fund, and CSAC is among its supporters.     Another key change between SB 69 and AB 1098 is that it provides money only to cities that incorporated before 2012. The bill would divide about $15 million in start-up costs among Jurupa Valley and the other three newly incorporated Riverside County cities.     As initially conceived, Roth's bill, SB 69, was written to provide funds for all newly incorporated cities that would formerly have been entitled to draw on vehicle license fees for their initial costs. That would have given all future new cities in California the same claims on VLF-substitute funding as the newest Riverside County cities. But recent negotiations narrowed the bill to apply only to cities that incorporated before 2012.     "It was strictly a cost issue," said Roth spokesman Dalldorf. "We'll have to do that after the four-cities bill."     Roughton said Jurupa Valley expects to have more revenue because sales tax projections are higher, and new residences are selling again in the city. Among other things, a new Walmart opened in the city in June.     The city is also taking tentative steps that show it might be around for a while. A new budget adopted in June adds $2 million in new spending for what Roughton describes as "things... cities are required to do."     New spending has been approved for studies the city is required to perform on developer fees, an interim general plan, and examining whether the city should hire its own staff (until now, all city employees have been contractors). The city also plans to increase spending on traffic officers, following several recent local traffic fatalities.     Jurupa Valley received a two-year extension from the state Office of Planning and Research on its general plan, which was due on at the end of 2013. The city is now funding what is being called an interim general plan. It should direct growth for three or four years, according to Roughton. The interim general plan needs to be completed at the end of 2015.     Despite the Jurupa Valley City Council vote to start disincorporation in January,  there has been little followup on the process, other than a few meetings with Riverside County officials, Roughton said.     Hurst of CSAC said Riverside County officials have been helpful to the new cities. "They're essentially floating them while this gets resolved in the legislature," she said.     Roughton said the city has not been able to secure a meeting with Governor Brown, but Brown did acknowledge the four newly incorporated cities' dilemma when he visited the county earlier in the year. He asked his staff to look into the concerns.     In the meantime, Roughton is trying to raise the Governor's awareness of Jurupa Valley issues by getting local school children to write to his dog. "It's all very positive," she said. "We've tried a 'Letters to Sutter Brown' campaign to Governor Brown's dog." The letters "invited Sutter to come and visit. We have a dog park."      Roughton said unlike other cities in the state, Jurupa Valley can't declare bankruptcy. "We don't have any unfunded pensions. We don't have any debts that can be unstructured."     SB 69 will next be heard in the Assembly's Local Government Committee on June 25. Links: CP&DR on Jurupa Valley's 2011 incorporation: http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-2901 SB 89, passed 2011: http://bit.ly/1nuB1i6 AB 1098, vetoed September 2012: http://bit.ly/1lJNoKl League of CA Cities response with link to Gov. Brown's veto message: http://bit.ly/1ps1r5m Prop 30, passed November 2012: http://voterguide.sos.ca.gov/past/2012/general/propositions/30/analysis.htm SB 56, died in Legislature, 2013: http://bit.ly/1p6N6Q3 SB 69, currently pending: http://bit.ly/1lhtBAX SB 1521, currently pending: http://bit.ly/1qCEuQQ

Last Friday in San Diego, Gov. Jerry Brown signed the first cap-and-trade appropriation bill as part of the state budget. This means that the Strategic Growth Council will now have $130 million to dole out next year for smart growth planning and related activities – many times more than ever before – and that number is expected to grow rapidly in the years ahead. Coming on top of the SGC's recent award of $16 million in local planning grants, the cap-and-trade appropriation news means it's a good time to take a look at how the SGC has doled out its money over the last few years and what the impact has really been. Up to now, SGC's grants program has been funded primarily by the $90 million for planning contained in Proposition 84, the 2005 initiative that was advertised as the "Safe Drinking Water Act." (The $16 million allocated by the SGC at its meeting on June was the last of the $90 million, so the cap-and-trade money came along just in time.) The SGC was created after Proposition 84 passed. The Legislature subsequently assigned it to distribute the funds in a way that encourages creation of "sustainable communities" under AB 32 -- that is, communities expected to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions under California's 2006 climate change law, which calls for significant GHG reductions by 2020. The planning funds were doled out in three rounds – 2010, 2012, and 2014 – and in each case the SGC sliced the pie a different way. In 2010, for example, there was a set-aside for metropolitan planning organizations to do modeling. In 2012, there was a category for regional cooperation. In 2014, there was an environmental justice set-aside. (Disclosure: The City of San Diego, where I work, won one of the biggest grants in Round 1 and got one out of the two it applied for in Round 3.) A separate program funded planning and construction of "urban greening" projects. Two external events over the past few years made the SGC grant program more important than it otherwise would have been. The first was the economic crash of 2008, which caused local governments' general funds to shrink and thus made it more difficult for cities and counties to fund their planning efforts. The second was the end of redevelopment in 2012, which robbed local governments – mostly cities – of a funding source they had often used to do plans in specific neighborhoods. Looking at the patterns, there's no question that SGC grants have been used to fund local plans that the cities and counties might otherwise have funded on their own. This was especially true in the first and second grantmaking rounds, before general funds began to recover from the 2008 downturn. (Many of these planning efforts were also funded by similar grant programs from the state's biggest metropolitan planning organizations, which have used either federal or local transportation funds for these programs.) But in the most recent round, something interesting happened: Cities and counties weren't seeking to use SGC grants to replace lost redevelopment planning funds, as one might expect. Instead, local governments and their nonprofit partners are focusing on implementation of previous plans – especially climate action plans – as well as transportation projects. Transportation plans received many grant awards in 2014 after getting virtually none in the first two rounds. The big question, of course, is whether the SGC funds have encouraged cities and counties to undertake planning efforts focused on infill and transit-oriented development efforts that they might otherwise not have undertaken with their own money. That's the whole point of a grant program, after all – to give somebody  money to do something they might not otherwise have done in order to achieve your objective. It's hard to know what cities and counties might otherwise have done if they had more money of their own. Even in the wake of the big economic downturn in 2008, an awful lot of local governments in California continued to start up general plan updates with money that they had squirreled away – but, of course, they had to focus on GHG reductions because of AB 32 and other state laws requiring them to do so. All three rounds of grants have focused on a few basic themes, including: 1. District and corridor plans tied to transit-oriented or infill development. 2. Climate action plans or other efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 3. General Plan updates focusing on such topics as GHG reduction and healthy communities. General plan updates and district or corridor plans are, of course, the bread-and-butter of local planning in California. And at the time of the first round, most cities and counties in California had realized they had to do some kind of climate action plan in order to comply with new state laws and emerging practices under the California Environmental Quality Act. But here's what's interesting: While the district and corridor plans continued apace among grantees in SGC's third round, the general plan updates and climate action plans slowed down. That's probably because, by 2014, most cities and counties had updated their general plans to reflect the new emphasis on greenhouse gas emissions. In place of General Plan updates and Climate Action Plans, cities and counties – and, in many cases, nonprofit partners working with them – focused on different things in Round 3, including: 1. Implementation of climate action plans and GHG reduction strategies. 2. Transportation plans and projects 3. Energy projects. For example, a number of cities – including Goleta near UC Santa Barbara and the ever-hip City of West Hollywood – got grants to focus on bicycle and pedestrian projects. Several others got grants to focus on various aspects of energy. These were often partnerships at the county level, including in Santa Clara, Sonoma, Butte, Monterey, and Madera Counties. The energy projects ranged from examining community choice aggregation (the ability to use small-scale, community-based energy production to break the hold of big utilities on the energy system) to experimenting with fuel cell technology. The focus on transportation and energy makes sense. Now that most local governments have big-picture plans in place for GHG emissions reduction, they actually have to produce – by switching to alternative energy sources, or by encouraging their residents to switch from driving to walking or bicycling. The shift to walking and biking – what has become known as "active transportation" – is an especially important component in meeting 2020 GHG targets because people can switch modes tomorrow, rather than waiting for big transit projects or major transit-oriented development. But in the long run, GHG reductions after 2020 are likely to depend in large part on those longer-range plans – more transit stops and more development around those stops. That's why cities and counties are still getting a lot of money from the SGC – and from the MPOs in their own grant programs – for district and corridor plans. The built environment takes a long time to change. So as SGC embarks on its huge new program with cap-and-trade money, it will be interesting to see whether this trend continues. Will SGC fund primarily implementation-type plans, such as zoning ordinances and bike/ped plans? Will there be yet more general fund updates to fund? Will corridor and district plans still be popular? Or will SGC push the locals deeper into implementation? Assuming it has hundreds of millions of dollars available in the years ahead, SGC may place a greater focus on actual construction of hard infrastructure, such as bikeways and the public realm components of transit-oriented development projects. After all, with the end of redevelopment these projects are very hard to pay for. Even though the cap-and-trade money is a drop in the bucket compared to redevelopment, the SGC may very well get pushed in the direction of using cap-and-trade money to build public realm amenities and infrastructure, not just funding plans.