In many situations, the settlement of a lawsuit is a flexible tool to resolve disagreements between parties and allow the participants to move on with their lives. A settlement with a public agency invokes slightly different considerations then a matter resolved exclusively through private parties. As previously noted in Trancas Property Owners Association v. City of Malibu (2006) 138 Cal.App.4th 172 , a public agency cannot rely upon a settlement agreement to bypass a required land use approval step.

In the latest chapter of a long-running legal battle over affordable housing and redevelopment in Fontana, the Fourth District Court of Appeal has ruled that the city is not required to take on the former redevelopment agency's affordable housing obligations.

Cities' ability to control their streets' aesthetics may be affected by a June 18 U.S. Supreme Court ruling on content-based regulation of signage, but perhaps not as drastically as they had feared.

In an important victory for local governments, the Third District Court of Appeal has ruled that the state Department of Finance improperly rejected Emeryville's action to re-enter into several redevelopment agreements with its successor agency.

Here’s an appellate case that’s a good illustration of why the actual words of a general planare so important: The Fourth District has struck down a Victorville environmental impact report for a Wal-Mart shopping center because, among other things, the city didn’t try hard enough to force Wal-Mart to follow its general plan policy and implementation measure of generating electricity on-site to the maximum extent feasible.

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.

Showing more than a little impatience, the Third District Court of Appeal has ruled that the old housing redevelopment housing set-aside requirement didn’t create a “debt” just because the set-aside funds were delineated in a long-term redevelopment plan as required by law.

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.