A couple of weeks ago I had the chance to tour a short strip of York Boulevard in the Highland Park district in Los Angeles. York's tucked away near Occidental College, a mile or two east of the Pasadena Freeway and the Gold Line. The boulevard is generally narrow – from Avenue 50 to Avenue 56 it's only one lane in each direction – and it straddles the divide between the yuppie hillside to the north and the Latino working-class flats to the South. It's a charming street with a characteristic hodgepodge of businesses that you'll find in L.A. – the 60-year-old Mom and Pop stores, the taquerias and auto repair shops typical of Latino L.A. and now a hipster gastropub and a new coffee shop where screenwriters hang out with their laptop . It's kind of a Silver Lake in the making. Indeed, artists have come to York Boulevard partly because they're priced out of Silver Lake. I was there, along with several other planners, at the invitation of Councilmember Jose Huizar, who's thinking about doing a new plan. The trick is to maintain the eclectic character of the street – and yet upgrade it at the same time. Striking this balance won't be easy, but we planners had better figure out how to do streets like York really well. There are lots of emerging places in California that could be as good as York's going to be, and in many ways they represent the future of the state. We in California planning spend an awful lot of time focusing on downtowns and transit corridors. Our big-picture policies – like Proposition R in Los Angeles and the carve outs in the 2006 state housing bond – focused on building rail transit infrastructure and then developing projects around the rail stations. Planning firms all over the state – including the one I work for – tout their skill at creating great places around transit stations. And when they're not obsessed with transit stations, cities are focused on corridor plans that hold the potential for bus rapid transit, such as Beach Boulevard in Huntington Beach . The challenge in a place like York Boulevard is that it's not on top of a rail transit station and probably never will be. It's away from dense employment centers (except the Oxy campus, a half-mile away). It's a mile and a half away from two Gold Line stations; the trip takes 15 minutes, either by Metro bus (which runs on 12-minute headways) or the city's DASH bus (which runs on 20-minute headways). And because it's a narrow strip, there'll probably never even be a parking garage. So it's a neighborhood center, accessible by foot and car to folks nearby, that's increasingly drawing a hipster crowd arriving by car at night. Local transit service isn't bad but it's a long way to the rail system, and most people who have a choice are going to drive. The locals appreciate the village-like charm (and with good reason); they're not very interested in Pasadena-style three- and four-story mixed-use along York, which would block views, change the scale of the neighborhood, and bring in a lot of traffic without bringing in more transit. A place like York is much more likely to be focused on little things: façade improvements, parking management, streetscape, maybe some economic development efforts to find just the right businesses. You might get more Oxy kids to come down off the hill on their bikes; and when tax revenues go up again, it might be possible to improve the bus service over to the Gold Line. But helping York Boulevard become a great place requires a scalpel, not a bulldozer; and entrepreneurs who want to transform one of the few two-story buildings into something great, rather than build new four-story stuff. Not everybody can be Pasadena. Not everybody wants to be. As planners and developers shape the new, more urban Los Angeles that's emerging, they're going to have to come up with a varied set of templates for different situations, rather than simply assuming that the mixed-use model so popular a few years ago will apply everywhere. – Bill Fulton

Your trusty CP&DR correspondents have been writing about planning and development matters for other publications of late. I have a story in Planning magazine's latest edition about access to healthy food, while Morris Newman has a story in the August 12 edition of The New York Times about redevelopment of the Sacramento rail yards. I will admit I did not fully understand the issue of food access until I was personally affected. It was during the 2002 American Planning Association, California Chapter, conference in downtown San Diego. One afternoon while walking back to my motel several blocks from the conference site, I went in search of some snacks. I wasn't looking for anything fancy –a bunch of bananas, a package of raisins, maybe a couple oranges. I walked block after block, finding plentiful junk food and liquor but little else. I think I finally ended up with a small bag of peanuts. The gentrified downtown San Diego has grocery stories and at least one weekday farmers market. But seven years ago, in the struggling neighborhood where I was living for a few days, I couldn't find even an apple. This unhealthy situation is not limited to inner-city neighborhoods. While researching my story for Planning , I learned that residents of poor towns in the Central Valley – where much of the country's fruits, vegetables and nuts are grown – often must rely on a liquor store or gas station mini-mart for their day-to-day needs. Thankfully, planners and public agencies are tackling the issue in a variety of ways. My story in Planning explains some of those efforts in Los Angeles, Philadelphia and New York. (You must be an APA member to access the story.) Meanwhile, Morris Newman has written a piece for The Times ' Real Estate section about reuse of Sacramento's rail yards. This could be one of the great large-scale infill projects in the country, as Morris explains in a story that explores not only the development, but the site's rich history as the terminus of the transcontinental railroad. You may read more about Sacramento's rebirth in Morris's latest piece for CP&DR about a riverfront project called The Docks . The long-discussed project between the Sacramento River and Interstate 5 would provide River City's first true riverfront development. – Paul Shigley

The Docks site was the orphan of downtown Sacramento. The broad, concrete shoulders of Interstate 5 divide the riverfront parcel from the rest of the city. Until recently, this 43-acre triangle of land remained almost entirely out of sight and out of mind from even nearby points in the city, such as the state Capitol and the enormous rail yards development, both only a few blocks from this site. As it currently exists, the Docks site is an unplanned space, a leftover between the Sacramento River and the interstate. Some runners and bike riders are brave enough to push beneath the shadowy recesses beneath the freeway structures. In general, however, the Docks site offers very little to the city, and vice versa. � The environmental impact report for large-scale homebuilding, a multi-acre park (there are several proposals) and a linear park on the river bank are awaiting approval this fall. The city has handled the linear park and the development site as separate projects, under the same specific plan. This article focuses primarily on the development piece; of course, the developer and designer have yet to be selected. � The Docks site is close to (1) Old Sacramento, (2) Westfield Downtown Plaza and (3) the K Street Mall. � Sacramento is a relative latecomer to the beautification (and monetization) of its formerly industrial riverfront. The redevelopment of industrial riverfronts has become a mainstay of American urban planning and design since the success of Riverwalk in San Antonio, Texas, four decades ago. Unlike many waterfront projects, however, Sacramento is emphasizing housing above entertainment and retail uses.��� The plan is admirable both for the planning that connects the riverfront site with the existing city grid, and the way that the southern edge of the site will be used for stormwater detention. When the city considers the EIR, the biggest decision to be made is whether to opt for one of three design choices, Variation A-1, A-2 or B. The public will benefit no matter the choice, because all schemes have virtues. That said, the city and its future private development partners face a choice of a scheme that maximizes open space at the expense of new residential development (Variation B), and two others that offer a smaller park and more development, along with more property tax and hotel tax revenues (A-1 and A-2). Both are good enough to be built. But which is better? Variation A-1 and A-2 are very similar, except that A-2 has more high-rise residential towers. From a purely graphic standpoint, Variation A is a superior composition to the more casual-looking Variation B. I confess I have long harbored a superstition that the design that looks better on paper is often the better design in real life. And, with a few notable exceptions, that belief has been confirmed by experience. But sometimes a nice, symmetrical picture does not yield superior urbanism. The site plan drawing by itself does not necessarily take into consideration the existing conditions on the site, such as hard-to-ignore roadways that rain down soot and noise. �One criterion for judging the two alternatives is to ask which takes the biggest step toward a successful pedestrian environment, where people set the scale and human movement sets the pace. Variations A-1 and A-2 (again, they are almost identical) are pretty pictures, for what it's worth.� I like the way that planners have routed traffic around the block-sized park, allowing the park to open directly onto the river without any barriers between the two. The scheme is also more urban (in this sense, formal) and far more dense than Variation B. I'm of two minds about the park. On the plus side, the park seems a comfortable size. Being surrounded by buildings on all sides also helps to give the open space a sense of form. ��� But why such a small park? What are the design priorities here? If the riverfront is truly a regional attraction, why is Sacramento packing this waterfront location full of housing � especially in light of the 12,000 units approved as part of the nearby rail yards re-use project? Might it be preferable not to max out the number of residential units and the revenue-capture-potential in the Docks development project to take full advantage of the riverfront location? Variation B is far less elegant as a drawing, lacking the formalism of Variation A. Less development is promised in Variation B, in large part because a third or so of the site is set aside for a large-scale, regional-sized park. Beyond offering far more in open space, Variation B is also interesting in the way it seems to pick up on existing conditions. The outer edge of the park, for example, is the freeway structure itself. This decision integrates the freeway into the composition and makes a negative into a positive. Variations A-1 and A-2, in comparison, merely turn their backs on the freeway and pretend that it does not exist. Assuming that the naked freeway structure would not make a good park wall, we will need to build some fence or enclosure to partly hide the freeway from view. An inventive landscape architect could make that wall into something visually interesting, covering parts of the freeway structure while allowing others to remain visible. This is a great architectural opportunity. The biggest sore point in Variation B is the traffic planning, which requires drivers to make turns on acute angles. Granted, the Docks is not supposed to be a thoroughfare, but this looks like a miserable place to be stuck during rush hour. On the other hand, we are facing a park and a river, and the need for streets laid out with Teutonic regularity does not extend all the way to the Sacramento River. Verdict: Either Variations A-1 and A-2 is an easy winner, while Variation B could become something extraordinary, if the designers are up to it. Despite my reservations, I vote for Variation B. I predict the city will opt for Variation A-1. The city will benefit in either case and the orphan of downtown will become a golden child; the leftover will become a main course. In this recessionary time when local government tends to think small, the Docks project is one of the projects that makes Sacramento the state's most interesting downtown area of the current moment.

GLOBAL SUSTAINABILITY CERTIFICATE Area of Concentration: Environmental Law & Policy OVERVIEW: This area of concentration will address the roles of local, regional, state, national and international regulatory agencies responsible for protecting natural resources. Air, water, food, energy, land use, transportation and waste management all fall under this heading. Recent legislative mandates regarding climate change and the reduction of green house gas emissions will be considered from global, legal, and policy perspectives. How much regulation is enough, too much? Land use authority battles, health impacts from mobile and stationary source emissions, and food quality concerns are examples of case studies that will lead to provocative discussions in searching for ethical answers that may be different for developed and developing countries. COURSE TOPICS: • Overview of Environmental Laws & Agencies: National and International • Causes and Mitigation of Environmental Impacts • Environmental Compliance: Monitoring and Performance Measures • Climate Change: How to Comply with the Body of Regulations • Transportation and Land Use: Impacts on the Environment • Natural Disaster Planning and Crisis Communication • Integrating Climate, Energy, and Transportation Policies • California Environmental Policy Act (CEQA): A Place to Start • Making Wise Policy under Uncertain Conditions: Energy Futures, Climate Change and Transportation. For more information and an overview of courses offered, contact the Public Policy Department at: (310) 825-7885 or sustainability@uclaextension.edu

A new report from the Centers for Disease Control says that planning may play a significant role in reducing the obesity epidemic in the United States. The report, which compiles numerous research studies and recommendations of experts, provides additional scientific backing for the healthy design movement that has started to gain traction during recent years. The report recommends 24 community strategies to prevent obesity, ranging from school lunch improvements, educational programs and breastfeeding support to mixed-use zoning and better pedestrian facilities. The report makes nine recommendations related directly to land use planning: • Improve geographic availability of supermarkets in underserved areas. The report does not speak specifically to zoning, but I learned while working on a story for an upcoming edition of Planning that zoning policies influence supermarket access. In Los Angeles, for example, city officials who want to encourage new neighborhood grocery stores in underserved neighborhoods have backed off some policies that essentially require giant stores with acres of parking – stores that are almost impossible to build in dense urban areas. • Provide incentives to food retailers to locate in and/or offer healthier food beverage choices in underserved areas. Some of this is basic economic development assistance, such as grants for installing dairy and produce cases. Zoning for small food markets also plays a role. • Improve access to outdoor recreational facilities. As you may guess, this involves building parks and community exercise facilities, and ensuring people may reach them. • Enhance infrastructure supporting bicycling. Create bike lanes and shared-use paths, and establish bike routes on existing roads. • Enhance infrastructure supporting walking. The report makes clear that providing sidewalks, walking trails and pedestrian crossings is not enough. The report also speaks to "street-scale urban design and land use interventions" such as improved street lighting, traffic calming and enhanced landscaping. • Locate schools within easy walking distance of residential areas. In California, planners have limited influence on where school districts locate their facilities. But the report also states, "Among students living within 1 mile of school, the percentage of walkers fell from 90% to 31% between 1969 and 2001." The report attributes this startling decrease to the walking environment, specifically, single land uses, long blocks and incomplete sidewalks. • Improve access to public transportation. People who ride transit often walk or bicycle to and from transit stops. • Zone for mixed-use development. The report says succinctly, "Zoning laws restricting the mixing of residential and nonresidential uses and encouraging single-use development can be a barrier to physical activity." Gosh, who knew? • Enhance traffic safety in areas where persons are or could be physically active. In other words, engineer streets to slow traffic in areas where you want to encourage walking, running and bicycling. The report, "Recommended Community Strategies and Measurements to Prevent Obesity in the United States," is available here from the CDC website . – Paul Shigley

Will redevelopment mean anything once the dust settles on California's budget crisis? Last month's state budget deal attempts to whack redevelopment agencies to the tune of $2.05 billion . The redevelopment agencies are suing, claiming it's an unconstitutional shift of funds. This is nothing new; last year, the state attempted to take $350 million, and the redevelopment agencies successfully sued to block the revenue shift. In fact, this is merely the latest skirmish in a decades-long fight over redevelopment funds. Redevelopment is one of the few ways that local governments – especially cities – can unilaterally gain control over tax revenue. By declaring an area blighted, a city can capture 60-70% of the increases in property tax revenue from that area in the future. By comparison, cities typically receive about 15% of the property tax revenue inside their borders absent redevelopment. Statewide, redevelopment agencies capture close to $5 billion a year in property tax revenue, which is nearly 10% of the statewide property tax total. The problem, of course, is that there is a fixed amount of property tax, so money that flows to redevelopment agencies flows away from somebody else – principally counties and schools. That's why the state always goes after redevelopment funds in bad times. Half of the property tax in the state goes to school districts, so every time a dollar flows to redevelopment agencies that means the state must backfill 50 cents to school districts. Whatever you think of redevelopment agencies – and there are strong feelings on both sides – they have far less money than they used to. Over the last 30 years, the state has gradually boxed redevelopment agencies in and diverted more and more tax increment revenue away from them, either directly or indirectly. The latest tax transfer is far more massive than anything we have seen before. It's more than worth it to keep existing project areas going; but we may soon be to the point where creating new ones doesn't pay off. – Bill Fulton

By shifting $1.7 billion from redevelopment agencies to state programs and schools, the state budget signed this week by Gov. Schwarzenegger could halt numerous redevelopment projects for years to come, according to the agencies and housing proponents. The tax increment shift could also mean the end for some redevelopment agencies. "This amount is so huge that it really, for most agencies, amounts to 100% or more of their discretionary spending," said John Shirey, executive director of the California Redevelopment Association (CRA). "The numbers are of such great magnitude, inevitably what it means is that some agencies will go out of business." Some redevelopment agencies have already identified projects that may halt because of the state's tax increment maneuver, such as rail yards re-use adjacent to downtown Sacramento and affordable housing development in downtown Los Angeles. The CRA has vowed to file a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the tax increment shift. The organization won a lawsuit over a similar shift earlier this year. From the viewpoint of local planning and development, the redevelopment tax increment shift is arguably the most important part of the 2009-10 state budget. The budget does not contain a shift of gasoline sales tax revenue away from local governments, a proposal that appeared certain to pass until the last minute. The budget also does not contain a 30- to 40-year extension of local redevelopment authority in exchange for the state getting a slice of future tax increment. Backed by the City of Industry, the redevelopment tax increment "securitization" plan passed the state Senate but died – for now – in the Assembly. The budget does borrow $1.9 billion of local government property tax revenues (8% of total), which the state is required to pay back with interest within three years. The budget included only 80% of Williamson Act subventions to make up for property tax revenues the counties lose through the agricultural protection program. However, at the last minute Schwarzenegger cut all but $1,000 of the subventions. The state has shifted money away from redevelopment agencies numerous times in recent years. In April, however, a Sacramento County Superior Court judge ruled that a $350 million shift from redevelopment agencies to schools in the 2008-09 state budget violated the state constitution because there was no guarantee the money would be used for redevelopment purposes (see CP&DR Redevelopment Watch , June 2009 ). Lawmakers and the administration say they solved the legal flaw with the creation of "supplemental revenue augmentation funds" (SRAF) in each county. Money contributed to the SRAF would fund courts, prisons, Medi-Cal service, hospitals and schools. But the money would be spent only in redevelopment project areas or for services to people who live in project areas or redevelopment-assisted housing. The budget calls for redevelopment agencies to transfer $1.7 billion to their county SRAF by May 1, 2010, and another $350 million in 2011. In exchange, redevelopment agencies may extend project area sunset dates by one year. Shirey, however, said the language in the budget bills does not change the fact that the tax increment in question is legally obligated to fund debt payments and redevelopment projects. "We intend to sue the state just as we did a year ago when they tried to take $350 million," he said. Any agency that fails to make its mandatory SRAF payment would be subject to the "death penalty," meaning the agency would have to cease nearly all activity except for the retirement of existing debts. An agency may borrow money from its low- and moderate-income housing fund, but the money must be repaid within five years or else the low-mod housing set-aside jumps from 20% to 25% for the remainder of the project area. The state is permitting agencies to suspend all required low-mod allocations for the 2009-10 fiscal year. An agency may also borrow money from other sources to make its SRAF payment. Republican lawmakers and the administration in recent years have eyed the hundreds of millions of dollars sitting in redevelopment agencies' low-mod housing funds. However, agencies say nearly all of the money is earmarked for projects that await other funding before they may be built. Officials with the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency said the shift of $71 million away from the agency threatens to halt at least seven projects, including affordable housing development in Hollywood and downtown, a shopping center in Reseda and a shopping center overhaul in Watts. "The gutting of the CRA-LA budget will mean that we will not be able to complete millions of dollars of redevelopment projects in Los Angeles, resulting in a loss of 2,300 construction jobs and a loss of $360 million in private investment," said Cecilia Estolano, the agency's executive officer. The Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency would be required to give up $16.8 million this fiscal year. The hit would prevent the agency from starting any new projects and could imperil several high-profile projects, according to Deputy Executive Director Lisa Bates. Among the projects in jeopardy is rail yards reuse, a project that recently won $83 million in Proposition 1C funding and was expected to get $50 million in redevelopment assistance. San Jose Redevelopment Agency Assistant Executive Director John Weis said the required shift of $75 million over two years would force his agency to borrow money in order to keep existing projects on track, which the agency did a few years ago to make an $18 million ERAF payment. The big loser in all of this will be affordable housing, predicted Christine Minnehan, a lobbyist with the Western Center on Law and Poverty, because the only money many agencies have available to make SRAF payment is in low-mod housing funds. "A take of this level is going to decimate the housing piece of redevelopment," she said, noting that redevelopment tax increment provides the sole permanent source of funding for affordable housing development in California. The Industry proposal would have permitted agencies to extend their redevelopment project area sunset dates by up to 40 years without renewed blight findings. In exchange, the state would receive 10% of agency tax increment. The argument in favor of the plan was that the extensions would be voluntary, and if enough agencies signed up, there would be no forced SRAF transfers and there might be no need to borrow the $1.9 billion from local governments. The plan did pass the Senate but never came up for a vote in the Assembly for reasons that remain unclear. The CRA strongly opposed the Industry measure, which surfaced as ABx4 27 during the wee hours of the July 23-24 budget marathon. "It takes redevelopment money and spends it on non-redevelopment purposes," Shirey protested. That is unconstitutional and it would invite more state and public opposition to legitimate redevelopment activity in the future, he insisted. Minnehan agreed the Industry proposal would "completely undercut" the point of redevelopment, and San Jose's Weis said the proposal would have been worse than what the state did pass. "Do I think it's dead? No I don't," Shirey said of the Industry proposal. "They have a whole army of high-powered lobbyists, including four former legislators." The immediate focus of many redevelopment agencies now appears to be CRA's coming lawsuit over the tax increment shift. Shirey said labor unions have also offered to lend assistance, because they fear the loss of tens of thousands of construction jobs as redevelopment projects are halted. The Williamson Act subventions lie on the other end of the urban development spectrum. The Department of Finance has targeted the subventions for years. Under the Williamson Act, agricultural property owners receive a tax break by agreeing not to develop their property for 10 years. The program costs counties $35 million to $40 million annually, an amount the state backfills. The budget contained money for 80% of subventions, or about $28 million. But the governor "blue penciled" the amount down to $1,000, saying the money is needed for a prudent general fund reserve. Contacts: John Shirey, California Redevelopment Association, (916) 448-8760. Christine Minnehan, Western Center on Law and Poverty, (916) 442-0753. John Weis, San Jose Redevelopment Agency, (408) 535-8500. California Redevelopment Association website . Department of Finance state budget summary . Legislative Analyst's Office, 2009 Budget Package .

The conventional wisdom is that Sonia Sotomayor's appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court doesn't make a whole lot of difference, because there's not much meaningful ideological distance between her and her predecessor, Justice David Souter. So, the party line goes, the court will still be stuck in the familiar 5-4 or 4-5 split, depending on how Justice Anthony Kennedy is feeling that day. But there's a debate brewing as to whether that's really the case in land use and property rights law. Souter's movement toward government power culminated in 2005 with his decision to side with the five-member majority in the controversial case of Kelo v. New London , 545 U.S. 469, (see CP&DR Economic Development , July 2005 ) which upheld a city's power to use eminent domain in a redevelopment situation to transfer property from one private owner to another. Would Sotomayor have done the same? You'd think so. But unlike Samuel Alito (see CP&DR Insight , December 2005 ), her federal judicial record – while lengthy – doesn't include a lot of takings cases. And, not surprisingly, her confirmation hearings did not provide much insight. Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wisconsin) asked Sotomayor point-blank what she thought about Kelo. Her stand-pat answer – typical of Supreme Court nominees these days – was this: "Kelo is now a precedent of the court. I must follow it. I am bound by a Supreme Court decision as a Second Circuit judge. "As a Supreme Court judge, I must give it the deference that the doctrine of stare decisis, which suggests the question of the reach of Kelo has to be examined in the context of each situation, and the court did, in Kelo, note that there was a role for the courts to play in ensuring that takings by a state did, in fact, intend to serve the public — a public purpose and public use. "I understand the concern that many citizens have expressed about whether Kelo did or did not honor the importance of property rights, but the question in Kelo was a complicated one about what constituted public use. And there, the court held that a taking to develop an economically blighted area was appropriate." In other words, she mostly hid behind the Supreme Court's ruling as a precedent, saying almost nothing except she is bound to follow precedent and apply the precedent in a context-specific situation. To the extent that this testimony provides any insight at all – which is not much – it kind of suggests that she would have sided with New London. She provided this hint by acknowledging the whole public use question: Essentially, can forcing a property transfer from one private owner to another serve a public purpose? John Roberts and especially Samuel Alito would surely have hidden behind the precedent and the context-specific idea just as cleverly as Sotomayor – maybe more so – but they probably would not have characterized public use as a complicated concept. In suggesting that Sotomayor is a typical pro-government liberal on property rights issues, property rights advocates point mostly to a series of Second Circuit rulings, but in almost all of these cases Sotomayor was a member of the panel and not the opinion's author. The case most bothersome to the pro-property side is Didden v. Village of Port Chester , 173 Fed. Appx. 931 (2d Cir. 2006), a case which was not signed by an individual judge and not published in the federal reporter. The facts would be amusing if they weren't so frightening. A landowner in Port Chester – located in Westchester County, New York, near the Connecticut border – wanted to build a drug store inside a redevelopment zone. A local developer with influence in the redevelopment area demanded that the landowner either pay him $800,000 or give him a half-interest in the project, and he threatened that if the landowner did not agree, the village would condemn his property. The landowner refused and the village went forward with eminent domain proceedings. The Second District upheld a federal trial judge in throwing the case out. UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh, one of the best pro-property bloggers, acknowledged that the panel may have simply thought it was implementing Kelo, because the case clearly states that the federal judiciary should give great deference to local judgments in eminent domain cases. But writing for the majority in Kelo, Justice John Paul Stevens, the only former city attorney on the high court, concluded that "pretextual" condemnations – condemnations that claim to serve a public purpose but whose real purpose is to benefit a private party – aren't covered by the ruling. "It is difficult to imagine a more clearly pretextual taking than this one," Volokh wrote of the Didden case. Beyond that you have to go all the way back to her federal trial court days to find an opinion she wrote that seems relevant. In that case she also seems to favor the government. In In re St. Johnsbury Trucking Co. , 199 Bankr. 83 (S.D.N.Y. 1996) and 191 Bankr. 122 (S.D.N.Y. 1996), a trucking company claimed the federal trucking rates law represented a taking of property. Sotomayor appeared to agree that the economic value of the trucking company's property had been taken away but ruled in favor of the government based on the well-known three-pronged test in the Penn Central case. (My description was taken from another good property rights blog, www.inversecondemnation.com , written by Hawaii property rights lawyer Robert Thomas, who expressed appropriate outrage at the ruling.) However, there are a few points on the other side that suggest Sotomayor may be more moderate on property rights than these rulings suggest. Chief among these is Krimstock v. Kelley , a 2002 Second Circuit decision written by Sotomayor, in which the panel overturned the New York City Police Department's longstanding practice of holding vehicles seized from accused criminals indefinitely and not permitting the owners any legal recourse in attempting to reclaim the vehicle. This ruling got good press among anti-government types. But it is, of course, a different kind of case. The owners of the property in question are not developers, but, rather, accused criminals. So maybe Sotomayor really is an unquestionably liberal judge, even when she rules in favor of property owners and against the government.

A bill that extends the sunset date of tentative subdivision maps by two years has been signed by Gov. Schwarzenegger. As originally introduced, AB 333 (Fuentes) would have extended the life of subdivision maps by six years. That unprecedented, lengthy extension met resistance, so it was reduced to two years. The urgency legislation took effect on the governor's July 16 signing date. Last year, Schwarzenegger signed a bill extending the sunset date by one year. About 1,800 maps statewide are affected, according to the California Building Industry Association. The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) has approved its first congestion pricing project. It will permit paying motorists to use carpool lanes on 14 miles of Interstate 10 and 11 miles of the 110 freeway. Rates would range from 25 cents per mile during light traffic to $1.40 per mile during rush hour, with the intent of keeping traffic flowing at least 45 mph in the carpool lanes at all times. The MTA intends to add a second toll lane in both directions of the same stretch of I-10, which is immediately west of the 605 freeway. The congestion pricing project, which received a $210 million federal grant, also involves construction of automated toll plazas and increased operation of clean fuel buses on the same stretches of highway. Construction is scheduled to be complete the end of 2010. A Desert Hot Springs site along Highway 62 that was planned to become a luxury golf resort, shopping mall and high-end housing is instead becoming protected habitat. The Coachella Valley Association of Governments (CVAG) has purchased 638 acres of the 1,766-acre Palmwood development site for $3.9 million and intends to buy more of the land as funding becomes available. The Palmwood project was one of the major sticking points in adoption of the Coachella Valley multiple species habitat conservation plan, which designated the site for protection. That caused the City of Desert Hot Springs to oppose the plan, which forced plan amendments and delayed adoption (see CP&DR Environment Watch , April 2006 ). Ultimately, the Palmwood development fell apart, and Desert Hot Springs joined the species planning effort. Mendocino County voters in November will decide on a proposed 800,000-square-foot shopping mall and housing development on a former industrial site just outside of Ukiah. Project proponent Developer's Diversified is taking its plan directly to voters because of frustration with county officials, who have been considering re-use of the 76-acre Masonite site for many years and who have been unable to reach agreement with Ukiah leaders on the project.

Orange County's Planning & Development Services department "is in critical condition," according to an internal county audit released in late July. The 117-page report by the county's Office of the Performance Audit Director detailed a planning department that has seen its workload and staffing level decline drastically this decade because of incorporations and decreased building activity. At the same time, the department adopted a new time-and-materials fee methodology and went through several permanent and interim directors. Seven years ago, county officials revealed the department was operating at a $500,000-a-month deficit, a situation that forced out both the planning director and the county administrator. The deficit arose after the county slashed fees to burn off $18.5 million in excess plan check and building inspection fee revenue. The county later shifted to a time-and-materials fee basis. The county auditor concluded, "Avoiding an operating deficit continues to be, by far, the top priority for the PDS (planning and development services) organization. In response to drastically declining revenues, PDS has made significant operations changes to achieve financial solvency, in many cases at the expense of customer service." Department Director Tim Neely retired earlier this year. New Director Bryan Speegle responded to the audit by agreeing with many of the findings.

California's farm and grazing lands decreased by 176,000 acres (275 square miles) from mid-2004 through mid-2006, according to the state Department of Conservation. Most of the agricultural land was lost to urban development (102,000 acres) and a little more than half of that urbanization occurred in only five counties – Riverside, Sacramento, San Bernardino, Kern and San Diego. Nearly all urbanization occurred in Southern California and the Central Valley. "Housing developments were the most frequent and largest category of newly urbanized land," according to the recently released California Farmland Conservation Report 2004-2006. "Most of the increase was associated with single-family homes located at the periphery of existing cities, and to a lesser degree condominium and apartment complexes. Individual subdivisions ranged up to 300 acres in size." The overall amount of farmland conversion increased by about 8,000 acres from the previous two-year period. A total of 81,000 acres of prime farmland were lost to urban development or other changes, such as idling, dry cropping, confined animal facilities and rural residential development, during the 2004-06 period. That's the greatest decrease in prime farmland since the state started the farmland mapping and monitoring program (FMMP) in 1984. In Stanislaus County, 81% of farmland lost to urban development during the 2004-06 period was prime farmland. "During the 11 biennial reporting cycles since FMMP was established, more than 1.2 million acres of agricultural land in California were converted to nonagricultural purposes. Nearly 79% of this land was urbanized," the report concluded. The report and detailed county-level information about farmland is available from the Department of Conservation website .

Gov. Schwarzenegger's last-minute decision to eliminate Williamson Act subventions is another example of how the state's spending decisions run counter to its greenhouse gas emissions-reduction goals. I know, the budget signed on Tuesday does not match many of the state's alleged policy goals. But I find the continual undercutting of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions policy to be particularly galling because the governor and other state leaders have been so quick to take credit for being climate change warriors. In case you haven't heard, the governor "blue penciled" all but $1,000 of Williamson Act subventions because he said the state needs the money for a reserve fund. The Williamson Act provides tax breaks to agricultural landowners who sign 10-year contracts (renewed annually) not to develop their property. The program reduces county property tax revenues by about $35 million to $38 million annually, but the state has always backfilled that money as a way of promoting the Williamson Act program. With about 17 million acres enrolled, the 44-year-old Williamson Act amounts to the state's biggest anti-sprawl program. Urban sprawl, of course, causes people to drive more and, therefore, produce more GHGs. Considering the AB 32 goal of reducing emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, and to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050, you'd think the state would do all it could to block sprawl. You know, things like provide incentives to rural landowners not to subdivide their pastures. State lawmakers were willing to fund subventions at 80%, or about $28 million, but the governor said he needs to hang onto the money for the next emergency. Will the Williamson Act survive? It's hard to predict, but it's easy to see that no level of government is more fiscally strapped than counties. Would it surprise anyone if counties started canceling Williamson Act contracts? The Williamson Act funding cut is hardly the only example of the state's counterproductive budget in the area of climate change. The spending plan also eliminates state support for transit operations , and it slashes $2 billion from redevelopment, which sure seems like something climate change warriors would want to support. (I should note that the budget does not include $100 million in royalties from new offshore oil drilling leases, as state lawmakers refused to approve the governor's drilling proposal .) Is anyone happy with this budget? It appears not. Even Republican lawmakers who got everything they wanted on potential tax increases concede the budget is no victory . - Paul Shigley