Monterey County should have completed an environmental impact report for a proposal to demolish a county jail that many people consider historic for cultural and architectural reasons, the Sixth District Court of Appeal has ruled.

In the first published ruling on the subject, the Second District Court of Appeal has ruled that the newly incorporated City of Goleta had the discretion to reject a final subdivision map.

A sweetheart deal that permitted nearly 300 mobile home owners to maintain homes in a state park at the beach has reached a conclusion.

A Placer County judge's decision to throw out a mitigated negative declaration for an employee housing project in the high Sierra has been upheld by the Third District Court of Appeal.

Measures that would impose sales taxes for transportation dominate local ballots around California this November. Five counties are attempting to get voter approval for local-option sales taxes for the first time, while another five counties are seeking extensions of existing taxes. The elections demonstrate the growing growing importance of local, general taxes for funding transportation projects. However, the two-thirds vote requirement makes the revenue source far from certain.

A bill that would have required cities and counties to prepare economic impact reports for proposed big box stores that sell groceries received a veto from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. During a flurry of activity in September, the governor also rejected a bill that would have created a pilot brownfield cleanup program and a measure making minor amendments to the California Environmental Quality Act. Schwarzenegger signed two other brownfield bills, and measures endorsed by environmentalists.

Kern County is moving forward on a new application process for nearly 30 new dairies and 214,000 cows. Although dairy supporters argue that the dairies would be good for the local economy, the cows bring with them tons of worry over public health, air quality, ground and surface water quality, and quality of life.

Ten counties have ten different ideas about what to do with revenue from a local-option sales tax. Here are the details.

A complex deal that would prevent large-scale development of the Hearst Ranch on California's central coast is nearly complete. But the deal that will preserve the 82,000-acre ranch does not satisfy many members of an environmental community that has fought Hearst Ranch development plans for decades. While environmental groups dislike the deal, there is wide support for it among ranchers, farmland advocates, area residents, and San Luis Obispo County officials and business leaders.

Fifteen years after the Loma Prieta earthquake caused a portion of the Bay Bridge to collapse, no one knows for sure when a seismically safe replacement will be built or how to pay for the job.

In an imagined conversion, two security spies consider the design of Dos Lagos, a new project in the City of Corona.

This month's selection of In Brief items includes Nut Tree redevelopment, a shopping center referendum in Glendale, campaign contibution restrictions for Ventura County developers, and competition for a cargo base in the Inland Empire.

There is no more peculiar animal in California housing than the mobile home park. It's a place where residents own their dwelling but rent the land on which the dwelling is located. The dwelling is theoretically moveable, but it's not going anywhere. So the landlords and the residents are stuck with each other -- and in a constant struggle that involves government regulation, property rights and California's sticky affordable housing problem.There is no more peculiar animal in California housing than the mobile home park.

The Court of Appeal has again upheld a public agency's dismissal of project alternatives as economically infeasible, even though the project's environmental impact report did not include an economic analysis. The ruling is the third published decision in two years in which a court has said that an economic analysis does not have to be part of an EIR.