Articles

The California Supreme Court has dismissed a case involving San Diego County's antenna ordinance because the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the ordinance last year.

This could become a year of creative financing, and not merely for the state government. Lawmakers are considering at least three bills that could change the rules for financing local infrastructure.

When you've got a $14 billion deficit, everybody's ox is going to get gored. So the question for the planning and development community in California is not really whether something bad is going to happen. The question is whether it matters very much.

A slew of land use issues are converging on Stockton, an older Central Valley city that is simultaneously struggling to revitalize its downtown and deal with a political environment that is both pro-growth and environmentally conscious.

Court have issued four recent court decisions regarding eminent domain that suggest that acquiring property through eminent domain is an increasingly costly prospect for the government. None of the four decisions addressed whether the government had the right to take the property in question. Rather, the cases dealt with procedure and valuation.

The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is one of the biggest ecological train wrecks in the nation, the focal point of a tectonic smash-up between human needs and natural dynamics. In consequence, it also has become perhaps the most-studied and squabbled-over body of water in the West. The latest contributions to that voluminous body of work are the final report of a governor-appointed "Blue Ribbon Task Force," and a federal court ruling.

The California housing market crashed during 2007, and only true optimists and a handful of industry groups predict a turnaround this year. The halcyon days of the housing boom already seem like a long ways away.

But while the downturn has reached nearly every corner of the state, some markets are stronger than others. In particular, exurban markets are weak, while urban markets focused on infill development are relatively strong.

An appellate court has blocked a controversial subdivision at the eastern base of Mt. Whitney because the project's environmental impact report did not adequately consider a potential land swap between the developer and the Bureau of Land Management.

An initiative that would prevent the use of eminent domain for economic development purposes and ban local rent control laws has qualified for the June ballot. The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and the California Farm Bureau Federation are the primary proponents. In addition, a competing, more limited measure that would prohibit the taking of owner-occupied, single-family houses for economic development has also qualified for the same June ballot.

A county cannot employ a development agreement to permit a use not otherwise allowed by zoning, the Fifth District Court of Appeal has ruled. The court said Tuolumne County could not use a development agreement allowing one agricultural property owner to conduct weddings and other events that are not allowed by the applicable zoning district and county zoning ordinance.

The Humboldt County district attorney cannot sue Pacific Lumber Company for allegedly submitting false information during the state's processing of an environmental impact report and sustainable logging plan, the First District Court of Appeal has ruled.

The court ruled that the district attorney's lawsuit was blocked by a section of the state Civil Code and by the Noerr-Pennington doctrine, which protects lobbying and petitioning activities. The court did not rule on the legitimacy of Pacific Lumber's allegedly fraudulent statements.

If California is truly going to reduce — in a meaningful way — its emission of the gases that contribute to global climate change, the state must change how it uses land.
That is the inescapable conclusion of virtually everyone who has analyzed the situation. But nearly every detail regarding how, when and who decides remains extremely uncertain at the start of 2008.