Articles

A city clerk did not have authority to throw out a zoning initiative petition based on evidence she received that the petition had been improperly circulated, the First District Court of Appeal has ruled. The city clerk's role was ministerial, and she did not have the authority to consider extrinsic evidence about how the initiative's backers circulated the measure, the court held.

The Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency was correct to require a supplemental environmental impact report (SEIR) for a billboard proposed within a redevelopment project area, the Second District Court of Appeal has ruled.

The California Coastal Commission does not have authority to consider environmental impacts to areas inside the coastal zone caused by development outside the coast zone, the First District Court of Appeal has ruled. The decision is the most definitive to date on the Commission's authority when a project straddles the coastal zone boundary.

Whoever said that art imitates life has not visited one of Southern California's neighborhood cybercafes, where, according to some planners and police, the reverse is true. It is in these mainly blue collar, immigrant enclaves where video games and youth culture have combined into a lively and sometimes violent activity, thereby creating the state's latest LULU (locally undesirable land use). In predictable fashion, cities are responding with ordinances, and businesses are fighting back through the court

At last, a property rights ballot initiative is making the rounds in California. But the initiative begs the question: Is there still a property rights movement in this state?

What began as an effort to prevent desecration of Native American sacred sites morphed this spring into a profound change in California's mining regulations, a change potentially so costly to mine operators that industry representatives predicted it would bring an end to one of the state's signature commercial activities: Gold mining.

An environmental impact report for a dairy in Madera County has survived a challenge from an organization that fights dairy expansion in the Central Valley. The Fifth District Court of Appeal rejected arguments that the EIR's handling of endangered species issues, project alternatives and cumulative groundwater impacts was inadequate.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has turned back a San Diego developer's broad attack on the Endangered Species Act as an unconstitutional exercise of federal power. Rancho Viejo LLC argued that the federal government had exceeded the authority granted to it by the constitution's Commerce Clause, and the developer pointed to two recent Supreme Court decisions striking down laws because they exceeded Congress's authority under the clause.

Like the lonely woodcarver Geppetto in the story of Pinocchio, boosters of "town centers" hope that the instant shopping streets will be accepted as the genuine article.

San Francisco International Airport officials will celebrate the opening of a new Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) train connection this month while lamenting the delay of an unrelated plan to expand runways.

California is a state characterized by big development projects. Some get built, and some don't. But simply the proposal of a huge project can be enough to start a political movement.

Throughout the high-stakes poker game that coastal cities and a giant irrigation district have been playing for the past seven years in the California desert � with a rich pot of Colorado River water the prize � the Salton Sea has been a peripheral presence, like a high-roller's mistress standing just outside the glare of the lights. But events earlier this year suggest that the ecologically ailing drainage sump at the heart of the Imperial Valley has really been manipulating the game all along.

Despite a sluggish California economy, the state agency charged with business development and job creation appears to be in for a substantial downsizing.

A developer's lawsuit that claimed the San Diego Unified Port District and one of its commissioners conspired to kill the developer's proposed waterfront project has been thrown out as a strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP).