Articles

The process of initiative and referendum is California's most peculiar institution. Other states rely on their legislators or other elected officials to hash out controversial public issues in lengthy, complicated and subtle debates. But Californians prefer the blunt instrument of the ballot box — a simple thumbs-up or thumbs-down from voters. We all know this is true at the state level, where voters are confronted on each ballot with a bewildering array of initiatives and bond issues. But it...

It's the oldest contract in the world: I'll scratch your back, if you'll scratch mine. The Walt Disney Co. recently worked a variant on this contract when it agreed to help the City of Anaheim obtain attractive interest rates for nearly $400 million in public improvements around Disneyland and the city's other big draws. On its face, the deal looks good. The town gets fixed up, and both the city and the theme park make money. Why would I care that The Walt Disney Co. was able to obtain at l...

The California Environmental Quality Act does not apply to a city's design review process, the Third District Court of Appeal has held. In a case involving a Border's bookstore in the City of Davis, the court also ruled that the identity of a particular tenant in a retail project that has already undergone CEQA review does not compel further study. And the court held that the city's design review process does not extend to approval of particular tenants. The partially published appellate cour...

It seems like a grand time for urbanists. Downtowns across California are dusting off their dancing shoes and, in some locations, absolutely cutting up rugs. This is particularly the case in older downtowns that have enough amenities – the sort that neotraditionalists like to copy — to draw recreational use. In the best cases, the workaday downtowns of yore have evolved into the work/play/live spaces of today. San Francisco, Santa Monica, and San Diego may provide the best examples. In...

Showing the willingness to veto bills for the second year in a row, Gov. Gray Davis rejected land use bills that ranged from high-profile measures to legislation that was nearly off the radar screen. Two project-specific bills that would have aided Indian casino development received vetoes in late September. Davis also rejected bills that would have, among other things, thrown a new obstacle in front of a controversial Ventura County subdivision; encouraged a 1.5 to 1 jobs-housing balance; a...

The shift of $200 million per year away from redevelopment agencies to school districts as part of the state's property tax reallocation beginning in 1992 did not constitute a "reimbursable state mandate," the Third District Court of Appeal has ruled. The ruling clarifies a question that first emerged when redevelopment agencies reluctantly agreed to the shift of funds in 1992. The City of El Monte had filed a test claim on the issue with the Commission on State Mandates. However, the city l...

The City of San Francisco has been dealt setbacks in two cases in which the city attempted to argue that two hotels were not "grandfathered" as tourist hotels and therefore are subject to the city's hotel conversion ordinance because of alleged conversion from residential to tourist use. The two cases appear to have interconnected issues that may need to be resolved later. In the first case, one First District appellate panel concluded that the hotel needed to prove "actual tourist use...

The November 7 election is shaping up as a potential landmark in ballot-box planning in California. Voters are scheduled to decide an even 50 local ballot measures, the most since the November 1990 election. Although ballot measures are concentrated in the Bay Area and along the Southern California coast, the collection of cities and counties where land-use measures will appear is as diverse as California itself. Lassen County voters will consider a mountain resort and subdivision. Monterey County wil...

The massive project to prevent the Santa Ana River from flooding heavily urbanized portions of San Bernardino, Riverside and Orange counties continues to move forward. Orange County is purchasing property in preparation for raising the existing Prado Dam near Chino. Meanwhile federal officials are wrestling with the environmental affects of an already completed dam farther upstream, a dam that environmentalists say will harm three endangered species. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Santa ...

In retrospect, no one should have been surprised by the chaos this summer in California's electricity industry. The stage was set six years ago for a painful collision between consumer expectations and marketplace realities when the Public Utilities Commission began dismantling the tightly integrated power industry. In 1996, the Legislature expanded the PUC's efforts and practically guaranteed this summer's debacle when it hurriedly approved a complicated deregulation plan intended t...

Building on an earlier case, the Fourth District Court of Appeal has expanded protection of low-quality coastal wetlands. Overturning a trial judge, the court ruled that all wetlands in California's coastal zone — even those not located in "environmentally sensitive habitat areas," (ESHAs) — should receive the same level of legal protection whether they are pristine or degraded. Last year, the same court ruled that coastal wetlands' quality could not be taken into account in determining wh...

Tejon Ranch Company has received approval from the Kern County Board of Supervisors for the Tejon Industrial Complex, a 320-acre business park along I-5 at the northern base of the Grapevine. Although it is a 45-mile drive from the outskirts of Los Angeles, the project appears to tie Kern County closer to metropolitan Southern California, a concept that Tejon Ranch encourages. Tejon Ranch owns 270,000 contiguous acres (422 square miles) in southern Kern and northern Los Angeles counties, ma...

The Fourth District Court of Appeal has thrown out an environmental impact report for a proposed San Bernardino County landfill because the EIR did not estimate the volume of groundwater underlying the site. Because the landfill could threaten the groundwater resource, decision-makers needed to know how large the resource is before determining whether the landfill was an acceptable risk, the unanimous three-judge panel held. Although the court threw out the EIR for lacking groundwater information, t...

Ben Hulse is director of the San Joaquin County Community Development Department. Long a major agricultural center, San Joaquin County has seen subdivisions rapidly replace farms. The population has grown 63% in 20 years to about 583,000. Earlier this year, the county Board of Supervisors unanimously adopted all 13 of Hulse's recommendations regarding implementation of the eight-year-old general plan. Hulse recommended basing general plan implementation on four values: preserving farmland an...