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Typically, the allocation of half of any pot of state funding to a single city would probably generate cries of favoritism. That’s even if it could get out of the legislature. That’s not the case, though, when the money is dedicated to disadvantaged communities and the city is Fresno.

The Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) and California EPA announced the release of the California Communities Environmental Health Screening Tool: CalEnviroScreen 3.0. The new screening methodology can help identify communities that are disproportionately burdened by multiple sources of pollution. CalEnviroScreen ranks each of the state’s 8,000 census tracts using data on 20 indicators related to pollution, environmental quality, and socioeconomic and public health conditions. The goal of the updated tool is to help implement a variety of state programs aimed at reducing pollution and providing healthier environment in the State’s most disadvantaged communities. Major changes include more recent data for indicators, two new indicators that reflect health and socioeconomic vulnerability to pollution, improvements in the way some indicators are calculated, additional information on pollution along the California-Mexico border, removal of “children and elderly” age indicator, and change in overall scoring methodology. Trump Budget Threatens California Transit Projects Several California transit projects are threatened with cuts in funding according to the Trump administration budget unveiled last week. Projects include Bay Area Caltrain electrification, Los Angeles Downtown Streetcar, Los Angeles Purple Line Phase 3 Subway, Orange County Streetcar, Sacramento Streetcar, San Bernardino Redlands Rail, San Francisco Transbay Rail Corridor, San Jose BART to San Jose, San Jose El Camino Real BRT, and San Rafael SMART Extension to Larkspur. Sacramento-area transportation officials hope to persuade Congress and the administration to maintain spending for transit and road projects when a final federal budget is approved later this year. The Trump budget proposes a 13 percent cut in transportation spending overall, including funding for roads. However, Sacramento Regional Transit chief Henry Li told the Sacramento Bee that he “suspects the Trump administration’s planned but not-yet-unveiled trillion-dollar infrastructure package may include some way to allow projects like the proposed airport light rail line to compete for funding, but probably only if the local agency is innovative in bringing some private funding into the mix.” Los Angeles City Planning Announces Incentives for Transit-Oriented Housing The Los Angeles Department of City Planning  released guidelines for its Transit Oriented Communities and Affordable Housing Incentive Program. Mandated by Measure JJJ, an inclusionary housing measure passed in November, the program is designed to promote the development of housing within a half-mile radius of major transit stops. The guidelines  grant exemption from certain code restrictions in exchange for providing on-site affordable housing provided that the meet certain criteria, including the provision of affordable housing. The program is tiered so that developments closest to transit stops receive the greatest increases in density, among other potential incentives. The program offers the option of an in-lieu fee for developments that do not include on-site affordable units. The guidelines are adopted at the discretion of the Planning Department — without City Council approval — and a project’s eligibility for incentives will be determined by the Planning Department and will not need further approval. The program will apply to nearly 100 light rail and busway stops in the city.  San Diego Landlords Face Gap in Section 8 Subsidies A report from NBC 7 Investigates has found that the amount a Section 8 landlord can charge for rent in San Diego has increased, but the amount provided to tenants has not changed since 2009. According to San Diego Housing Commission records, over 15,000 residents in the city rely on government assistance to help pay rent. Last year, HUD increased the new federal rental rates called “Fair Market Rents,” these are calculated using Census Bureau data and can change every year. According to San Diego Housing Commission, it has approved 1,982 rent increases for Section 8 households since the new standards were released in October. Report Details High-Value Environmental Lands in Western States The Nature Conservancy released its Terrestrial Resilience and Regional Connectivity report. The report and its accompanying maps describe 355,000 square miles of key landscapes in the west that are most likely to sustain native species amid climate change. The maps are designed to help governments and nonprofit groups identity high-priority lands for conservation. They cover areas of Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Montana, Nevada, California and Utah. The data was collected from soil maps, vegetation maps, species distribution, moisture, elevation and location of roads, power lines, cities and towns.  Report Summarizes $3.4 Billion in Cap-and-Trade Spending The California Air Resources Board and California Department of Finance release a report that tracks the progress of the cap-and-trade auction proceeds. The California Climate Investments are awarded and implemented more than $500 million in new funding last year and doubled the number of projects statewide. To date, $3.4 billion has been divided by the Legislature to 12 state agencies that have distributed $1.2 billion to projects. These projects include the port of Los Angeles as the world’s first shipping terminal to generate all its energy needs from renewable resources, ultra-clean locomotives for Metrolink, 82-unit affordable housing development in MacArthur Park neighborhood in LA, as well as grants to farmers for more water-efficient irrigation technology. Additionally, fifty percent of the $1.2 billion is providing benefits to disadvantaged communities such as installing solar panels, replacing polluting vehicles, and planting 1,000 trees in San Bernardino County. Cap-and-Trade Auction Again Yields Disappointing Results Continuing a trend over the past few months, California’s Cap-and-Trade February auction made significantly less than was expected. According to initial results , just 16.5 percent of the 74.8 million metric tons of emission allowances were sold at the floor prices of $13.57 per ton. Almost all the February proceeds went to California’s utilities or the Canadian province of Quebec, which offers emission allowances through California. This means the state will see only $8.2 million, rather than the nearly $600 million it was hoping for. This may stall Gov. Jerry Brown’s 2017-18 budget plan to spend $2.2 billion on climate-related programs, including $800 million on the high-speed rail. Quick Hits & Updates Ten days after the LA County election, Measure H climbed to 69.24 percent approval, putting it over the necessary two-thirds threshold. The measure will raise the sales tax a quarter-percent to fund homeless programs across the county. The County Registrar-Recorder was counting the last 55,000 absentee ballots, which led to the big finish. The sales tax rate will increase to 9.5 percent in July and is expected to raise $3.5 billion over a decade. Following adoption of a program to accelerate the city’s long-term planning processes, the Los Angeles City Council  approved , 10-0, an increase in developer fees to help pay for a pending ordinance requiring the city to update its community plans every six years. Updating every six years would cost an estimated $12.55 million annually. The vote would increase the General Plan Maintenance Surcharge from 2 to 7 percent, which city officials say would raise up to $5 million per year. The surcharge is placed on developers for any permit, plan check, license or application. The 116-year old, 298- foot Angels Flight funicular in downtown Los Angeles will reopen to the public by Labor Day, according to LA Mayor Eric Garcetti. The "world’s shortest railway" descends from Bunker Hill to the Historic Core, but was shut down after a derailment in 2013. San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin was appointed to the California Coastal Commission to fill former Marin County Supervisor Steve Kinsey’s seat. He is currently president of the Great Basin Land & Water, a nonprofit organization focused on protecting water quality in the Truckee River. He is also a member of the SF Bay Conservation and Development Commission. California’s Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources found dozen of pages of violations for the Newport Banning Ranch oil field that developers want to turn into a hotel and housing development. The state directed the field operators, West Newport Oil Co. and Armstrong Petroleum Corp. to correct the problems by March 31. The violations include piles of rusted, abandoned equipment, wellhead and pipeline leaks, small chemical spills, and discarded equipment. The California Supreme Court ruled unanimously that more evidence must be presented to overturn an endangered species listing . In the case, forest landowners filed a petition to remove a subset of coho salmon arguing the listing was wrong because the fish were not native to the area and were introduced through hatcheries. To have a species delisted, new evidence to challenge the original listing decision must be shown. Two construction firms helping to build high-speed rail structures in the Central Valley are seeking an additional $300 million meaning the easiest, most predictable section of the system jumps to $3.6 billion above current estimates. The letters from the firms argue the contracts do not cover the full scope of work and the state’s management of the project is causing delays. The Department of Finance approved the High Speed Rail Authority’s request to spend $2.6 billion on work in the Central Valley. The decision allows the state treasurer’s office to sell a portion of the nearly $10 billion in bonds voters approved in 2008 for a bullet train. However, the first 29-mile segment of track isn’t expected to be completed until at least August 2019. The Los Angeles City Council is considering an Affordable Housing Linkage Fee (AHLF) that would tax certain types of new residential and commercial construction to generate a fund for new affordable housing as well as refurbishing existing stock. The plan was approved by the City Planning Commission and is now heading to the City Council. The linkage fee is $5 per square foot of new office, hotel, retail, and warehouse projects and $12 per square foot for new residential construction. This fee is expected to generate between $75-$92 million each year.  Assemblymember Cecilia Aguiar-Curry (D-Winters) has proposed a constitutional amendment that would lower the margin needed for local governments to pass a ta x hike or bond measure  from a two-thirds supermajority to 55%. Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) has proposed a similar constitutional amendment to lower the threshold for passing, but only for transportation projects. Caltrain officials are scrambling to put together a plan to make up for the $647 million in electrification money they may lose because of changes in Washington. Caltrain officials are talking to tech bosses from the Silicon Valley Leadership Group to lobby the administration and Congress when they head to Washington to talk to the Trump administration.  The Oakland Raiders announced Bank of America will replace Goldman Sachs in paying $1.9 billion for the 65,000-seat Las Vegas Stadium. March 26-29th the 32 owners will be voting on the relocation proposal and 24 owners must approve. Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf presented a plan to keep the Raiders in Oakland through the creation of “one of America’s premier mixed-use sporting venues." A survey conducted for the City of Santa Monica found 72 percent used their personal vehicle for majority of their tasks. Only 4.7 percent used bicycles, 18 percent walked, and 3 precent or 11 trips were light rail or subway. This data comes even though the city has spent significant amounts of money and resources to encourage residents to shift smaller trips to non-vehicles to easy congestion and pollution. Tulare City Council voted, 4-0, to change the city’s general plan zoning from low density residential to community commercial as well as a CUP to include a 75-foot freeway sign. The change will allow construction of a large hotel, however residents are concerned about the compatibility with homes, a school, park and fire station.  The Mountain View City Council unanimously approved Google’s new canopied campus in North Bayshore and will begin building this year. The Charleston East project is 595,000 square feet and includes walking trails, a public park and plaza, and ground-floor retail. The company didn’t receive any pushback at the public hearing and instead residents praised the company’s community contributions from education initiatives to local environmental work.  Marin County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved an ordinance that would remove the exemption that owner-occupied buildings containing three or fewer housing units now enjoy from the county’s fair housing ordinance. Marin landlords who live in the buildings they rent may soon have to conform to a county ordinance prohibiting them from discriminating against people using Section 8 housing vouchers and other third-party housing subsidies.  Palo Alto City Council voted , 6-2, to make some zoning changes to encourage construction of accessory dwelling units. The changes also eliminate lot size requirements so these units can be built anywhere. Also allows the conversion of existing structures, such as garages, or bedrooms with a kitchenette. The council asked city staff to devise incentives for residents to build such units, especially if the units are for low-to-moderate income residents. The High Speed Rail Authority board criticized the state’s Republican House delegation for the delay of a grant that would have benefited California’s bullet train project. The State’s 14 Republican congressmembers asked Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao to withhold a $647 million grant, and the FTA said it would defer any action on the grant which would help pay for the $2-billion electrification of Caltrain. Democrats argue the grant was separate from the bullet train and was meant only to help Caltrain.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti signed an executive directive that has banned City Planning Commissions from meeting or communicating privately with real estate developers whose plans they are vetting. Executive Directive 19 is designed to help help L.A. build the transportation infrastructure and affordable housing that voters funded through Measure M and Proposition HHH last fall. The directive reforms the city’s planning process by directing the Department of City Planning to develop a specific program and timeline for updating all 35 of the City’s Community Plans — a process that will take place within six years. The directive also bans certain types of ex parte communications between developers and government officials. The directive was partially inspired by the debate over Measure S, which was defeated two days prior to the signing of the directive. Yes on S campaign director Jill Stewart said the ban was too limited and that “backroom meetings” could happen before a developer formally files an application. LAO Report Underscores Shortage of Housing Approvals The Legislative Analysis Office released a report, “Do Communities Adequately Plan for Housing?” contending in no uncertain terms that California cities are not planning for or approving enough housing to meet the state’s population demands. The report finds that many communities- particularly coastal- limit construction of new homes, which has driven up costs. Communities’ decisions about housing can limit home building such as their long-term land use plans and implementations through zoning or creating onerous processes for approval of new housing developments. The LAO looked at relationships between overall general plans, housing elements, and Regional Housing Needs Allocations, finding that housing elements fall short of their goals by having zoning rules out of sync with the types of projects developers would like to construct. Changing this mindset of coastal communities to allow more home development will be difficult. The report echo a series of reports published by the department of Housing and Community Development last year that were also critical of cities’ housing production.  Fresno to Become More Pedestrian-Friendly The Fresno City Council unanimously adopted  a plan to improve and expand the city’s network of sidewalks, trails and bicycle lanes, and paths. The new Active Transportation Plan envisions the expansion of the city’s 491 miles of bike lanes to nearly 1,440 miles. The plan also sets forth a strategy to identify areas that have no sidewalks, and other improvements for pedestrians. A newly created rubric assigns points to projects based on the following criteria: access and equity (20 points), connectivity (30 points), traffic control, mode shift, and user comfort (35 points), and feasibly and engineering considerations (15 points). The plan is divided into near-term priorities to be built over the next 5-10 years and long-term needs over the next 30-50 years. To qualify for transportation grants from the state and Fresno County’s Measure C, an adopted plan is required. Analysis Reveals Concentration of Housing Near Freeways in L.A. A Los Angeles Times analysis of U.S. Census data, building permits, and other government records show that thousands of new homes have been approved within 1,000 feet of a freeway even though they advise developers that this distance poses health concerns, including cancer risks. In 2015, the city issued building permits for 4,300 homes near freeways. More than 1.2 million people live in high-pollution zones within 500 feet of a Southern California freeway. One City Councilmember, José Huizar, who lives several hundred feet from I-5, wants to establish buffer zones for limiting development around freeways. Others, including Mayor Eric Garcetti, are wary of any prohibitions on housing development, since buffer zones could end up covering 10 percent of the city’s residentially zoned land.  Fontana Updates 30-Year-Old Plan for Warehousing  The Fontana City Council approved , 5-0, the Westgate Specific Plan which includes 946 acres in North Fontana near the 15 and 210 freeways slated for development by Intex Corp. The broad plan was approved for the area, but the developer must take each project to the city for separate project-by-project discussion and approval. The plan allows 1.2 million square feet of warehouse space and 3,751 residential units for 15,000 residents. It replaces a 1996 plan that called for 4 million square feet of warehouses and is intended to provide a more “balanced” mix of development. However, major criticisms revolve around affordable housing, particularly for seniors. AHSC Guidelines Available for Comment The Strategic Growth Council (SGC) is accepting public comments on the 2016-17 Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities (AHSC) Program Guidelines . The Air Resources Board is also receiving comments on the AHSC GHG Quantification Methodology for FY 2016-17. The final program guidelines and accompanying GHG quantification methodology are expected to be considered for adoption at the June 1 SGC meeting. AHSC staff will hold workshops on this draft in early April.

Gov. Jerry Brown’s idea of by-right approval of certain affordable housing projects may have gone by the wayside, but the Legislature is teeing up a whole range of possible policy changes that would create more carrots and sticks to local governments in California to allow affordable housing – including one by Assemblymember Richard Bloom, D-Santa Monica, creating a state board that could override local decisions in certain circumstances. (Bloom has introduced 11 housing bills altogether.) At the core of the debate is the role that local governments play in creating or preventing housing. “The League of California Cities would say, ‘We don’t produce housing so don’t hold us accountable’,” said Marina Wiant of the California Housing Coalition at the recent Housing California conference in Sacramento. “But what we’re talking about in terms of enforcement is mostly, whether a site is actually developable or whether they are denying projects that otherwise meet the criteria. There’s no question that 2017 is shaping up as the year of housing in Sacramento. By far the two most bills getting the most attention in Sacramento are part of Senate Pro Tem Kevin Deleon’s “infrastructure package”: SB 2 (Atkins), which would create a $300 million permanent source of funding for affordable housing by creating a $75 recording fee on real estate transactions, and SB 3 (Bell), a $3 billion housing bond that would go on the 2018 ballot. Brown is receptive to the first bill but hostile to the second because it would affect the state general fun. But there are more than 100 bills on housing floating around Sacramento right now and a lot of them would either induce or pressure local governments to allow more housing generally and affordable housing in particular. Several bills would seek to overturn or mitigate the effect of recent court decisions. Here’s a rundown by topic: Tightening Up Housing Element Site Lists  The list of sites contained in every local government’s Housing Element is supposed do be one of the keys to increasing housing supply. But state officials are concerned that the housing element lists aren’t “real” and include many sites that aren’t really in play or won’t become available anytime soon. Both Senator Nancy Skinner of Berkeley and Assemblymember Evan Low of Campbell have bills in the hopper that would try to tighten up the lists. “How do we make sure the housing element process from start to finish is a real process and not a paper one,” commented Brian Augusta of California Rural Legal Assistance at the Housing California conference. “Are these real sites? Are they capable of being developed?” SB 469 , Skinner’s bill, would simply prohibit a local government’s list of sites from providing less housing than is called for in the housing element. It would also require written findings if a local government approves a project below the capacity called for in the housing element. AB 1397 , Low’s bill, would require parcels on the site list to have sufficient infrastructure or be included in a mandatory plan to develop that infrastructure within three years. Streamlining Infill Permit Processing SB 35 (Weiner) is the big by-right bill. The bill would require by-right approval of multifamily and accessory dwelling projects in urban infill locations if the jurisdiction is falling far short of its regional housing targets. However, the bill requires the project to be built with prevailing wage – a condition that might discourage developers from pursuing such projects. AB 73 (Chiu) would allow “zoning incentive payments” from the state to local governments that create “housing sustainability districts” that permit residential development by right. The districts would have to meet a variety of criteria, including a minimum of eight units per acre for single-family development and 20 units per year for mult-family development as well as exemption from any moratoria imposed in the city. Payment to cities in exchange for housing production has been successful in the past . SB 540 (Roth) would similarly create “workforce housing opportunity zones” that would form the basis of a specific plan that would have environmental work done up-front and then permit residential development by-right. AB 30 (Caballero) would specifically authorize local governments to create an infill specific plan that would become an overlay zone with by-right development, but only in “underperforming” infill locations. State Override of Local Affordable Housing Denials Undoubtedly the most controversial of the housing bills will be AB 1585 (Bloom), which would adopt Massachusetts’s “Chapter 40B” system of permitting state overrides of local decisions on affordable housing. The Bloom bill would create an “affordable housing zoning board” in every local jurisdiction (with planning commissioners serving ex-officio) and a housing appeals board at HCD that would rule on appeals when affordable projects are denied. The affordable housing zoning board would be alternative process that developers could choose to move through rather than the conventional project approval process. Inclusionary Housing Two bills would codify the ability of local governments to adopt inclusionary housing ordinances requiring residential developers to set aside a certain percentage of their units for affordable housing. The issue has been contentious ever since 2009, when a court struck down Los Angeles’s inclusionary ordinance. In 2013, Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed an override, saying he wanted to see how a supsequent California Supreme Court ruling was decided. In 2015, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of inclusionary housing . AB 1505 (Bloom) is the favored vehicle at the moment, though SB 277 (Bradford) also deals with the same topic. Workaround Around the Tuolomne Tactic Finally, one bill would create a workaround around the so-called Tuolomne Tactice, the practice of adopting a voter initiative prior to an actual vote in order to end-run the California Environmental Quality Act review process. The California Supreme Court approved the tactic in 2015, thus allowing developers to slipstream between election officials’ option of approving an initiative and court rulings saying initiatives are exempt from CEQA. AB 890 is sponsored by Assemblymember Jose Medina, whose district includes Moreno Valley. Moreno Valley used the Tuolomne Tactic to approve a 40-million-square-foot logistics district.

Now that federal government seems likely to pull the plug on the federal Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule (AFFR), California is considering several counterveiling steps, including a state law backstopping the rule. The AFFR rule – guideance for which was issued by the Department of Housing & Urban Development the day before the Obama Administration ended -- requires many recipients of federal public housing funds to formally assess whether their actions promote fair housing. Though the rulemaking predates the opinion, the AFFR rule will inevitably be used to implement the need to focus on “high opportunity” – i.e., affluent – areas, as called for by the U.S. Supreme Court in Texas Department Of Housing And Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, Inc., 576 U.S. __ (2015) .  New HUD Secretary Ben Carson appears likely to try to unwind the rule – it was the only housing issue he ever commented on prior to his appointment – and a pair of Republican bills in Congress would repeal the rule and, further, prohibit the federal government from collecting data on housing segregation. California is prepared to strike back, however. AB 686, introduced by Assemblymember Miguel Santiago, D-Los Angeles, would require agencies to “affirmatively further fair housing” in all of their activities – including land-use planning and permitting decisions.” “Affirmatively furthering fair housing” is defined in the bill as “taking meaningful actions, in addition to combating discrimination, that overcome patterns of segregation, promote fair housing choice, and foster inclusive communities free from barriers that restrict access to opportunity-based characteristics protected by this part; and that transform racially and ethnically concentrated areas of poverty into areas of opportunity, while protecting existing residents from displacement.” Furthermore, at the recent Housing California conference in Sacramento, state officials indicated that they will continue to work to implement the federal rule and also find stronger ways to promote affordable housing in “high opportunity” areas. “We are beginning to crank away and think about where our investment is going and what more we should be doing,” said Ben Metcalf, director of the California Department of Housing & Community Development. Both the Inclusive Communities ruling and the federal AFFR rule have focused national attention on the question of how affordable housing might be more evenly distributed across all neighborhoods, not concentrated only in low-income neighborhoods. In part this policy directionis the result of research showing that poor children growing up in “high opportunity” areas are likely to do better in life. Although the issue has generally been partisan, with Democrats in favor and Republicans opposed, some Democrats have struggled with the issue. Many affordable housing developers and their funders have noted that their projects often stabilize housing for families in poor neighborhoods and some Democrats, such as Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, have expressed similar views to Carson in saying that poor children shouldn’t have to move to affluent neighborhoods to succeed. The California Tax Credit Allocation Committee is also working on how to work “opportunity” into its formula for low-income housing tax credits. But TCAC has pulled back on a proposed incentive-based rule to provide more points in high opportunity areas to “think about how we might want to approach this in the future,” said Mark Stivers, TCAC’s staff director. “We are oversubscribed two-to-one,” Stivers said at the Housing California conference. “But we are probably not funding ones that are in higher opportunity areas that ones we are funding.” Dating back to the era with Phil Angelides was state treasurer, TCAC allocates points for proximity to transit, groceries, health services, and other services. “But we have not focused on quality,” Stivers said. “Being close to a school isn’t the same as being close to a high-quality school, and the state has no determiner of what a high-quality school is.” Sources: Ben Metcalf, HCD Director, (916) 263-7400 Mark Stivers, TCAC Director, (916) 654-6340 Assemblymember Miguel Santiago, https://a53.asmdc.org/

Los Angeles’s Measure S, which was overwhelmingly rejected , was a monumental ballot measure in an otherwise quiet election statewide March 7. In fact, there were more measures on local ballots in Los Angeles County than there were in the rest of the state combined. This is in contrast with a bumper crop of land use measures, plus a raft of marijuana-related measures, that appeared on November 2016 ballots.

Voters in the City of Los Angeles resoundingly rejected a ballot measure that would have radically reshaped the city’s approach to planning and influenced the city’s urban fabric for generations.

Board members of the San Diego Association of Governments are calling for an independent investigation into the agency’s flawed forecasting  of revenue projections from a tax increase that it sponsored on the November ballot to pay for transportation investments. The agency reportedly over-estimated revenues — by $4 billion out of an estimated total of $18 billion —possibly to make the tax more appealing to voters. When the over-estimation was discovered, it was reportedly withheld from board members. “None of us are suggesting the result of such an examination is a foregone conclusion — it may indeed exonerate SANDAG — but for the public to be well-served an impartial and thorough examination must be conducted,” wrote Poway Mayor Steve Vaus and six other board members, according to Voice of San Diego. Legislators Seek to Shore Up Environmental Protections Responding to expected weakening of federal environmental law under President Trump, members of the California legislature are moving to incorporate existing federal protections into state law. Senate President Pro Tem Kevin De Leon introduced legislation that would enshrine federal rules on air quality, water protection, endangered species into California law. He is promoting a related bill that would require the federal government to give the state first dibs on any federal lands that it wishes to sell to private developers. Roughly half of California’s land is owned by the federal government, including national parks and rural land managed by the Bureau of Land Management. The bills’ other authors include Sens. Henry Stern (D-Canoga Park), Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica) and Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara).  PPIC Survey Shows Mixed Support for Road Investments In a recent statewide survey by the Public Policy Institue of California, 61 percent of Californians say that spending more money on the maintenance of roads, highways, and bridges is very important for California’s future quality of life and economic vitality. At the same time, a majority of Californians (54%) oppose the governor’s proposal to do so. His transportation funding plan would provide $43 billion of additional spending for state and local transportation projects, with money coming from a new $65 vehicle fee and an increase in gasoline and diesel taxes. Republicans are overwhelmingly opposed to the governor’s proposal and independents are divided. Among Democrats, a slight majority (53%) favor the plan while 42% oppose it. Among Californians who oppose the governor’s proposal, 64% say that the wiser use of existing funds is the best way to significantly improve the quality of the state’s roads. Only 30% say that both wiser use of existing funds and more state funding is needed. North Coast Tribal Site to be Protected An important Native American site on a remote stretch of the North Coast will be protected under a plan announced by the Save the Redwoods League. The plan pertains to 870 acres that includes what is considered the “creation site” of the Kashia people, a tribe that now numbers roughly 1,000, 100 miles north of San Francisco at Stewarts Point. The plan places a permanent conservation easement on the land, preventing development and ensuring that the Kashia have access to the site in perpetuity. The land is undeveloped but currently used for grazing.  Parties Spar Over Accordable Housing Legislation in S.F. A coalition of affordable housing and tenants organizations in San Francisco has voiced opposition to State Sen. Scott Weiner’s SB 35, a bill designed to require local jurisdictions to facilitate the development of more housing and encourage cities to meet the requirements of their respective Regional Housing Needs Assessments. The opponents claim that Weiner’s bill would give too much freedom to developers and would result in an excess of market-rate development at a time when affordable housing is needed. The coalition claims that streamlining “approvals equates to a monetary value conferred to developers, by cutting capital-risk and development timelines” but does not necessarily make housing more affordable. Meanwhile, Supervisors Ahsha Safai and London Breed have introduced an ordinance designed to make the city’s rent-controlled units more available to middle-income earners. It would allocate units according to income tiers to ensure that they do not go only to low-income earners. Berkeley Promotes ‘Micro-Housing’ for Homeless Berkeley City Council approved unanimously the “Step Up Housing” initiative co-sponsored by three council members to encourage “supportive housing” for homeless and very low-income people with city help. In December, the council endorsed a proposal from Mayor Jesse Arreguin and councilman Kriss Worthington to explore supportive housing for homeless, disabled, and veterans in the city and allowing tiny homes to be displayed for a week to a month. The report refers to 160-square-foot MicroPAD (Prefabricated Affordable Dwelling) produced by Panoramic Interests in San Francisco. The approved proposal identifies city-owned parcels for assisted-living modular micro-unit buildings, amends the permitting and approvals process to easy creation of below-market housing, starts a competitive bidding process for development of up to 100 units, arranges for management and operation of the buildings by a non-profit, and establishes need-based criteria for eligibility. While the legislation now is simply about “100 units of housing in an expedite manner” it is assumed to be aimed at microhomes. The two sites being bid on by developers are both parking lots. Stockton Promotes Non-Residential Developments The Stockton City Council adopted an incentive program for non-residential developments. The new program is part of an effort by local officials to generate additional revenue and more jobs. The new incentives will allow non-residential facilities to defer payment on public facilities fees that go towards city projects such as street improvements, fire and police stations, and water and wastewater connections. To qualify for the program, developers must be facing gees that exceed $20,000. The fee deferrals will be extended until a certificate of occupancy is issued to the developer and will last up to a maximum of two years from the issuance of the first building permit. Quick Hits & Updates The California Air Resources Board is hosting  workshops on updates to Senate Bill 375 regional passenger vehicle greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction targets for California's Metropolitan Planning Organizations. The workshops will be held in Los Angeles March 7, Sacramento March 9 (also webcast), and Fresno March 14.  The California Natural Resources Agency’s  Urban Greening Grant Program has released its application and guidelines and is hosting eight of technical assistance workshops around the state between March 13 and March 28. Each workshop will include a formal presentation and breakout sessions designed to provide help and guidance in preparing grant applications. Bay Area Rapid Transit reports that ridership was down 5.2 percent in December and 4 percent in January, foretelling a budget deficit for the year of $15 million to $25 million. The board is considering ways to cut costs and increase revenues, possibly by increasing base fares. Los Angeles Metro's Expo Line Phase 2 Light Rail, a 6.6-mile-long project with seven stations has received recognition for sustainable performance from the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure (ISI). The project earned the Envision rating system’s highest award level—Platinum. It is the first Metro project that is Envision-verified. This week the Coastal Commission will consider a plan to restore a group of cottages at Crystal Cove in Orange County. The cottages, which predate the Coastal Act by decades, fell under public control in 1979, and are considered historic.  Los Angeles Metro has released four alternatives for “run-through” tracks at Union Station. The tracks would enable Amtrak, Metrolink, and future high-speed rail service to provide continuous service to points both north and south of Los Angeles.  The City of Glendale is considering options for a streetcar line, funded by a $200,000 planning grant from the Southern California Association of Governments. The proposed route would run diagonally through Burbank and then run north-south along Glendale’s Brand Boulevard.  The Los Angeles Conservancy has awarded Survey LA its Chairmans Award for 2017, the organization’s highest honor. Conducted by the L.A. Department of City Planing, Survey LA is a multi-year project to analyze and catalog the city’s historic resources. It has analyzed over 800,000 parcels and is believed to be the largest such effort of its kind in U.S. history.  Responding to changing commuting patterns in the Sacramento region, Sacramento Regional Transit is considering a wholesale redesign of its bus system. A new design would serve employment centers such as Rancho Cordova and Folsom and have less emphasis on downtown Sacramento. A study will begin this summer.  Facing a threat that the federal government may withhold a promised $647 million to electrify the Caltrain corridor, Caltrain officials have extended the contracts of contractors set to work on the project. Though funding is still uncertain, the extension prevents the automatic termination of the contracts.  An investment group has submitted a roughly $1.3 billion proposal that would keep the Raiders in Oakland to the NFL. Details of the proposal have not been released but it reportedly calls for a combination of public and private funds to renovate the Oakland Coliseum.  San Francisco supervisors rejected , 9-1, an appeal filed against a plan to manage roughly 1,000 acres of natural areas in the city. the vote means that the plan, which calls for strategic removal of up to 18,000 trees, can go forward. the appeal had been filed by the San Francisco Forest Alliance, which felt that the plan went too far.  The Clear Lake City Council unanimously adopted an update to the city’s general plan that is designed to guide development through 2040. the plan is designed to accommodate population growth of 1.4 percent annually and the development of over 600,000 square feet of retail in the city of 15,000.

In an extraordinary action, President Donald Trump has issued an executive order calling for a reframing of federal wetlands regulation in a way that would in effect overturn a U.S. Supreme Court ruling and include policy considerations that extend far beyond those contained in the text of the Clean Water Act. Among other things, the executive order calls for the Trump Administration to balance water quality against “minimizing regulatory uncertainty” and instructs federal agencies to interpret the Clean Water Act in a manner consistent with Justice Antonin Scalia’s plurality opinion in the 2006 case Rapanos v. United States . Scalia’s opinion called for the Clean Water Act to be interpreted narrowly, requiring a federal wetlands permit only if the wetland has a “continuous surface connection” to a “relatively permanent, standing, or continuously flowing” body of water. But Scalia’s opinion only got four votes. The deciding vote in the Rapanos case came from Justice Anthony Kennedy, who said a permit would be required “if the wetlands, either alone or in combination with similarly situated lands in the region, significantly affect the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of other covered waters more readily understood as navigable.” Ever since Rapanos , the Environmental Protection Agency has been flummoxed trying to interpret the case. Ironically, the “Waters of the United States” rule represented the Obama Administration’s attempt to eliminate the resulting uncertainty. Seeking to slipstream in between the Scalia and Kennedy opinions, the WOTUS rule does appear to bring marshes, peat bogs, vernal pools, and other small and sometimes disconnected wetlands into federal wetlands. The vernal pool aspect of the rule is especially important in California. But the Trump executive order essentially instructs federal agencies, including EPA, to ignore Kennedy’s opinion. It also orders agencies to use a balancing test that goes far beyond the Clean Water Act’s language, which was reflected in Kennedy’s opinion. The first paragraph of the executive order declares his administration’s “policy” on water quality, saying that it is in “the national interest” to keep the nation’s waters “free from pollution,” but also “promoting economic growth, minimizing regulatory uncertainty, and showing due regard for the roles of Congress and the States under the Constitution.” Such a statement is remarkably far-reaching compared to the typical presidential executive order. The Clean Water Act itself calls on federal agencies “to restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation’s waters” and that discharge of pollutants into “the nation’s waters” be eliminated. It is the definition of “the nation’s waters” that has been subject to constant debate since the Reagan Administration. Implementation of the new rule  was halted in late 2015 by the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals , which issued a stay. The litigation was brought by several attorneys general, mostly in the Midwest and Plains states, including Oklahoma’s Scott Pruitt, who is President Trump’s new EPA administrator. The Sixth Circuit  has now halted the litigation temporarily  while the U.S. Supreme Court considers another case that poses the question of whether federal district or appellate courts have jurisdiction over Clean Water Act issues.

A proposed Napa County initiative designed to protect oak woodlands should not be placed on the ballot because the attachments did not contain complete information about all the new legal requirements it would impose, the First District Court of Appeal has ruled.

The sun was still 20 minutes from rising when he crossed Broadway south of downtown Los Angeles early one February morning. The police offered few details about what happened next. The 69-year old, who went unidentified in news reports, was struck and killed by a motorist who fled the scene.  There area where he was walking, part of a six-mile stretch of Broadway that runs between Adams and Century Boulevards, is among the most dangerous in Los Angeles for pedestrians and bicyclists. In fact, according to the Los Angeles Department of Transportation, just 6 percent of the city’s streets — including that six-mile stretch — account for 65 percent of deaths and serious injuries for pedestrians involved in traffic collisions. And, to be clear, these incidents are indeed “collisions,” not “accidents,” said Nat Gale from LADOT. Whether through engineering, enforcement or education, he said, “they are preventable tragedies.” That’s the idea behind the city’s Vision Zero program. Borrowed from Sweden, the strategy has the ambitious goal of eliminating all traffic deaths and severe injuries and has been adopted in roughly two dozen cities, according to the national Vision Zero Network . For years, streets were designed with the goal of moving as many cars through as quickly as possible. (See prior CP&DR commentary  on Vision Zero.) But as cities look to become increasingly multi-modal, they have to confront the uneven consequences that this logic has had for pedestrians and bicyclists. Though the majority of collisions in Los Angeles — 85 percent — occur between two vehicles, roughly half of all traffic deaths involve people walking or biking. New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles each have official Vision Zero plans, but many large cities have not approved a plan. Los Angeles, which released its action plan in January, is hopeful that it can transform its sprawling, car-focused streets into safe place for everyone, starting with the 6 percent of streets identified by LADOT as the city’s  High Injury Network . “Los Angeles is a big city...so 6 percent of our streets is still 450 miles,” added Gale, who is heading the Vision Zero effort for the department. He said the city would focus first on roughly 80 miles of priority corridors. In addition to reworking dangerous intersections and other engineering changes, cities also look to enforcement and education to reduce traffic deaths. In New York City for example, to combat the spike of collisions during the darker winter rush hour, the city added more lighting to crosswalks. It also stationed more cops at hot spots to catch drivers who sped through crosswalks. During first two months of the effort, “pedestrian deaths dropped to half of what they had been during that stretch the year before,” according to Governing magazine. In Los Angeles, the city has set two goals. It aims to reduce traffic deaths by 20 percent by 2017. By 2025, it wants to eliminate them. The city has already started making changes to its streetscape to achieve those goals, like adding a “scramble crosswalk” at a popular intersection in Hollywood that allows pedestrians to cross from every street corner while car traffic remains stopped. The city has also added curb extensions that effectively restrict the turning space for cars in an intersection, forcing them to reduce their speeds. Other tools like pedestrian medians in the middle of streets, new signage and striping, dedicated bike lanes and pedestrian intervals that give people crossing the street a head start at traffic lights have all been put to work on the city’s streets. And Los Angeles has taken a particularly data-driven approach, looking at not only collision data but neighborhood level disparities. By doing that, LADOT found that nearly half of the city’s High Injury Network sits inside some of the poorest communities with the worst health outcomes. “In L.A., as in most cities that have analyzed their data closely, some communities are disproportionately impacted by traffic crashes,” said Leah Shahum, founder and director of the organization Vision Zero Network, “This includes seniors, children, low-income people, people of color, people with disabilities, and those walking and bicycling.” Gale put it bluntly: “We can prove that where people are dying are in communities already overburdened with other conditions.” But he said the data also point to the need to tread carefully, particularly around enforcement. “It can’t mean that we’re criminalizing walking and biking or overburdening them with law enforcement,” said Gale. Most Vision Zero plans require governments to work simultaneously in very local contexts and at a broader systemic level. “Traditionally, we have over-emphasized the education or training of individuals to ‘do the right thing’ with very mixed success,” said Shahum. “Vision Zero holds that, while education and training still have a role to play, this is not as effective as focusing on the systems level changes that will have far greater impacts.” That means both changes to the built environment but also a collaborative approach between city departments, particularly law enforcement, health and transportation, and updated policy. In Los Angeles, said Shahum, “They have set clear benchmarks with years and measurables and named which agency is responsible, which is important. Not all Vision Zero plans by all communities have done this.” “In the end,” said Shahum, “Vision Zero acknowledges that people will make mistakes, and there will always be crashes. But, it is the speed that kills. By managing speed effectively, we can prevent the most serious crashes and, hence, fatalities and severe injuries. People can still get where they need to go, of course, but in a Vision Zero community, safety is prioritized over fast speeds.” A version of this piece originally appeared on the  Kinder Institute/Urban Edge Blog .. Further CP&DR coverage: Mobility Plan Nudges Los Angeles Towards New Transportation Modes A Plan with 'Zero' Chance of Success

In a year of electoral upheaval stretching from the United Kingdom to Washington, D.C., voters in the City of Los Angeles have one more paradigm-shifting question to consider.