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Yesterday, Gov. Jerry Brown signed AB 471, a redevelopment cleanup bill that included some of Brown's ideas about using infrastructure financing districts as a future substitute for redevelopment. Specifically, AB 471 clarifies that an IFD can be created that overlaps with a former redevelopment project area, so long as the IFD debt is subordinate to the old redevelopment debt. CP&DR 's brief description of the bill as it was drafted by Speaker-elect Toni Atkins can be found here . The bill itself can be found here , and the last legislative analysis can be found here . For a more detailed discussion of Brown's IFD proposal, go here .

The tar pit–inspired scheme by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor to replace the eastern half of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is a rare misstep by one of the world's most gifted architects. Surprisingly for a Pritzker-winning architect famed for his sensitivity to context and site, this ink blotch of a design shows little understanding of its park site, or, for that matter, the context of Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles as a whole, or museums as a building type. It should not be built. I find myself typing these words in a state of near disbelief. Zumthor ranks high on my short list of favorite living architects, which includes Japan's Tadao Ando and Portugal's Alvaro Siza. At their best, each of these designers has combined deep thinking, with quietness, modesty and understatement. Each has produced buildings that provide pleasure to their users while inserting themselves into the existing built environment without violence. Perhaps it's understandable that a visitor to L.A. would be impressed by the tar pits that adjoin the county art museum. Yet the tar pits have hardly gone without unnoticed: The Page Museum, which stands on a hill overlooking the tar pits, is devoted entirely to fossil findings from the pits, primarily large mammals and birds from the Pleistocene Era (40,000 to 11,000 years ago). Plus, the museum maintains several tar pits as working paleontological sites. And as every Angeleno knows, the pits even make a nod to passing motorists on Wilshire Boulevard, in the form of replica mammoths that mimic the death struggle of animals trapped in tar (although the motorized motion, alas, of the animals no longer operates). So perhaps the tar pits are adequately celebrated as they stand. More to the point, Zumthor's proposal razes much of what has constituted the museum campus since its start in 1965. Replacing this set of admittedly imperfect buildings is a single, two-story sea serpent that twists and turns and bifurcates, as if the footprint of the museum itself was a splotchy tar pit. This twisting-and-turning does not accomplish much in terms of providing variety in exhibition space, however:  Much of the building appears to consist of a long hallways, which supposedly could be programmed either as "walk through" galleries or divided into smaller gallery rooms. Unless I'm mistaken, I see little opportunity for large installations, for example, of the kind that have made the Tate Modern in London a popular destination. And as a low-lying building with a considerable setback, I'm not sure the Zumthor building would make much of an impression on either pedestrians or motorists on Wilshire Boulevard, on one of the most visible intersections in L.A. As urbanism, the Zumthor blob is big zero. Meanwhile, the great black blob appears to encroach, or nearly so, on the Japanese Pavilion, a free-standing structure which represents a rare public building by the late Bruce Goff (completed by Bart Prince.) In homage to traditional Japanese buildings, this eccentric building by a follower of Frank Lloyd Wright was conceived as a building within a garden. Goff's building needs air and greenery on all sides, but the blob hems in on the western edge of the pavilion, surrounding the smaller building with pincer-like wings to the north and south, as if to swallow the Goff building. The LACMA campus has undergone nearly as many facelifts as Joan Rivers, yet remains quirky and disunited. The Anderson Building, part of the original William Pereira design from the 1960s, is a poorly lit set of galleries that seems to scare visitors away from the museum's world-class ethnological holdings. A streetfront fountain that made a connection to Wilshire Boulevard was abandoned early on, and replaced by an outdoor sculpture garden, which weakened the visual connection of the museum to the important boulevard. An enlargement from the 1980s by Hardy Holzmann Pfeiffer added several buildings, which are serviceable, if undistinguished. The best parts of that scheme was the courtyard framed by new and old buildings on the campus. The large rectangular space is usually crowded with people – and crowds are the gold standard in campus design. Free jazz concerts on Friday nights are filled to overflowing. In a major city with a dearth of successful public spaces, the LACMA courtyard is an important asset. A further enlargement, this time by the world's most  prolific museum designer Renzo Piano, chose not to alter existing buildings, but rather to change the way that visitors enter the museum from a new parking lot, while adding several new buildings. One of the best parts of the Piano enlargement is a prominent artwork by Chris Burden, consisting of a forest of historical streetlamps happily located close to the boulevard. The sight of constant visitors mingling amid the nostalgic lamp posts at last anchors the museum successfully engages the boulevard for the first time in nearly 50 years. The Zumthor scheme, in contrast, lacks any courtyards or social space. That failing alone should be enough to disqualify the project. True, floor-to-ceiling glass windows on the perimeter of the museum could arguably make the exterior friendly for people on foot. But there is no formal gathering place, no high point, no sense of arrival like that provided by the existing courtyard. The lack of a vital public space seems an extraordinary flub by Zumthor, whose 2011 design for a pavilion in London's Hyde Park—a simple rectangular enclosure., with an open-air garden and surrounded by seating and sheltered by overhangs--was a model way to create a small social space within a larger public area. The best approach to LACMA may be "Burkean" -- that is, to tinker with the historical edifice rather than scraping it. Remember that LACMA sponsored an international design competition about 10 years ago, with big-name architects proposing various approaches to expansion. The winner at that time was a radical scheme by the iconoclastic Rem Koolhass, who proposed demolishing the campus and replacing it with a single giant box. The idea behind the scheme was intriguing: the Dutch architect had proposed arranging the museum's enormous (and largely unseen) ethnological collections in parallel rows, all coordinated along a giant timeline. Private museum patrons were hostile to the scheme, which was quietly shelved, while the museum went to the reliable Piano for an affordable addition that would meet the approval of big donors. The Zumthor proposal repeats several of the drawbacks of the Kollhaas proposal – a banal exterior, the destruction of the existing buildings, a lack of genuine social spaces and consolidation of the collection into a single building of monstrous size.  I don't know how Zumthor came up with such an inept design. I'm not sure why museum director James Govan should be so enthusiastic about the destructive scheme. All I'm sure of is that the Zumthor scheme should remain a blotch on the drawing board, -rather than a black hole on Wilshire Boulevard.

The California Second District Court of Appeal has sided with the Coastal Commission against organic farmers accused of damaging habitat on a ridge above Topanga Canyon. In a January 24 ruling, the Second District refused to block cease and desist and restoration orders issued by the Commission to property owners Stefan, Kathryn and Rahel Hagopian. The court's decision rested mainly on its finding that, despite a rule drafting process begun in 1982, the Coastal Commission has never approved a Local Coastal Plan for the Santa Monica Mountains area of Los Angeles County, nor had it provided interim permitting authority to the county.  Further, it held the Commission had no duty to delegate interim powers to the county under Public Resources Code Sec. 30600.5 where the county did not meet the statutory prerequisites. The court rejected the Hagopians' claim that Los Angeles County gave itself authority to approve permits for that area in a 1989 ordinance. Further, the court refused to order the County and Commission to agree on an LCP. It found the Commission did not have a duty to ensure the county adopted an approved local coastal program; the county "cannot be compelled" to adopt an LCP that the Commission will approve; and the county had no duty to seek interim permitting authority under Sec. 30600.5. At issue are three stunningly situated mountaintop parcels, owned by Stefan and Kathryn Hagopian and, in part, Rahel Hagopian. Stefan and Kathryn, an osteopath and doctor, are described in a 2010 Los Angeles Times article as operators of Skyline Organic Farms, an organic and biodynamic farm founded in 1991.  Whether or not the Hagopians farmed conscientiously, the Coastal Commission alleged that they cleared and developed land without coastal development permits in an environmentally sensitive area of live oak woodland and chaparral. It says in 2007 they sought a permit exemption to build a guest house and in response were invited to apply for a coastal development permit. They then created vineyards, several county-permitted structures, a pool, tennis court and solar array while continuing to argue they did not need Commission approval -- or not beyond permissions granted by a prior owner's 1987 homebuilding permit on one parcel. The Second District opinion quotes Commission members during a 2010 public hearing as accusing the Hagopians of "ongoing "massive commercial development" ... without Commission approval, resulting in "wholesale destruction" and "mountain top removal" reminiscent of "West Virginia coal mining." " The trial and appellate courts rejected the Hagopians' allegations of due process violations. They also rejected claims that the work on the property fell within an agricultural exemption, saying such claims were not raised at the 2010 Commission hearing. The 2010 Commission staff report is here .  But the extra layer of regulation that so frustrated the Hagopians may not continue much longer. Los Angeles County is moving toward qualifying to assume coastal permitting authority by at last securing Commission approval for a complete Santa Monica Mountains LCP. The Board of Supervisors will consider a draft LCP was scheduled to hear a draft LCP today. Dennis Slavin, chief deputy director with the L.A. County Department of Regional Planning, said staff had been working steadily for the last "two-plus years" to complete the current proposal, whose land use component was approved by the supervisors in 2007. He said the county had been working intensively with biologists to make protection choices for the most environmentally sensitive errors and with the Coastal Commission staff in Ventura to create a package the Commission could accept. Slavin said there was "no direct relationship" between the Hagopians' case and the LCP process. As for the court decision, he said, "That's pretty much how the county felt all along." The case is Stefan Hagopian, et al., v. State of California , Case No. B240688, available at http://www.courts.ca.gov/opinions/documents/B240688.PDF .

A square mile of Central Valley farmland moved closer to development with the defeat, on procedural grounds, of a CEQA and reorganization challenge to the annexation of 960 acres by the City of Ceres under its West Landing Specific Plan. California's Fifth Appellate District rejected an attempt by an unincorporated citizens' group, Protect Agricultural Land (PAL), to get arguments before the court that the annexation and related changes to Ceres' sphere of influence infringed CEQA and the Cortese-Knox-Hertzberg Local Government Reorganization Act. The initial defendant was the Stanislaus County Local Agency Formation Commission (Stanislaus LAFCO) as responsible agency for the annexation. Ceres was named as real party in interest. Both entities were respondents on appeal. The appeals panel did not address PAL's substantive objections to the annexation. Instead it upheld the Stanislaus County trial court finding that PAL's petition was formally incorrect under both CEQA and the Reorganization Act because it was filed and served as a petition for writ of mandate. Instead, the court found it should have been brought as a reverse validation action under § 56103 of the Cal. Government Code and, as such, should have met different captioning and notice requirements under Cal. Code of Civil Procedure §§ 860-863, including newspaper publication of a public notice. The trial court did not allow PAL to complete the missed requirements and did not find good cause for the group's failure to comply. Agreeing, the appellate decision threw out the case entirely.  While the decision turned on the reverse validation action requirements, it noted in passing that PAL failed to meet its 30-day deadline under CEQA to challenge the City of Ceres' certification of the EIR and the statement of overriding considerations that enabled it. The ruling moves the annexed area closer to major residential and business development. As of the 2011 EIR, properties in the 960-acre area included about 660 acres of farmland  of which about 187 acres were under Williamson Act conservation contracts; a small residential subdivision; a governmental complex with jail, social service offices and animal shelter; and the large plant buildings of G3 Enterprises, a bottling and winery services business created by members of the Gallo family.  The Council resolution said the West Landing Specific Plan Project called for development of "up to 3,635 residential units... up to 884,200 square feet of retail commercial; up to 383,910 square feet of office space; 802,100 square feet of light industrial and/or Research and development uses; 16 acres of schools; and 47 acres of parks," while the county and G3 facilities would  continue to expand.  Staff reports and the Ceres City Council approval resolution are here . You can find a map here .  http://goo.gl/maps/RG596. The land was previously unincorporated. Local addresses appear as "Modesto." The case is Protect Agricultural Land v. Stanislaus County LAFCO , opinion text here .  Rose M. Zoia was the attorney for PAL. Stanislaus LAFCO was represented by deputy county counsels William Dean Wright and Thomas Boze. Ceres had private counsel: Edward Grutzmacher of the firm of Meyers, Nave, and Michael L. Lyons. Details here .

Raw fish will not singlehandedly save urban California. But it can still help. Two years ago, Governor Jerry Brown, with an assist from the state Supreme Court, dealt a blow to urban revitalization with the dismantling of the state's redevelopment program. Redevelopment was flawed and needed reform. Even so, cities and civic-minded developers have been sorry to see it go. Of course, real estate development alone – with or without public assistance – is just one part of the equation. Once buildings are built, someone has to occupy them.  In the inner city, perhaps the archetypal commercial tenant is the restaurant. Granted, Appleby's, Popeye's, and Pizza Hut are unhealthy in more ways than one. If we want to stoke local economies, the independent, locally owned restaurant is a great place to start. Although redevelopment agencies were not always savvy about assisting local businesses, they were surely happy when they moved in. Even more happy were the people who got hired by mom and pop. In short, the state should be doing everything it can to promote and support independent restaurants. A new law—which, ostensibly, has nothing to do with urban development—does just the opposite. AB 1252 , sponsored by the Assembly, Committee on Health (chaired by Richard Pan, an MD and Democrat representing Sacramento) updates Section 113961 of the California Retail Food Code to require every cook and food-preparer statewide use gloves if they handle food that will not be cooked. So far, only a few chefs and restaurateurs have raised a serious outcry over the new requirement. Those that haven't cried out are probably still getting over their shock. Covering the construction of salads, sandwiches, artisanal cocktails, and, most importantly, sushi, AB 1251 puts restaurants in league with hospitals and crime scenes. The rule acknowledges a truism of living together -- people are messy -- but this is the first instance I know of when public policy has been dictated by fear of cooties. (I also wonder if it's a coincidence that many food-preparers are non-white immigrants.) As an aesthetic matter, sushi chefs widely insist that sushi – delicate and deliberately constructed – suffers from the use of gloves. The inevitable condom analogy has been made. It's not hard to imagine, though, that gloves hamper the assembly of just about any cold plate. Ludo Lefbvre – who is precisely the sort of chef-entrepreneur who has helped revitalize formerly moribund neighborhoods – told the LA Times  that he knows by feel how many grains of sea salt fit between his bare fingers. Precious as Lefebvre's claim may sound, I don't question his tactile skills. Great food is precise. As any calligrapher, violist, or tailor can tell you, there's no instrument more precise than is the human hand. This rule is designed to prevent contamination. Interestingly, not a single article I have read actually cites the incidence of contamination that stems from bare-handed food-handling. Needless to say, food preparers are already required to wash their hands assiduously. Medical professionals and culinary experts alike agree that proper hand-washing is more than sufficient to keep germs at bay. (When you're in the kitchen, what do  you  do?) Then again, the L.A. Times mentions studies that find, not surprisingly, that the use of gloves can compel food preparers to slack off on basic hygiene. These are the times when moral hazards are also health hazards. This is, in other words, a solution in search of a problem. Unless, of course, your problem is that you're not selling enough rubber gloves. I'm sure the rubber industry is keeping its head down about this, but it's not hard to imagine that they are popping champagne and blowing up the balloons over this one. One restaurant estimates that it will spend $4,000 annually to buy 500 gloves per week thanks to AB 1251. The majority of them will end up in landfills. Now multiply that by the state's estimated 61,000 restaurants. The California Restaurant Association (which ironically shares initials with the erstwhile California Redevelopment Association) supports this rule. The CRA's guide  to the rule ominously explains, "when food handlers have not washed their hands thoroughly before handling food, harmful germs may be on their hands." That's a big "when." Not to mention a big "may." How harmful are these germs? The CRA doesn't say. As if Cheetos, soda, and frozen pot pies are any less risky than are raw foods. Though he's an MD, Assembly Member Pan and all other doctors should be aware of a few of the non-medical causes of death in the United States. Columbia University's Mailman School of Medicine reports that of the 245,000 premature deaths attributable to adverse social conditions, 133,000 were due to individual-level poverty. Another 39,000 were due to "area-level poverty." The number of Americans who died from food-borne pathogens in 2010: 1,351. The CRA's position surprised me until I realized that the CRA represents restaurant chains. Their economies of scale will make them better equipped to absorb these costs. "Many other states have similar laws in effect, so the multi-state chains were prepared for the changes here in California," said CRA Communications Manager Angela Pappas in an e-mail to CP&DR . As far as I know, sushi restaurants have no such lobbying power. Big chains that send their profits god-knows-where yet again gain a relative advantage over the businesses that might be owned by your friends and neighbors. If only we had an indigenous rubber industry. Will restaurants disappear from inner-city California simply because of this law? Of course not. Will every budding entrepreneur be deterred? Doubtful. And yet, we all know that California is not always kind to small businesses. I hesitate to throw around the "nanny state" accusation, because many regulations are effective and necessary. This one, though, is a veritable Mary Poppins. It does the following:  has a seemingly unimpeachable mission; will be ineffective;  will imposes costs on those being regulated; will lower the quality of life for everyone everyone else; gives undo credence to invisible enemies.  And it will make it just that much harder to fill California's vacant lots. My advice: the legislature should repeal this law. People who are too squeamish to let strangers touch their food, can stay home and eat Hungry Man. They can leave normal people to enjoy our California rolls, and our California cities, in peace.

"If you're waiting for CEQA reform from the legislature, get a life! If you're going to reform CEQA, you have to do it at home." Those words came from veteran land use lawyer William Abbott at Friday's UCLA Land Use Law and Planning conference -- but they seemed to represent the general sentiment of the 300 land use practitioners gathered for the annual event in downtown Los Angeles. Although Senate leader Darrell Steinberg managed to get SB 743 passed last year, major reform of the California Environmental Quality Act proved elusive and the consensus is that Steinberg -- who will be termed out after this year -- doesn't have the stomach to keep trying. However, with five cases pending, the California Supreme Court could play a significant role in shaping CEQA in the coming year. "There was a time in the late '90s when the Supreme Court didn't seem interested in CEQA," veteran CEQA lawyer Jim Moose said at the UCLA conference. " They're quite interested now. Most of their case load is criminal. They get to choose and of the civil cases they take, CEQA is a surprisingly large percentage. They take seriously their role on CEQA." SB 743 declares parking and aesthetics to not be significant impacts in infill situations and also exempts projects approved within an adopted specific plan area under certain circumstances. Though it stops far short of the of sweeping CEQA reform under discussion a year ago, the bill does provide significant streamlining for infill projects. Not that the new law stopped the UCLA panelists from debating the very things that SB 743 seeks to clear up. CEQA panelists Moose and Susan Brandt-Hawley, for example, had a vigorous debate over the parking question -- which has vexed CEQA practitioners for decades. For example, in Taxpayers for Accountable School Bond Spending v. San Diego Unified School District (215 Cal.App.4th 1013), the appellate court found that a mitigated negative declaration for installing lights at a high school football field was insufficient for a variety of reasons, including inadequate analysis of traffic and parking. Among other things, the case declined to follow up on a different appellate court's decision in San Franciscans Upholding the Downtown Plan v. City and County of San Francisco, 102 Cal.App.4th 656 (2002), saying that San Diego did not have the same strong transit policies that San Francisco had and therefore inadequate parking is "not merely a social inconvenience." "So what's the takeaway?" moderator Margaret Sohagi asked. "Do we have to go back to scrutinizing parking?" "It depends," Moose said. "You need to make the case. The General plan or other policies favoring transit may downgrade the parking impact. There may be interplay with the upcoming OPR guidance" -- meaning proposed CEQA Guidelines changes forthcoming from the Governor's Office of Planning & Research, directed by SB 743, to look at alternatives to level of service as a standard under CEQA. But Brandt-Hawley, one of the most successful CEQA plaintiff lawyers in the state, disputed the idea that parking isn't an environmental issue. "Parking alone doesn't have any impact but parking is related to traffic" she said. "If there isn't enough parking it creates more traffic. It never really made sense that parking isn't environment. What has happened since is that planners have called it traffic rather than parking."

In a new case from Humboldt County, the First District Court of Appeals has ruled that Caltrans must see the trees as well as the forest -- at least in the environmental impact report for a controversial road widening. Overturning a ruling by Humboldt County Superior Court Judge Dale A. Reinholtsen, a three-judge panel of the First District ruled that Caltrans should have examined the impact of a Highway 101 widening project on the root systems of individual old-growth redwood trees, rather than examining the impact on the old-growth forest in a more general way. The appellate court also said that Caltrans could not get around finding significant impacts by amending the project description to include proposed mitigation measures. Writing for the majority in Trisha Lee Lotus v. Department of Transportation , Justice Stuart R. Pollak wrote: "Absent a determination regarding the significance of the impacts to the root systems of the old growth redwood trees, it is impossible to determine whether mitigation measures are required or to evaluate whether other more effective measures than those proposed should be considered. Should Caltrans determine that a specific tree or group of trees will be significantly impacted by proposed roadwork, that finding would trigger the need to consider a range of specifically targeted mitigation measures, including analysis of whether the project itself could be modified to lessen the impact." The case began when Caltrans undertook to change the alignment of Highway 101 through Richardson Grove State Park in Humboldt County to make it easier and safer for large trucks to travel on the road. The winding two-lane road is so narrow that standard-sized trucks have a difficult time navigating the road. However, Richardson Grove is also home to more than 300 old-growth redwood trees, which are the first -- and most visible -- set of redwoods along the highway north of San Francisco. The project did not call for the removal of any old-growth redwoods. However, the environmental impact report did not discuss the impact of the project on the root systems of individual redwood trees. Judge Reinholsten generally ruled in favor of Caltrans, though he did find fault with the fact that the agency had proposed mitigation measures without -- apparently -- including a mitigation monitoring and reporting plan. Trisha Lee Lotus and others sued Caltrans, represented -- as is so often the case these days in environmental cases -- by the Center for Biological Diversity. (Former congressman and one-time presidential candidate Pete McCloskey was also listed as a counsel for the plaintiff.) Overruling Reinholsten, the appellate court bought the Center for Biological Diversity's argument that the potential impact on root systems of specific old-growth redwoods should have been analyzed in the EIR. "The EIR in this case contains information regarding the overall impacts on the community of redwood trees," Judge Pollak wrote. "Though somewhat less clearly presented, the EIR also contains information about project activity that will take place within the root zones of specific old growth redwood trees." In the case, the Center argued that Caltrans should have used the very specific analytical standards contained in the California Parks Department's Natural Resources Handbook as the benchmark against which to measure the environmental analysis. Though Caltrans referred to the handbook in its appellate brief, it did not refer to the handbook in the EIR. "The EIR fails to indicate which or even how many protected redwoods will be impacted beyond the tolerances specified in the handbook and, by failing to indicate any significant impacts, fails to make the necessary evaluation and findings concerning the mitigation measures that are proposed," Pollak wrote. Making matters worse, the appellate court said, was the fact that Caltrans had incorporated the mitigation measures into the project description, thus allowing the agency to conclude that any impacts were less than significant. Though one could argue that this is the whole point of the California Environmental Quality Act -- to make sure impacts are less than significant -- the court accepted the Center's argument that this was not permissible. "As the trial court held," Pollak said, "the 'avoidance, minimization and/or mitigation measures,' as they are characterized in the EIR, are not 'part of the project.' They are mitigation measures designed to reduce or eliminate the damage to the redwoods anticipated from disturbing the structural root zone of the trees by excavation and placement of impermeable materials over the root zones." The Case: Trisha Lee Lotus et al v. Department of Transportation , A137315 .

By the simplest accounts, peace has returned to Lake Tahoe. California-Nevada cooperation has rescued the Lake Tahoe Regional Compact from years of deadlock and faltering communication over environmental governance by the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA). After Nevada threatened in 2011 to withdraw from the Compact, negotiations driven by both state governments' natural resource chiefs led to a major rewrite of the Compact's enforcement rules, the Regional Plan Update (RPU), which was adopted by TRPA's board in 2012. Further negotiations produced 2013 passage of parallel California and Nevada legislative measures that ended Nevada's pullout threat. The Compact, and hence bi-state governance of the lake, is saved.  If you believe TRPA's accounts of "an unprecedented level of public support", it would seem the developer now sits down happily with the environmentalist under conifer, crag, ski lift or casino chandelier, and only a few loose ends and sore losers remain to be straightened out. Except, this is a Western land-and-water fight. It isn't ever all happy, easy, or over. The settlement's costs included a painful schism in Tahoe's close-knit conservation community and some significant resignations.  Two prominent environmental groups now back the RPU: the League to Save Lake Tahoe (creator of the "Keep Tahoe Blue" slogan) and the Nevada Conservation League. Their choice could be viewed as a political concession, or a generational shift, or both: from older views of environmental regulation as a consistent, detailed system of publicly maintained defenses against encroachment, to newer, more pragmatist incentive-driven compromises with businesses that involve active retrofitting of existing developed properties. But dissenting groups remain. Two of these, the Sierra Club and Friends of the West Shore, have sued TRPA to block the new RPU and related rules. They allege the new rules allow too much density with mitigation measures that are insufficient or insufficiently tested. The case of Sierra Club and Friends of the West Shore vs. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency , Case No. 2:13-CV- 00267-JAM-EFB, in the Eastern District of California, was narrowed by a demurrer and goes to hearing March 5 on summary judgment motions by both sides. (The plaintiffs' opening brief is here.) Laurel Ames, conservation chair for the Tahoe Area Sierra Club, argues that Californian and environmentalist negotiators gave up too much to Nevada to secure peace. She says some of her fellow dissenters have joked about printing a bumper sticker: "Save The Compact: Lose The Lake." The RPU: Win-Win or Zero-Sum? With the lawsuit's outcome still uncertain, leading figures from the negotiations insisted the renewed bond between California and Nevada officials would survive even a successful challenge to the RPU. Bill Craven, chief consultant to the California Senate's Natural Resources and Water Committee, said: "If are successful in their litigation, and I of course have no idea, both states have already pledged to fix whatever the court identifies that needs fixing and get that fixed." Any definite resolution is good news for many.A long-term watcher of the process said Tahoe has for years suffered a form of "planning blight," in that small business and property owners held back from undertaking development projects or renovations because of uncertainty about permission to build. Supporters of the 2012 RPU say it reflects new science and urban planning principles as well as new political and budget considerations. It creates incentives to enlist builders and renovators in its mission to limit effects of real estate development within Lake Tahoe's environmental threshold carrying capacities. The RPU rewards owners for installing new runoff filters and other "Best Management Practices" (BMPs) on existing "legacy" properties, such as those from the pre-Compact building boom of the 1950s and '60s. It seeks to shift density to urban sites deemed least environmentally delicate while compensating for runoff effects of density with improved BMPs. Further, it grants development rights in urban centers as multiples of "coverage" (structures and paving) that developers "retire" from areas rated as more sensitive, such as Stream Environment Zones. Supporters, including the TRPA as litigants, argue the RPU doesn't weaken standards, but in some areas uses rigorous different ones, such as the Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) standard under the Clean Water Act. They say it responds to changed circumstances such as reduced concern over ozone levels and greater concern over fine particulate matter, which turns out to affect the lake's clarity more than nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus. Darcie Goodman Collins, current executive director of the League to Save Lake Tahoe and an environmental scientist by training, said the old 1987 Regional Plan is less effective against recently understood threats, such as particulate matter or aquatic invasive species. The plaintiffs say the RPU adds too much possible development area to the total that may be approved in the next 20 years: 2,600 residential units, 600 "bonus units" for urban centers, and 200,000 square feet of commercial floor area. Plaintiffs also oppose the RPU's long-sought delegation provisions. These give municipal governments approval power over larger projects than before, provided they get TRPA approval for "area plans" compliant with the new TRPA standards. The plaintiffs allege that TRPA has not adequately studied the impact of its incentives for more ground coverage in denser areas, places too much faith in under-tested, expensive runoff mitigation, unrealistically seeks to increase compliance through incentives rather than adequate enforcement, monitors ozone insufficiently, and otherwise fails to protect the lake environment under the Compact. "They don't have solid evidence that shows that this new strategy is going to work," said the plaintiffs' counsel, Wendy Park of Earthjustice. Discussing pressures for development that TRPA faces, she said, "Their strategy is misguided in claiming that development is going to be the solution to the lake's problems when it's really the cause, I mean, the biggest cause for clarity decline. It's indisputable that more urban development results in more stormwater runoff pollution and that stormwater runoff pollution is the cause of the clarity decline at the lake." But TRPA general counsel John Marshall argued TRPA did an adequate analysis of denser coverage in urban areas. He said of the plaintiffs, "They didn't get the specific analysis that they demanded. That doesn't mean the analysis that we did was inadequate." The new plan imposes standards for reduced automobile dependency through Level of Service (LOS) and Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) regulation and sets urban planning goals including walkability and affordability. The Sierra Club and fellow critics question whether density-related goals that may be good urban policy elsewhere might harm the clarity of Lake Tahoe by increasing runoff. Conversely, TRPA board member Clement Shute Jr., a prominent environmental attorney who helped lead the bi-state negotiations, argues it's inconsistent for the Sierra Club to back SB 375 air quality and density goals elsewhere in California but not at the lake. Marshall cited a need to favor carrots over sticks in a time of worsened local poverty and limited public budgets: "You can bash existing businesses over the head and say you have to put in these BMPs and you have to do this, and the cost is not insignificant. So either you can take an approach where you try to force businesses to do this -- and given the tenuous nature of the economy at South Lake Tahoe and other places," he said that could push them out of business. "So what really the court is faced with is a policy choice." TRPA further argues that its findings about the sufficiency of the RPU to protect the lake and local air quality are policy matters within its discretion that the court cannot properly second-guess. End of a Nevada showdown  Nevada's 2011 threat to withdraw from the shared California-Nevada regulatory process came in Nevada's SB 271 legislation, passed with support from the South Tahoe Alliance of Resorts (STAR), formerly the Lake Tahoe Gaming Alliance.  SB 271 set a 2015 deadline for Nevada to withdraw from the Compact unless development-friendly changes were made to TRPA's governance process. Since the demands included revisions to the bi-state Compact agreement, they effectively sought approvals at all levels: from the TRPA board, both state legislatures, and Congress. The most substantive demand, which was not met, would have reduced the levels of bi-state agreement required on the 14-member board. For a new project approval, it would have allowed only four rather than five of the required nine votes to come from the project's home state. The bill would have allowed any nine votes to pass a variance or rule change, whereas the Compact requires at least four delegates from each state to agree. More symbolic demands called for the TRPA to consider economic conditions and effects on commerce in changing the Regional Plan, and imposed the burden of proof on any challenger to the Plan's compliance with the Compact. It was after SB 271's passage that Secretary John Laird of the California Resources Agency and Leo Drozdoff of the Nevada Department of Conservation and Natural Resources  created a "bi-state consultation" negotiating group to complete the overdue 20-year revision of Tahoe's main regulatory document, the 1987 Regional Plan. This group's recommendations formed the basis for TRPA's 2012-approved RPU.  But SB 271 may not have been the main driver of those negotiations so much as a shout that drew high-level attention to existing pressures, which included a risk of losing federal environmental funding. Steve Robinson, a significant Nevada political figure who served on the TRPA board through the negotiations, said SB 271 "had very little chance of passage" in its original form as a unilateral withdrawal form the Compact, whereas in the conditional measure that passed, "If progress was shown it allowed the state to stay in, which was what essentially happened."  Parallel legislative measures, California SB 630 and Nevada  SB 229, endorsed the RPU and accepted the economic impact and burden-shifting provisions but did not change the voting rules. The economic impact provision still requires an act of Congress to take effect but Robinson said that Congressional action "although important, is not an emergency." All parties, including the Sierra Club's counsel, Wendy Park of Earthjustice, said the burden-shifting provision did little more than restate existing law. The Tahoe-area delegation, for its part, was said to be putting its energy into companion measures S 1451 and HR 3390 to reauthorize $415 million for environmental remediation at the lake. Who Lost? Theories vary about who lost in this not entirely win-win deal. When the Los Angeles Times reported, "California blinks, Nevada wins", Shute wrote a heated rebuttal calling the Tahoe compromise "a win for the lake, not Nevada". In an interview he said Nevada interests didn't get all they wanted: that, for example, on the TRPA board's prior RPU revision committee, he had often cast the sole dissenting vote against developer -friendly proposals, but many of those shifted toward environmental protection under the bi-state process. Further, the Nevada Legislature's willingness to approve SB 229 without SB 271's voting change demands may have been related to the re-election defeat of SB 271's original author, State Sen. John Lee, after a special effort by the Nevada Conservation League. Three conservationists' resignations accompanied and arguably enabled the compromise. At the League to Save Lake Tahoe, long-term executive director Rochelle Nason resigned in 2011, having been singled out by pro-development political figures as too critical and quick to litigate. "There was a great deal of conflict," she said. Nason's successor, Goodman Collins, joined the bi-state consultation group as the California environmental representative alongside Kyle Davis, then political director of the Nevada Conservation League. Goodman Collins said the League's decision to back the RPU was "overwhelmingly" supported in a poll of its members. She said participation in negotiations "gave us a strong seat at the table" and a continuing "very strong voice in all of the conversations" including formation of area plans under the RPU. (The area plan process is moving fast: Douglas County and the City of South Lake Tahoe already have TRPA-adopted plans for parts of their respective landscapes.) Davis called the plan an "opportunity to improve conditions on the ground, and should that not happen there are appropriate safeguards in place to keep things from getting worse." The TRPA board's December 2012 RPU approval vote was over objections from two California board members: Byron Sher and Mara Bresnick. Sher, an elder of California environmentalism who served for many years as the chair of the Senate Committee on Environmental Quality, abstained from the final vote pending his imminent resignation. Shute said Sher was "under tremendous personal pressure because he felt loyalty to Secretary Laird" despite opposing the RPU proposal himself. Bresnick raised objections in detail right up to the final vote (see the minutes here), then resigned before the January 2014 board meeting. Bresnick said: "I am not anti-development and my background is representing development interests," but that she agreed with Sher "there weren't significant protections" in place for the environment while "there were significant incentives for development and redevelopment." They contested "what we thought were a lot of holes in the specific language of the plan." She said they proposed changes to the staff that were not incorporated. Bresnick cited family reasons for her departure, as Sher reportedly also did. Bresnick said while both were dissatisfied with the outcome, their resignations were not in protest. Afterbite Several supporters of the RPU, including TRPA's own public affairs office, have criticized the Sierra Club as refusing to negotiate constructively, claiming the group and its Tahoe-area allies lack broad support for their dissenting position. One of these was Shute. Another was Steve Teshara, principal of a firm known as Sustainable Community Advocates and a past official of Tahoe business organizations. He said: "There were a couple of strong-willed individuals who wouldn't compromise" and managed to "get organizations like Sierra Club and Earthjustice to support them." Teshara agreed with the suggestion that recent political changes partly reflected changes in the  personalities involved. He added, "We just need a few more people to change... I have a feeling the litigation will be the last hurrah for some." Ames, for her part, said the Sierra Club's two Tahoe-area chapters together have about 21,000 members and that, if few people are seen to speak for their positions at public meetings, there are others who want to "but they would lose their jobs." She said, "Every day that I'm out in the Post Office or the grocery store or wherever will just stand there quietly and say thank you for what you're doing." She said they're afraid of trouble if they speak up. "It's a small town."

Redevelopment reform has been gridlocked in the state capital for two years, but Governor Jerry Brown issued new clues on where he's heading in the state budget that was released in January.  The governor proposed changes to the Infrastructure Financing District law,  a tool that allows tax-increment funding for infrastructure improvements that formerly were handled by redevelopment agencies. The governor's office is expected to send specific language on the proposal to the legislature by February 1. The real action should begin then.     IFDs allow cities to use tax-increment financing without a blight finding. They have been part of California law since 1990, but have rarely been used, in part because they require two-thirds voter approval.  Brown's budget calls for lowering that voter threshold to 55 percent of the vote, as has been done for some forms of local school funding. But that's still a far cry from the past, when redevelopment agencies could approve individual projects and bonds without direct voter input. But the bill would also require cities to finish up the redevelopment wind-down and  conclude all post-redevelopment litigation against the state before they can take advantage of the new law. Groups such as the League of California Cities, which opposed the redevelopment changes, are waiting to see the actual legislation before they comment, said Chris McKenzie, the group's executive director. McKenzie expressed concerns about the public vote requirement for IFDs. "This is hard to get--even a 55 percent vote," he said. But he seemed relieved that  the governor had made some movement on redevelopment.  "We appreciate the fact the governor has started the conversation," McKenzie  said. "There's going to be a serious conversation. We're encouraged by that."  Other leaders, such as Sen. Lois Wolk, D-Davis,  chair of the Senate Governance and Finance Committee, were also glad to see the governor's proposal.  "I'm really delighted that he's engaging," she said, noting, "We haven't seen the language. The devil's in the details." "Many believe local governments could make good use of if requirements were eased or eliminated," said John Shirey, city manager of Sacramento, and former head of the California Redevelopment Association. Wolk's own bill to make it easier to use IFDs, SB 33, passed the Senate in 2013. It is now awaiting a final vote on the assembly floor. She said a final vote was delayed because Brown's office "gave clear signals last year that he wasn't ready to sign it." But Wolk's bill doesn't require a public vote on IFD projects, like Brown's does.  "That's a stark difference," she said.  And Brown vetoed an earlier version of her legislation SB 214 in 2012.  In his veto message then, he said the new law would have changed the focus to new tools, "instead of winding down redevelopment."  Wolk's bill on IFDs would improve accountability by requiring annual audits Other legislative measures to restructure redevelopment have been on hold as well. SB 1, another key redevelopment bill was introduced in 2013 by Sen. Majority Leader Darrell Steinberg-D-Sacramento. It is a re-tooled version of a measure that Brown also vetoed in 2012.  At the start of 2014, Shirey remains unconvinced that anything will happen.  "The governor seems to have launched a preemptive strike in his budget proposal by making his own proposal rather than embracing any of the pending bills in the Legislature," he said. "I think he is signaling that he will not sign any bill that isn't his proposal and so it appears there will be no relief for IFDs again this year."   Brown's proposal on IFDs did more than re-start the conversation on redevelopment in Sacramento. It also offers an inducement to cities and counties to speed up resolution of claims with the Department of Finance. At the time of redevelopment's demise, there were about 400 redevelopment agencies in the state, and the Department of Finance has sought reimbursement for specific expenses made by those agencies.  Currently, 100 lawsuits are pending against the department by former  redevelopment agencies, according to H.D. Palmer, the press spokesman for the department. Brown's new proposal requires city and counties who want to use IFDs to have no outstanding lawsuits against the state regarding the redevelopment wind-down, to comply with all State Controller's Office RDA audit findings, and have a "finding of completion" from the state. Wolk noted that many of the agencies have wound down their operations and resolved issues with the Department of Finance in the past two years.  The new proposal on IFDs would expand them beyond infrastructure uses to include military base reuse, urban infill, transit priority projects, affordable housing and "associated necessary consumer services." "The goal is to maintain the IFD focus on project which have tangible quality-of-life benefits for the residents of the IFD project area," Brown said in his budget message.  The governor suggested IFDs could be used in former redevelopment project areas. He called for retaining the current ban on using tax increments from school districts, which means the state general fund would be held financially harmless.  Despite Brown's embrace of IFDs, they have only been approved three times in the past twenty years. One was to fund public works for a hotel adjacent to the Legoland theme park in Carlsbad in San Diego County, and two others were in San Francisco.  One IFD was for improvements in San Francisco's Rincon Hill neighborhood, and the other was to finance waterfront improvements by the Port of San Francisco for the recent America's Cup races.  San Francisco may latched onto IFDs early on because it is both a city and a county, making it easier to negotiate among taxing entities.  Most point to the two-thirds voter approval requirement for IFDs as the main impediment to their use. In the Port of San Francisco's IFD, the legislature granted San Francisco an exemption from holding an election, according to Peter Detwiler, a retired legislative staffer.  Detwiler thinks the state is in the middle of figuring out the next steps on redevelopment, and he sounded optimistic about the governor's IFD's proposal.  "IFDs are the correct policy response in this early redevelopment reset," he said.  IFDs may appeal to Governor Brown because they don't take money from the state, as redevelopment once did.  Redevelopment lost popularity because it became a drain on the state's general fund, said Detwiler, explaining that the state had to make up money to school districts that they lost to redevelopment.  But with IFDs, "it's not diverting schools' property tax," he said. "There's no cost to the state general fund."

The vast majority of California jurisdictions are now addressing greenhouse gas emissions, and increasingly they are using reduced parking requirements to achieve the "smart growth" land use changes that go along with emissions reductions.  That's the not-so-surprising conclusion of the annual Office of Planning & Research survey of local jurisdictions in California. The OPR survey  covers a wide range of topics, but is very focused on the things OPR is currently focused on – "smart growth" development strategies, climate change, and renewable energy. Among other things, the survey shows just how deeply engrained in California planning climate change has become. More than 70% of jurisdictions said they are either preparing a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or are have already adopted one. This finding comes after a decade of being pounded by the state on the importance of GHG reductions through the passage of AB 32, SB 375, and lawsuits from the attorney general's office. However, California jurisdictions are not nearly as far along in planning for climate adaptation. Only 36% say they are planning for adaptation. In the case of both emissions reduction and adaptation, however, the vast majority of jurisdictions say they use climate action plans as the policy document. OPR also conducted a detailed survey of different tools and what they are used for in achieving smart growth. Not surprisingly, the state density bonus law was most cited as the most common tool used to achieve higher densities – more than 50% of jurisdictions reported using density bonuses to achieve higher densities.  The survey also spoke to the frequency with which jurisdiction use specific plans in urban or smart growth settings – about 50%, give or take, which is a surprising number considering the fact that specific plans were traditionally used most frequently to facilitate the development of large single-developer greenfield projects. Perhaps most surprising, however, is the frequency with which California jurisdictions are now using reduced parking requirements in smart growth situations. As the chart below shows, more than 50% of the responding jurisdictions said they are using parking reductions to facilitate mixed use projects – and close to 40% say they are doing so for infill projects generally. Parking reductions are less frequently used for higher density and transit-oriented development – only about 25% in the latter case, though that may be partly due to the fact that TOD opportunities are concentrated in a relatively small number of jurisdictions with good transit service.

Sending the first signal that he is open to re-establishing some form of redevelopment, Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed changes to the Infrastructure Financing District law that would expand the allowable uses for IFDs and lower the voter threshold required to create them. But he would permit the expanded use of IFDs only for cities and counties that have settled out all redevelopment cash payments to other agencies and settled all redevelopment lawsuits against the state – moves that may accelerate the redevelopment wind-down process. The Infrastructure Financing District idea passed the Legislature in the early 1990s as an alternative to redevelopment, permitting the use of tax-increment financing for infrastructure without requiring a finding of blight. But the idea has rarely been used, primarily because they require two-thirds voter approval to be created. In the budget narrative accompanying his 2015 budget , Brown said he would support expanded use of IFDs as an economic development tool, but only if a city or county has completed its redevelopment wind-down process and resolved all lawsuits with the state over redevelopment. It was Brown's first cautious step toward reviving the use of tax-increment financing, which was eliminated in California two years ago at Brown's initiative. Since redevelopment was abolished on February 1, 2012, Brown has steadfastly refused to consider tax-increment financing in any form. Late in 2012 he vetoed a bill carried by Sen. Darrell Steinberg that would have permitted tax-increment financing in limited circumstances when consisted with an adopted sustainable communities plan. Steinberg stopped short of putting the same bill on Brown's desk again last fall, instead choosing to hold SB 1 over until this year. Brown's proposal would expand the use of IFDs beyond infrastructure to include military base reuse, urban infill, transit priority projects, affordable housing, and "associated necessary consumer services." "The goal is to maintain the IFD focus on projects which have tangible quality-of-life benefits for the residents of the IFD project area," said Brown's budget message. Presumably, "transit priority projects" means projects located inside transit priority areas, which local governments can create under SB 743 , the California Environmental Quality Act streamlining bill passed last fall. Brown suggested IFDs could be used in former redevelopment project areas, and also proposed that local government using IFDs for these purposes should be able to adopt IFDs with 55% voter approval. He called for retaining the current ban on using tax-increment from school districts, which means the state general fund would be held financially harmless. However, he also proposed placing strict limitations on the expanded use of IFDs, linked tightly to the redevelopment wind-down activities. More specifically, cities and counties seeking expanded use of IFDs would have to: 1. Have a "Finding of Completion" from the state, meaning the city or county has paid all unencumbered RDA cash assets to other taxing entities 2. Comply with with all State Controller's Office RDA audit findings. 3. Have no outstanding lawsuits against the state regarding the redevelopment wind-down. Local governments have literally hundreds of lawsuits pending against the Department of Finance over the redevelopment wind-down. By requiring that the cash be paid and lawsuits settled, Brown may be attempting to accelerate the redevelopment wind-down.

Are the days of "levels of service" as a performance measure under the California Environmental Quality Act numbered? Following up on t he passage of SB 743, the Governor's Office of Planning & Research is considering a variety of alternatives to vehicle "level of service" under CEQA, including vehicle miles traveled, auto trips generated, and multi-modal leve l of service. OPR plans to deliver final draft CEQA guideline revisions to the Natural Resources Agency by July 1. In a preliminary paper released last week, OPR declared unequivocally that SB 743 "marks a shift away from auto delay as a measure of environmental impact". Most specifically, OPR has proposed the following possible metrics: 1. Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT), which OPR suggests "captures the environmental benefits of transit and active mode trips" and is easy to calculate 2. Automobile Trips Generated (ATG), already in use in San Francisco, which OPR suggests has many benefits but does not address the region of regional location of development projects. 3. Multi-Modal Level of Service (MMLOS), an spin on auto LOS, which creats an A through F grade for every intersection and roadway segment for every mode of travel. OPR notes that MMLOS could increase the cost of infill development by burdeningch projects with additional bike/ped facility costs. 4. Total fuel use, which OPR suggests would encourage infill development although it could sometimes add auto travel if road expansions and operations improvements (sometimes required to reduce idling or slow traffic) are used as mitigations. 5. Motor vehicle miles traveled, which OPR suggests could harm alternative modes by increasing vehicle speeds, thus making roadways less safe. 6. "Presumption of less than significant transportation impact based on location" – in other words, adopting the idea that infill development in transit-rich locations will affect the regional transportation network so differently than greenfield development that a "less than significant" impact can be assumed. The law dictates that OPR develop new transportation metrics to accomplish three goals: * Promote greenhouse gas emissions reduction * Develop multimodal transportation networks * Promote a diversity of land uses In the preliminary evaluation released last week, OPR announced that it would consider a number of other factors as well, including: * Maximizing environmental benefit and minimizing environmental harm * Efficient use of local government fiscal resources * Equity, meaning, among other things, equitable distribution of public facilities * Health, especially the health benefits associated with "active transportation" (biking and walking) * Simplicity * Consistency with a wide variety of other state policies, including the AB 857 priorities (infill development, compact greenfield development, and protection of open space) * Access to destinations – in other words, recognizing that the goal of transportation is to provide people with access to the things they need, rather than simply moving either people or vehicles. The OPR document can be found here: http://www.opr.ca.gov/docs/PreliminaryEvaluationTransportationMetrics.pdf Comments may be submitted to CEQA.Guidelines@ceres.ca.gov, using the subject line "LOS Alternatives". Staff lead at OPR is Senior Counsel Chris Calfee.