A bill that would permit a lawsuit challenging a housing element to be filed at almost any time advanced through a state Senate committee earlier this week and is headed to the Senate floor. Assembly Bill 602 passed the Senate Transportation and Housing Committee on a party-line vote of 6-3 vote, with Democrats in favor and Republicans opposed. The partisan vote may have surprised some people, but it should not have. The politics of AB 602 are linked to crusading lawyers, state-directed planning of high-density housing and climate change mandates. No Republican wants to be associated with those things. But it's also true that the emergence of AB 602 during the last two weeks has created some odd alliances. The California Association of Realtors, the Silicon Valley Leadership Group and the Sierra Club support the measure; the California Building Industry Association, the California Chamber of Commerce and local government organizations oppose it. The politics are not simple. Bill author Mike Feuer (D-Los Angeles) told the Senate committee the legislation would "return affordable housing law in California to what it was for the last 25 years." As I reported last week , Feuer and affordable housing advocates argue that an erroneous 2008 Court of Appeal decision changed the statute of limitations for lawsuits over a housing element from, essentially, anytime to 90 days after the element is adopted. Housing elements are intended to contain the land inventories and policies needed for a city or county to provide its fair share of new units for households of all income levels. The Department of Housing and Community Development reviews local housing elements, but there are few penalties for not having a housing element that HCD certifies as being in compliance. The open-ended statute of limitations is necessary because not until a developer proposes an actual project – which may occur months or years after housing element adoption – can people determine the precise impacts of housing element land inventories and policies, explained Julie Snyder, policy director for the organization Housing California.  Maybe more importantly, said Snyder, is the threat of litigation that affordable housing advocates use to get local government officials to the negotiating table. That's a far more common approach than actual litigation, she said. Snyder said fewer than 20 housing element lawsuits have been filed during the past 25 years. But League of California Cities lobbyist Bill Higgins complained to the Senate committee that the bill does not distinguish between jurisdictions with HCD-certified housing elements, and those without. Under AB 602, a city could have adopted a certified housing element seven years earlier and still get sued over the adequacy of the element by a developer demanding a greater density bonus or waiver of development standards. Building Industry Association lobbyist Allison Barnett pointed out that a housing element lawsuit may result in a moratorium on all housing construction, which does nothing to improve the housing stock and punishes innocent parties. Still, committee Chairman Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach) made clear his support for the bill. "I've always felt we needed effective judicial enforcement of the law," he said of the housing element statute. "Access (to the courts) must be restored." Negotiations among housing advocates, builders and local government representatives are ongoing, but I find it hard to believe everyone will reach agreement. The differences are too fundamental and, frankly, I think everyone has a fairly strong argument. Planners have a deep interest in this one because they are the ones who actually prepare and implement housing elements – and because of the SB 375 aspect. As you probably know, SB 375 is the 2008 legislation that requires metropolitan planning organizations to prepare sustainable communities strategies (SCSs) which include regional land use plans, with the intent of reducing regional greenhouse gas emissions. However, SB 375 does not require city and county general plans to comply with SCSs. Thus, the housing element is seen as an essential tool (a stick, really) to ensure local governments actually implement SCS policies. Here's how a Senate Transportation and Housing Committee analysis of AB 602 puts it: " ousing element law is currently the only tool to get cities and counties to increase affordable housing densities needed to achieve the SB 375 regional greenhouse gas emission reduction targets. Without an effective way to enforce housing element law, the only tool to effectively ensure implementation of SB 375 at the local level is lost." – Paul Shigley

Back in 2005, after Con Howe stepped down from his longtime role as Los Angeles's planning director, my phone kept ringing off the hook with calls from people trying to help new Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa find a new planning director. Some wanted to know who I thought would be good; others wanted to bounce candidates off of me to see what I thought. After about the eighth call, I realized something important. There was only one person on everybody's list. Astonishing, given the typical biography of a big-city planning director at the time, she was 62-year-old woman from San Diego who hadn't even been a professional planner until the late 1980s. And so it was almost preordained that Villaraigosa was going to pick Gail Goldberg as his planning director. Gail was one of Villaraigosa's early, big hires – at a time when he was selecting many formidable women for top jobs, including Cecilia Estolano at the Community Redevelopment Agency, Gloria Jeff at the Department of Transportation, and Mercedes Marquez at the Housing Department. And now she is the last one of these women to depart , following Estolano by only a few months. There's a lot of loose talk around town today as to why Goldberg is leaving. Is she worn out? Did she tire of the endless budget-cutting, which has eviscerated her department more than anyone could have predicted only a couple of years ago? Did she clash with Deputy Mayor Austin Beutner, who was charged with reorganizing her department? Soon enough we'll know the truth. But for the moment, let's acknowledge Gail Goldberg for the extraordinary person that she is – and for the remarkable work she did in both San Diego and Los Angeles. And let's also recognize that even for a planning director as skilled as Gail, it's tough out there. I don't think anybody could have done a better job running the planning departments in both these cities. And I don't think anybody is more frustrated than Gail with how it has all turned out – San Diego unable to truly realize the "City of Villages" vision because of a lack of infrastructure money, and Los Angeles unable to realize the potential of a revived planning effort because of a budget meltdown that cost Gail her best senior people, who retired, and her most promising junior planners, who got laid off. By now everybody in planning knows the inspiring story of Gail Goldberg – a stay-at-home mom who found herself a widow at 40 who went back to school, and then wound up as a brand-new assistant planner in the San Diego planning department at age 46. Remarkably, she became the city's planning director only 13 years later – and the planning director in Los Angeles a few years after that. In San Diego, Gail was the primary architect of the "City of Villages" concept – perhaps the quintessential node-oriented California planning concept, which called for new growth to be focused on existing neighborhoods in a village-like way. City of Villages emerged from an innovative public outreach process for which Gail became well-known, through which the city went to extraordinary lengths not just to get people out to meetings (like giving away television sets) but also to explain the true nature of the choices facing the City and its neighborhoods. Implementing City of Villages has proven to be an overwhelming task , as the city struggles both to update all of its community plans during dark budget times, but still hasn't solved an apparently endless multibillion-dollar infrastructure deficit, without which the City of Villages plan probably can't win the widespread political support required for implementation. Los Angeles proved an even tougher nut to crack. L.A. was already far down the infill road when Gail arrived; half of the city's new housing units were already being built on commercial strips, and new transit stops were popping up all over town. From current planning to GIS to advance planning, she had to pull the department out of the dark ages. Community plans – the bread-and-butter of advance planning – were old and vague and provided almost no guidance. She quickly turned things around, getting more money from Villaraigosa when nobody but public safety could do so, putting community plan updates on a rigorous schedule – and, perhaps most important, turning the department into a place where talented young planners actually aspired to work. Through it all, Gail has always had a kind of homespun, motherly quality that endeared her to everybody. She often likened planning a city to planning a dinner party. "You have to make sure that everybody brings something different, and not everybody brings the same appetizer." When she moved to L.A., she spent every Saturday touring a neighborhood with one of her enthusiastic young planners, almost as if she was attending their dance recitals. And yet Gail was always tough enough to survive the rough-and-tumble politics of big cities, and in retrospect it's clear that she was on the leading edge of a whole generation of outstanding big-city planning directors who are women. Socialite Amanda Burden in New York and funny-but-gritty Harriet Tregoning in Washington, D.C., have far different styles – but their mayors would have been less likely to appoint them if it hadn't been for Gail. Thank you, Gail Goldberg, for making two of California's great cities better. And even though implementing your dreams is tough now, in the long run all your hard work will pay off.

Read Bill Fulton's appreciation of Gail Goldberg's time in Los Angeles here . After four-and-a-half years at the helm of the Los Angeles Department of City Planning, Gail Goldberg has announced her retirement. In a letter to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa Goldberg, who arrived in Los Angeles after serving as planning director for the City of San Diego, cited major initiatives that she had championed at the department but wrote that ultimately she has "been long ready for retirement and new adventures."  The announcement comes just a month after the initiation of a major restructuring in the department. Under the restructuring, projects would be handled by a single staff member, and the department's case processing would be broken into four geographic units intended to enable staffers to focus on their respective communities. The restructuring process is planned to take place in three phases, through January 2011.  The first woman to head the department -- and one of several early Villaraigosa hires who collectively obliterated the city's glass ceiling -- Goldberg succeeded longtime director Con Howe and promised to bring major reforms and fresh ways of thinking to a department that had been criticized as ossified and overly bureaucratic; a November 2005 audit by then-City Controller Laura Chick found "an agency cast in a time warp of past practices, old procedures and outdated technology" that was "mired in backlogs, often in violation of state law." By contrast, Goldberg had enjoyed widespread acclaim in San Diego, where she promoted community-oriented planning under the mantle "A City of Villages." She was also known for embracing public participation and even using gimmicks like raffles to attract stakeholders.  In her resignation letter, Goldberg wrote that she was most proud of initiatives to "Do Real Planning" -- as opposed to merely process cases -- even while by the end of her tenure the department was forced to cope with the equivalent of a 45 percent reduction in staff due to budget cuts. Goldberg oversaw the addition of the Office of Historic Resources and the Urban Design studio, in addition to many specific plans and special initiatives.   Goldberg's efforts to streamline the department met with mixed results. Downsizing forced the department to adopt more efficient structures, but in the process the department lost such veteran planners as Jane Blumenfeld, who had guided the evolution of the city's zoning code. Moreover, the department under Goldberg was the subject of yet another scathing audit by current City Controller Wendy Greuel. Gruele's audit, from April, found that the department had implemented few of the recommendations made in Chick's 2005 audit and that the department's "cradle-to-grave" approach to permit processing -- by which the process was to be vertically integrated and overseen by a single staff member -- had consistently fallen short of its goals, thus prompting the new round of restructuring. That audit, which Greuel called "most disappointing," also faulted the department for failing to fully implement the so-called "12-to-2" plan, by which the permitting responsibilities of 12 departments would be folded into those of two -- to be led by City Planning.  Nevertheless, Goldberg has of late had to operate in a vastly different city than the one she joined in 2006. When she was hired, Los Angeles was at the height of its building boom, and plans for smart growth development and new ways of thinking -- championed by both her and Mayor Villaraigosa -- were taking hold in the city. The slowdown in construction and the subsequent loss of both revenues and general plan funds took their toll on the department. Nevertheless, Goldberg leaves a legacy of new programs and strategies, including greater attention to public engagement, pedestrian-oriented planning, bicycle planning, historic preservation, and restructuring of the department's finances.  Goldberg will officially step down at the end of August, but her last day in the office will be July 16.

It's a saga straight out of the Rust Belt: auto giant closes its factory, laying off nearly 5,000 auto workers, and leaving behind an aging structure and contaminated site of 370 acres. Businesses throughout the region, which supply parts to the factory, also take a hit. But this is California, and in the second act, the plot takes an unexpected turn: along comes a company that, for $42 million, takes over the factory and 200 acres of land and promises to build electric cars there. The auto giant, which has faced bad publicity for closing the plant, decides to invest $50 million in the green tech manufacturer. Auto giant raises hopes of locals that it will even return to site for a joint venture someday.  Factory jobs are now expected to number in the hundreds instead of thousands, but parts suppliers expect a renaissance as well.   If a new Industrial Revolution � characterized by green technologies and not infernal smokestacks � is to take place in the United States, then the City of Fremont may be poised to be the Detroit of the 21st century.  Fremont, in south Alameda County, has been through highs and lows in recent months as Toyota closed its New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc. (NUMMI) plant in April, then resurrected it in May by announcing plans to sell the property to Tesla Motors, the well-known startup that has advertised grand plans to bring high-end electric cars into the mainstream. For years, Toyota had operated the NUMMI plant jointly with General Motors, but GM pulled out of the partnership when it declared bankruptcy in 2009, thus leading to the demise of the last major automobile manufacturing plant in the western United States.  How major Tesla will become � and how deep its impact on Fremont will be � remains to be seen.  Based across the San Francisco Bay in Palo Alto, Tesla is expected to go public with an initial public offering June 29, which should provide $178 million for its expansion. The company has said it hopes to begin manufacturing its roadsters and luxury sedans by 2012. Car prices will start at $50,000.   The company has said that, initially, it will not need all the manufacturing space that it has paid for at the NUMMI plant. But the Tesla announcement has already helped Fremont, a city of 210,000, cement its reputation�and that of all of adjacent Silicon Valley�as a center of green tech. The city has about a dozen green tech companies, including Solyndra, a solar panel maker that is building a manufacturing facility less than a mile from the NUMMI plant. Solyndra has 500 employees; another company, Solaria has 50 employees in Fremont.  Many of the companies are benefiting from money invested in green and alternative technology by the Obama administration. Tesla's plant is intended to be only one piece of this larger revitalized industrial base. City officials began laying the groundwork for the future of the NUMMI area before the plant closed in April. They secured a federal grant for $333,000 for four studies of the future of the site, and surrounding land that totals 850 acres. The studies are set to begin soon, and should be completed in eight months, said Fremont Economic Development Director Lori Taylor.   The area surrounding NUMMI is currently an amalgam of low-slung research parks, industrial buildings, and a few hotels, interspersed with acres of vacant land.  Several transit options already work in the area's favor: there is easy access to the Port of Oakland, two freeways run through the area, and a Bay Area Rapid Transit extension is under construction. The Warm Springs BART Station is slated to open in 2015. "This site is a prime location and adjacent to several acres of vacant and underutilized land, and right adjacent to a future BART station," said City Councilwoman Anu Natarajan. "There could be several uses including green tech businesses, higher density mixed use, potentially a convention center in the future." The city is also exploring whether to make an 850-acre area, which includes the NUMMI plan, a redevelopment project area, said Natarajan and city councilmember Bob Wieckowski.  Wieckowski said that Tesla's arrival means that the plant may become the hub of green industry located on adjacent land. NUMMI's suppliers were scattered throughout Northern California, but the adjacent land would be a good spot for the new businesses that will likely arise to supply Tesla � thus vertically integrating the green economy in Fremont. "Part of the trick to having a green economy and green jobs is to have them right next to each other," he said.   Tesla officials toured the NUMMI plant in the months before the plant was shut down, as had many other companies, Wieckowski said. But Tesla appeared to be headed towards Downey, a city in southeastern Los Angeles County, which had put together a package of incentives to lure the company to a portion of a former aerospace facility.  "We never had a clue," Downey City Councilman Mario Guerra said of Tesla's decision. "We had been working with them for over a year."  Guerra thinks the money Toyota is giving to Tesla Motors swayed the company to back out of its plans for Downey. Wieckowski said Fremont is also much closer to the firm's Palo Alto headquarters, and that proximity must have played a role.  If Tesla thrives in Fremont, it will be a major victory for a city that has suffered its share of loses. In 2006, the Oakland A's announced they were going to build a 32,000-seat baseball stadium in Fremont, on vacant land near the 880 Freeway. The stadium project was to be financed in part by housing and retail development on 260 acres.  But after local residents complained about the impacts, and the housing market tanked, the team began looking at sites in downtown San Jose and in Oakland. Team owner Lew Wolff has been quoted in the Oakland Tribune as saying he is no longer interested in a ballpark in Fremont, because a housing component is no longer a viable option for financing it.  Councilmembers Natarajan and Wieckowski say there is land near the former NUMMI site for a ballpark, if a team is interested. "Is it likely it will happen?" said Natarajan. "Maybe not with the A's." Fremont's Taylor said a committee from Major League Baseball "has been studying this site since NUMMI has announced its closure." The MLB task force is also considering other Bay Area sites.   Though it's considered the first mover in the electric car field, Tesla's success is not a sure thing, notes economist Robert Fountain, consultant and retired economics professor at Sacramento State University.  "There is lots of new technology not yet proven in production," he said, "and there are other competing efforts at an all-electric vehicle which may blow Tesla away. So there is lots of risk and at best several more years of local losses before Tesla has the economic impact in the region which NUMMI had, if it ever does."  Meanwhile, Downey may yet prove to be Fremont's competition in electric car production. Guerra said his city is currently talking to another electric car company about opening a factory on the site that Tesla once seemed certain to claim.  Contacts: Lori Taylor, Economic Development Director, City of Fremont,(510) 284-4024 Anu Natarajan, City Councilmember, Fremont (510) 284-4082 Bob Wieckowski, City Councilmember, Fremont  (510)790-2732 Robert Fountain, Regional Economics Consultant, Benicia (916)719-2037 Mario Guerra, City Councilmember, Downey (562)904-7274

To this day, the State of Kentucky forbids the sale of alcohol on election days. This momentary dry spell – which hearkens back to frontier times – is meant to encourage sober voting and discourage bribery via alcohol, turns a legal substance into something illegal for the public good. On Election Day in California this November, quite the opposite might happen. As of June 24, the Regulate, Control, and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010 (full text pdf) had collected more than the 435,000 signatures needed to put it on the ballot. If passed, it would strip away the medicinal veneer of cannabis use and simply make it legal for anyone over age 21 to possess, grow, and use cannabis, hemp, and related products. It would also authorize the state and local jurisdictions to impose taxes on its sale and cultivation and – importantly for planners – to decide where it can be sold and consumed.; (Update: The Tax Cannabis 2010 initiative has been named Proposition 19 on the Nov. 2 ballot.) An April 2009 Field poll of registered voters found 56 percent in favor of marijuana legalization and taxation. A SurveyUSA poll from the past April came up with the exact same number in favor of legalization, with only 42 percent opposed. If these sentiments hold firm, a vote that will be a fantasy for marijuana connoisseurs may turn out to be a very bad trip for city planners and local public officials.; "If it passes, and the polling right now says it has a real good chance, we will go through a period of a couple years where some folks put their heads in the sand, others jump out in front, and after two years at lot of people will say, ‘shoot, we have to get our arms around this because it's gotten kind of crazy,'" said University of San Francisco Professor of Politics Patrick Murphy, who specializes in drug policy. Voter-approved legalization would likely force cities' hands in two ways: first, it will give public officials the simple choice of whether to allow sale and/or cultivation in their jurisdictions, and, second, if it is allowed, then they will have to decide where it will go. Some embarrassing experiences with medical marijuana suggest that cities should think carefully about the land use ordinances that they will use if marijuana goes fully mainstream. "Planning gets caught somewhere in the middle" of the current confusion over medical marijuana, said Dale Clare, spokesperson for the Tax Cannabis 2010 campaign. "You're trying to zone for over-the-counter retail sales…while claiming that all of that is basically illegal activities." That bind became clear as the medical marijuana took off in 2009 and the City of Los Angeles became the poster child for cluelessness. A tardy, sloppily-written ordinance led to the proliferation of pot shops of varying degrees of respectability. Some felt like elegant day spas while others were no so luxe. The rap on the city was that it had more medical marijuana outlets than it did Starbucks. Los Angeles has since cracked down on what it considered rogue pot shops and instituted a complex and restrictive land use ordinance that, planners say, ensures access to those who need marijuana as medicine but otherwise prevents the blight and unseemly connotations that come with the trade of a formerly illicit substance. "The recommendations we came up with ensured that there would be potentially medical marijuana collectives located within all the community plan areas in the city," said Alan Bell, senior planner at the Los Angeles Department of City Planning, who led the crafting of the marijuana ordinance. "We'd limit the number so that we could have a limited number that we could enforce and monitor." By November, though, the marijuana trade may not be a matter of "need" but rather of "want" – want not only on the part of recreational uses, but also on the part of cities that perceive a monumental opportunity to generate revenue. The Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010, despite its title, does not prescribe how cannabis should be regulated, controlled, and taxed. Nor does it dictate where pot can be sold or grown. It leaves those complex decisions up to cities and counties, which many consider both a blessing and a curse. "In Prop 215 we used a process to make a policy without regard for how it would be implemented. That's a lousy way to make policy," said Murphy. "We've got a similar situation on the horizon now where we will be making another very broad, very vague policy and say, ‘locals, figure it out.'" A report authored by Dale Gieringer, California Director of the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), in October 2009 proposes that a legal cannabis market could generate between $2.7 and $4.5 billion in state excise tax revenue, several hundred million in local sales tax revenue, and $12 - $18 billion in spinoff economic activity, including that from tourism and coffee shops. The California Board of Equalization estimates that cannabis could yield roughly $1 billion per year in direct tax revenues for the state, irrespective of how much local tax revenue they generate. Thus far, the City of Oakland has heartily embraced commercial medical marijuana through Measure F, a 2009 ballot initiative that passed with 80 percent of the vote and authorized the city to raise the tax on "cannabis business" from its standard 1.2 percent citywide sales tax to 1.8 percent. Oakland city officials are not shy about their embrace of marijuana's economic powers, and an entire neighborhood has been renamed with the convenient portmanteau of Oaksterdam. The name comes originally from Oaksterdam University, a school gives seminars to hobbyists and pot entrepreneurs about how to cultivate, process, and market the herb. The name has caught on throughout a half-dozen block area between downtown Oakland and Lake Merritt. What has also caught on is a minor economic boom. " were essentially moving into a place where there was a lot of vacant space," said Oakland City Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan, who authored Measure F. "They did a fair bit to clean up the area. There were dispensary owners out in the morning sweeping the sidewalks." Ada Chan, Kaplan's policy analyst for economic development, said that nearby hotels have been, at times, sold out and full of Oaksterdam students. "Why go to Amsterdam when you can go to Oaksterdam? We can keep our dollars here," said Clare. "While we're bringing in students to come to Oaksterdam, we're also improving the city and putting more money in the coffers because of all the folks who are coming to stay." (Richard Lee, the proprietor of Oaksterdam University, is one of the main sponsors of the Tax Cannabis 2010 initiative.) At a time when many cities' coffers are cached out and when the state, itself $21 billion in the red this year, has announced plans to divert over $2 billion from local redevelopment funds to school funds, marijuana may prove as effective a redevelopment tool as any.; Moreover, a retail scheme coordinated with local production could create a tightly closed economic loop that keeps money circulating within the city, thus creating multipliers that are absent from the sale and production of many other consumer goods.; ;"I do see using it as a further economic development tool. Part of what's in the pipeline for Oakland is to be looking at production and cultivation," said Kaplan. "There isn't yet still effective permitting and regulation for that. ;I think that could contribute significantly to jobs and economic development in Oakland." The prosperity of the Oaksterdam neighborhood offers a glimpse of one end of the spectrum of legalization: entire neighborhoods dedicated to marijuana, replete with places to get high, spend the night, satisfy the munchies, and commune with fellow travelers. While current medical marijuana regulations forbid on-site consumption, the November ballot measure explicitly permits on-site consumption if cities choose to allow and zone for them. The potential to stoke a neighborhood by allowing "coffee shops" in fact could achieve many of the popular smart growth goals, including pedestrian activity and neighborhood-focused economies not unlike those that surround nightclub-oriented neighborhoods such as Hollywood. "Places that are appropriate for street cafes are appropriate for coffee shops in general," said Gieringer, of NORML. "Like-minded people tend…to come together and share their joys and experiences together, so this would be similar to that," said Clare. "Maybe it's just a block, maybe it's a neighborhood…or maybe just a couple of businesses side by side that become a destination." The types of outlets that appeal to tourists will not necessarily be the same as those that simply sell medicine to patients. Understanding the difference, and knowing how to capitalize on them, will be one of many matters that planners will have to take up. "The question is what kind of outlet? Would you have cafes, walk-in clubs where people could smoke marijuana, or would it all be in package stores or something like that?" said Gieringer. "Of course there are siting issues and zoning issues all up the kazoo." In small towns and rural areas, the race may be on to see who can perfect a version of pot tourism based on the wine country model, where small towns provide an idyllic backdrop for marijuana use. "There are different levels of opportunities for different areas," said Clare. "You may find….more of a B&B where people come out to experience varietals and classic strains that are hard to come by and more expensive in the higher end." The early favorite in that race to provide the perfect marijuana getaway would be the towns of the so-called Emerald Triangle counties of the north coast -- Mendocino, Humboldt, and Trinity -- where cannabis has long been a way of life. Legalized marijuana may offer those towns a way to get a handle on an industry that is thriving but unregulated. "If I had to make a wild guess, just because of the lengthy association we've had with it up here there's going to be value to the Humboldt name," said Humboldt County Supervisor Mark Lovelace. "I think that the land use issues are going to be our biggest issues," said Eureka City Councilmember Linda Atkins, who authored a marijuana ordinance that is now under discussion in the picturesque coastal city. These prospects, whether rural or urban, put planners in the unusual situation of devising land use schemes to maximize public benefits and revenue for something that used to be confined to back alleys and unsavory streetcorners. For those who are skittish about that prospect -- or just uncertain about how to plan for pot – they have ample reason to get up to speed. "Some of those progressive localities were among the first to both regulate medical marijuana and create model ordinances that controlled the distribution of medical marijuana," said Stephen Gutwillig, California state director of the Drug Policy Alliance. "Cities like Los Angeles sat on their hands while dispensaries proliferated." As unsettling as the prospect of drug legalization might be for some public officials, the worst-case scenario for many cities would be not to plan and then to end up in a city that is neither wet nor dry but, indeed, hazy. "Don't pretend like it's going to go away," said USF's Murphy. "You're going to have to take elected officials, hold them by both shoulders, and explain to them the consequences of not acting." Contacts: Alan Bell, Los Angeles Department of City Planning, (213) 978-1322 Dale Clare, Control and Tax Cannabis California 2010, (415) 981-9940 Dale Gieringer, Director, California Office of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws Stephen Gutwillig, California State Director, Drug Policy Alliance, (213) 382-6400 Rebecca Kaplan, City Councilmember, City of Oakland, ;(510) 238-7008 Mark Lovelace, Supervisor, Humboldt County, (707) 476-2396 Patrick Murphy, University of San Francisco Department of Politics, (415) 422-5867

The California Air Resources Board has released very cursory greenhouse gas emissions reductions targets for the state's 18 metropolitan planning organizations. Although draft greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions targets under SB 375 are due June 30, detailed targets will not be proposed until August. The targets, scheduled for final adoption in September, are intended to guide sustainable communities strategies that the MPOs must adopt during coming years.  The air board staff lumped the 18 MPOs into three groups: the four big urban MPOs (Southern California Association of Government, San Diego Association of Governments, Metropolitan Transportation Commission and Sacramento Area Council of Governments), the eight MPOs that each cover one county in the San Joaquin Valley, and the remaining six. Under the plan outlined at the June 24 Air Resources Board meeting, the big four MPOs must reduce greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles and light trucks by 5% to 10% per capita by 2020.  Every other target at this point amounts to a "placeholder" until further study and public outreach is completed. The placeholders are based largely on what MPOs say they will be able to achieve. So, for example, the placeholder reduction targets for 2020 and 2035 for the San Joaquin Valley MPOs are 1% to 7%.  The targets are intended to account for GHG reductions solely from land use planning and transportation system improvements, and do not account for GHG reductions from low-carbon fuels, according to Lezlie Kimura, of the air board staff. Seven public workshops on SB 375 target-setting is scheduled for July at seven different locations.

Judged by the result, the Supreme Court's June 17 decision in  Stop the Beach Renourishment v. Florida Department of Environmental Protection  looks like a model of judicial restraint. The court unanimously rejected a claim by landowners on Florida's northern Gulf Coast that they had suffered an unconstitutional taking of property after beach restoration by local governments turned their oceanfront homes into ocean-view lots separated from the water by 75 feet of new sand. Looked at more closely, however, the court's decision discloses an activist impulse by the Roberts Court's committed conservatives. In a plurality opinion, four justices fell one vote short of a majority to give federal courts new power to superintend state court rulings on land use law. The ruling they sought could have led to a vast increase in property rights litigation, giving property owners new leverage to block government-backed development and improvements aimed at benefiting the broad public. The decision came as liberal groups are stepping up their accusations that under Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., the court has been guilty of pro-business judicial activism. "The Roberts Court consistently pursues a political agenda that favors powerful corporate interests," according to a report by the Alliance for Justice, "and recent Supreme Court decisions show certain Justices' striking willingness to engage in judicial activism to fulfill their ideological goals." Exhibit No. 1 in the group's indictment is the 5-4 Citizens United decision in January, which freed corporations (and unions) to spend unlimited sums from their own treasuries on political campaigns. But the report pointed to a dozen other cases in which the court purportedly "overreached" by deciding questions unnecessarily, crafting new legal standards "out of thin air," or overriding factual determinations by lower courts. As another example, the group cited the 2009 decision, Gross v. FBL Services , that went beyond the narrow question presented to shift the burden of proof from employers to plaintiffs in one type of federal age- discrimination case. As the report notes, the logic of the decision could also apply to the broad range of job- discrimination suits (race, sex, and so forth) brought under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The conservative Heritage Foundation rushed out with a report depicting the liberals' accusation as "mythology." The attack, senior fellows Robert Alt and Hans von Spakovsky argue in a legal memorandum , is an effort to distract court watchers from the true record of judicial activism by liberal judges. The court's handling of the Florida property rights case gives the warring ideological groups one more decision to debate. The case stemmed from the plan by the Gulf Coast town of Destin and its county government in 2003 to restore about seven miles of hurricane-eroded beach. Some beachfront property owners objected. Why? Because under well-established law, the restored beach would be public land, not private property. Having paid a pretty penny for an oceanfront lot with no beachgoing public between them and the water, the owners concluded that the government was taking their property without compensation in violation of the Fifth Amendment's Takings Clause. They also claimed the benefit of Florida's 1961 Beach and Shore Preservation Act, which generally provides that beachfront owners, post-restoration, are still entitled to almost all of their pre-existing property rights. The Florida Supreme Court rejected the owners' claim, saying the owners had lost no protected property right. The owners took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. There, they argued the novel theory that the state court's decision on this somewhat close legal question amounted to a taking because it purportedly changed existing state law. The Supreme Court agreed to review the decision. During arguments in December, justices across the ideological spectrum appeared satisfied that the Florida Supreme Court had a sound basis for its decision. And that is what they said in the eventual  ruling . All eight justices (Justice John Paul Stevens, a Florida land owner, recused himself) agreed that the state court was not guilty of taking the owners' property. Before reaching that conclusion, however, Justice Antonin Scalia led a four-justice bloc that also included Roberts, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel A. Alito Jr. in saying that, yes, a court ruling changing an "established" property right could amount to a taking just as much as action by a legislative or executive body. The four other justices — Anthony M. Kennedy and Sonia Sotomayor in one opinion, Stephen G. Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg in another — said it was unnecessary to decide the issue. In his opinion, Kennedy warned that the plurality opinion could transform virtually any state court property rights dispute into a "takings" claim. Any losing party, he suggested, could argue that the state court had "changed" established law to its detriment. In fact, within hours Ilya Shapiro of the libertarian Cato Institute Shapiro was hailing the four-vote opinion. "State courts are now on notice that they violate long-hailed property rights at their peril," Shapiro wrote. Four votes, of course, do not make a majority on the Supreme Court. A full court almost certainly would have rejected Scalia's position since Stevens has not embraced property rights claims in past cases. So Scalia's opinion adopting the idea of "judicial takings" represents an extended dictum of no real legal effect, unnecessary to the decision but an activist gift to property rights advocates in future cases. Kennth Jost is a  CP&DR  contributing editor and associate editor of  CQ Researcher . This piece also appears on his blog  Jost on Justice .

Pitting affordable housing advocates against local government officials, planners, and builders, a housing element bill has seemingly risen from the dead to become one of the hottest land use bills in Sacramento. Assembly Bill 602 would provide an unlimited time period during which someone could sue over a jurisdiction's housing element, which is intended to demonstrate how a city or county will provide its fair share of housing at various cost levels. According to the affordable housing advocates supporting the legislation, a 2008 Court of Appeal decision placed a 90-day statute of limitations on legal challenges to housing elements. The bill would permit lawsuits at any point during the housing element planning period. Two years ago, the First District Court of Appeal permitted advocates' lawsuit over the City of Pleasanton's housing element to proceed, but the court also ruled that suits must normally be filed within 90 days of housing element adoption (see CP&DR Legal Digest , September 2008 ). Richard Marcantonio, who represented the advocacy group Urban Habitat Program in the Pleasanton litigation, said AB 602 would restore "what everybody thought the law was before the Court of Appeal in the Pleasanton case rewrote the law." In the final weeks of last year's legislative activity, Assembly Democrats gutted and amended AB 602 – which had concerned insurance matters, – to address the housing element statute of limitation. The measure stalled in part because local government representatives and housing advocates could not negotiate an agreement. With assistance from Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), Assemblyman Mike Feuer (D-Los Angeles) resurrected AB 602 on June 21, and the bill is set for a hearing in the Senate Transportation and Housing Committee on June 29. Most local government land use decisions come with short statutes of limitations. You have 30 days to sue over an environmental impact report, for example. The short time frame for filing lawsuits helps provide certainty on land use policy. Housing advocates say the housing elements should be an exception for several reasons: Because of the way planning cycles work, scores of housing element updates may get adopted within a matter of days. Advocacy groups say they can't keep track of all of the housing elements as they go through the process. The advocates also say that housing elements can have unique regional impacts, and, they note, the system is built on citizen enforcement. Finally, they say, the threat of litigation sometimes is necessary to get a local government to take affordable housing issues seriously. "Local jurisdictions are already skating by because there is not enough enforcement of affordable housing laws," Marcantonio charged. Naturally, cities and counties object to a bill that could extend their legal exposure, especially on the politically sensitive topic of affordable housing development. But even cities that are good actors on affordable housing and that have adopted thoughtful housing elements oppose AB 602. There is a feeling that housing advocates are over-reaching. Remember, the advocates won the 2008 procedural ruling in the Pleasanton case, and, with legal assistance from the attorney general's office, they won a Superior Court ruling on the merits earlier this year. As of right now, the City of Pleasanton cannot issue a building permit until it adopts a housing element acceptable to the court. What more do the housing crusaders want?  Bill Higgins, a lobbyist with the League of California Cities, noted that the requirements for housing elements have expanded during recent years. Housing elements now must address farmworker housing and emergency shelters, for example. Inventories of land available for housing development must be far more detailed than they used to be. "The universe of what you can argue is wrong with a housing element has grown a great deal," Higgins said. Environmental groups live with the California Environmental Quality Act's short statutes of limitations, and there are thousands of CEQA decision taken every year. Plenty of those actions – in regards to public works projects, commercial power centers and large subdivisions – have regional impacts. So what makes housing elements special? "The housing element occupies a unique place in California law," Marcantonio responded. "It occupies a unique place in local government law because a local government's ability to control its land use is subject to its ability to provide affordable housing." The housing element statute says that provision of housing is a matter of statewide importance and urgency. That's unusual language, he said. Under SB 375, the importance of housing elements only increases. Housing elements are essential for implementing sustainable communities strategies that are intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles. But if housing elements are open to litigation at any time, local governments and builders argue they will lack the certainty they need to make progress on development that is less automobile dependent.  The two sides have already resumed negotiations that broke off last year. But it's very important to remember that those talks are occurring in the shadow of a November ballot initiative that would suspend AB 32, and during a gubernatorial campaign in which greenhouse gas emissions regulation may be a central issue. Passing a bill so closely linked to lawyers, centralized planning and climate change may not be in the Democrats' best campaign interests for 2010. –  Paul Shigley

In upholding the City of Lemoore's development impact fees for a wide range of municipal facilities, an appellate court has rejected a homebuilders association argument that such fees must be based on a specific list of public facilities. The Homebuilders Association of Tulare/Kings Counties challenged a series of housing development impact fees adopted in 2006 and 2007 by the San Joaquin Valley city of Lemoore for community/recreation, park land, police, municipal facilities, fire protection, and refuse vehicles and containers. The case addressed several key practice questions regarding impact fees, including 1) whether the fees must be earmarked for specific facilities, and 2) to what extent the Quimby Act – which governs impact fees for parkland acquisition – is pre-emptive.The lawsuit also challenged the city's fee accounting practices. The Kings County Superior Court ruled for the city on nearly all claims. After the builders association appealed, a three-judge panel of the Fifth District Court of Appeal echoed the Superior Court's ruling and generally upheld the city's fees, with the exception of a fire impact fee on the east side of town. The appellate court first addressed the burden of proof. The court noted that while the public agency bears the initial burden of justifying its fees, the burden of proof ultimately falls on the fee challenger. The first issue of substance was that of the community/recreation fee. The city used an approach by which it valued the existing facilities and divided that total amount by the city's population to create a cost per resident. The city decided that new growth had to maintain the existing value of recreational facilities per resident. This is a fee calculating methodology referred to as "standard-based," rather than the more typical "facility-based" approach that uses a list of future facility needs. Lemoore's plan generally described the types of facilities that could be constructed, but the city did not commit to specific facilities. The builders association argued the city had to identify specific facilities that the fees would fund. However, the appellate court concurred in the city's approach, noting that the Mitigation Fee Act gives local agencies discretion when identifying the facilities to be developed. The builders association also argued that fees for recreation facilities were pre-empted by the Quimby Act. However, the court viewed the purposes of the Quimby Act as preserving recreational opportunities for new subdivisions. In this instance, Lemoore's impact fees were designed to fund unique facilities of broader benefit, and, therefore, were not pre-empted by the Quimby Act, the court ruled. Like the community/recreation fee, the parkland impact fee also applied, in part, to non-subdivision development. Again, the appellate court rejected the Quimby Act pre-emption argument, as well as the argument that a standard-based fee calculation was improper. The builders further argued that the city's 5-acres-of-parks-per-1000 residents standard (which is allowed by the Quimby Act), was inconsistent with the 3-acres-per-1000 residents standard set forth in the city's general plan. In an analysis that is not entirely clear, the appellate court agreed with the city that the 5-acre standard was not inconsistent with the general plan. The builders' objection to the public safety fee and municipal facilities fee posed another challenge to the use of a standards-based calculation that the city employed to ensure no dilution of existing service levels. Again, the appellate court held that the city's fee report provided ample supportive documentation to justify the charges. Where the appellate court agreed with the building association was with respect to the city's east side fire fee. The east side of the city is largely developed and is fully served by existing facilities. The revenue from the fee was to be used to pay back the city for facilities already constructed by the city to serve the east side. On this issue, the appellate court held the impact fees to be invalid because they were enacted for general revenue purposes. At the same time, the court upheld the west side fire fee because it would fund facilities that would directly serve the new development. That fee assumed the city would eventually annex substantial acreage (an assumption which effectively lowered the per unit fee). The court concluded that a sufficient basis existed to support the west side fee, even without annexation. The final category of fees challenged were fees for solid waste vehicles and equipment, which opponents argued were not capital assets and therefore not eligible to be funded by impact fees. Although the depreciation rate for these assets is much more rapid then other types of facilities, this equipment still qualified as capital facilities that could be funded by impact fees, the court ruled. The petitioner's final challenge was to the city's accounting practices. The court viewed this argument as a recast of the debate over standards-based versus facility-based fees. As the city was entitled to use broad facility descriptions when enacting the fees, a similar approach was sufficient when accounting for the fees, the court ruled. Presiding Justice James Ardaiz concurred in the ruling but expressed concern over the city's purported connection between facilities that serve the broader community, such as a military museum, to specific instances of new growth. "In my view, absent some showing of a more direct and specific relationship between the municipal improvement and the proposed development, such fees are seriously subject to question," Ardaiz wrote. The Case: Homebuilders Association of Tulare/Kings Counties, Inc. v. City of Lemoore, No. F057671, 2010 DJ DAR 8671. Filed June 9, 2010. The Lawyers: For the homebuilders: Walter McNeill, (530) 222-8992. For the city: Daniel Jamison, Dowling, Aaron & Keeler, (559) 432-4500. (William W. Abbott is a partner in the law firm of Abbott & Kindermann , LLP: California Land Use & Real Estate Lawyers.)

Some people are, lamentably, forced to live in substandard housing. They languish in stark Modernist buildings that are often segregated from the proverbial hustle and bustle of the city. They enjoy no amenities and they have a hard time making a living, even with public assistance, so they ask for more public assistance to give them the environment they need to prosper.  That's a tired old narrative that has undergirded the construction of a new venue for almost every major league team in the country, from the Baltimore Orioles, who moved into Camden Yards in 1992, to the Pittsburgh Penguins, who will abandon the magisterial Igloo in favor of a truly hideous block come September. Just this past year, the Mets and Yankees got new homes built right next to their old homes, and the Jets and Giants will trade Giants Stadium -- a hulking galleon in a sea of parking lots (which are, in turn, surrounded by an ocean of swampland) -- for a fancier, more expensive craft that will ply the very same asphalt.  Here in California, now it now looks like Santa Clara will welcome the San Francisco 49ers to a venue that will, no doubt, be an improvement over the breezy Candlestick Park.  With the 49ers fate settled for the moment, let's turn to the longest-running saga in California sports -- a saga that so far has all but ignored principles of sound planning. The fantasy of getting a team in Los Angeles -- an expansion team? the Chargers? the Jaguars? the Trojans? (oops...that's a pro team that already calls L.A. home) -- has kept developers on their toes and architectural draftspeople in business over the past 15 years.  By my count, a good half-dozen schemes have cropped up to conjure up a suitable stadium in L.A. The one that's gotten its picture in the local blogs more often than any other is Majestic Realty's proposal for a retail-entertainment complex in the City of Industry, a rough noncity 20 miles east of downtown. Whether football fans will want to go someplace that is, essentially, a mall remains to be seen. But the EIR for the Los Angeles Football Stadium was certified two years ago, and last year Gov. Schwarzenegger unceremoniously threw out CEQA so that construction could proceed "as soon as an NFL team commits to move to Los Angeles."  Perhaps no one takes the Industry stadium very seriously, but I've been surprised that a project that contradicts every tenet of current urbanist thought has received relatively little criticism.  We've heard enough other ideas that, if built, would support an entire league in Los Angeles. One developer wanted to stick a stadium in a quarry in Irwindale, and others have wanted to bulldoze half the South Park neighborhood south of downtown L.A. Before he got preoccupied with his divorce, Dodger owner Frank McCourt toyed with the idea of building a friend for Dodger Stadium up in Chavez Ravine. Officials in Pasadena have talked about offering up the Rose Bowl, but that will happen over the dead, pearl-bedecked bodies of Pasadena's matrons.  Lost in this tour of L.A.'s less glamorous side is the Venue that Dare Not Speak Its Name: the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.  As far as it goes, the Coliseum is a planner's dream: It's centrally located, near the intersection of two immense freeways and nearly in walking distance of downtown. It's co-located with major civic institutions, including the Museum of Science and Industry and USC. It already has a built-in tenant, which means that it would get used twice as much as the average NFL stadium and the area is already equipped to handle traffic and crowds. If Los Angeles has a center, Exposition Park is probably as close as it gets. And it's historic how many other extant stadiums have hosted two Olympic Games? Zero.  Moreover, in the decade-and-a-half that Los Angeles has been pining for a new football team, the Coliseum has, in spite of itself, become transit-oriented. Within two years, the Expo light rail line will stop a short punt away.  It makes too much sense.  The Coliseum has just one little problem. Well, three. They're called the City of Los Angeles, the County of Los Angeles, and the State of California. The L os Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission , a joint powers authority, consists of every level of government short of the United Nations (not that the state probably wouldn't like to sell its 1/3 -- that's 30,000 seats at fire-sale prices!). It ensures that the stadium doesn't cost the public sector anything, and it quite notoriously ensures that not a lot happens there in Exposition Park.  What Santa Clara did right -- or, at least, better than some other cities -- is drive a hard bargain. Opponents of Measure J claimed that the 49ers stadium could cost the city several hundred billion dollars, but its supporters, and over 60 percent of voters, seem to agree that its use of redevelopment funds and new hotel taxes means that it won't be a ripoff for the city. That would be a change from the countless white elephants that cities have built so that pro teams could make millions off stadiums disingenuously billed as civic amenities.  In Los Angeles, public sentiment has pushed would-be team owners a step further, by essentially making it clear that they won't stand for any public subsidy of a new stadium. On the one hand, this frugality fits with the Coliseum Commission's mission. On the other hand, it means that in order to make use of the county's single best venue, a team would have to invest a ton of money into a stadium over which it would have little control.  I don't blame any potential owner for being scared stiff about negotiating with the Coliseum's owners; it would be the mother of all public-private partnerships. It makes digging a hole in Industry (or filling one in Irwindale) look simple by comparison. Yet again, bureaucratic complexity leads developers to favor greenfield development on the fringes over infill in the heart of the city.  Unfortunately, urban planners don't get much of a vote in this issue because the bureaucracy is just too thick. And they probably don't have $500 million or so to renovate the Coliseum. But backers of an NFL team in both the public and private sector would be well advised to give the Coliseum another look, because it embodies almost every principle of progressive planning that you could imagine. And if it was done right -- with the private sector picking up the tab for lavishness -- maybe the public sector could afford new homes for people who really need them.

Redevelopment agencies in California are often asked to carry a heavy load: fighting blight, promoting economic development, transforming brownfields, and creating communities. Now add to that list the modest task of combating global climate change � at the very moment when they have fewer funds than they have had in decades. Senate Bill 375 seeks to reduce California's greenhouse gas emissions through the coordination of land use and transportation planning. But the state's most recent $2 billion raid on redevelopment funds is merely the latest shift of funds away from redevelopment agencies, many of which were already coping with lean budgets. "Planning and redoing land uses is certainly an important piece of reaching 375," said Greg Devereaux, county administrative officer of San Bernardino. "But in many markets the type of development�smart growth development, denser development�needs assistance to make it work in the market." Devereaux was formerly Ontario's city manager and a member of the SB 375 Regional Targets Advisory Committee.            Much of that assistance would, under normal economic circumstances, likely come in the form of redevelopment monies � agencies that are almost always focused on exactly the kind of high-density, mixed-use, infill development required to meet SB 375's goals. "I think that redevelopment is probably going to be the most important tool to implementing SB 375," said Andy Agle, Santa Monica Director of Housing and Economic Development. "Their core mission is about compact infill development in already developed areas.  The agencies have already done so much to push that type of smart development." "Southern California�has some of the most severe pollution problems and the highest traffic congestion problems in the county," said Don Spivack, Deputy Chief of Operations and Policy at the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency, which has project areas surrounding existing and planned rail stations throughout the city. "Hand-in-hand with the expansion of the metro system is making communities walkable�that helps to reduce greenhouse gases." However, this year, in the wake of a $2.05 billion transfer of funds from the state's redevelopment agencies to the Supplemental Educational Augmentation Fund (SERAF), monies to support that kind of development have all but evaporated. "Redevelopment agencies will never have any ability to do long-term planning, make any investments where they can assure that the money is going to be there," said John Shirey, executive director of the California Redevelopment Association. The current funding take covers only this year and next year, and Assembly Speaker John Perez (D-Los Angeles) recently announced that he does not intend to seek further transfers. "I have no interest in going after redevelopment money as a way to balance our budget this year," Perez announced June 2. That news, however, is not as good as it might seem for redevelopment agencies' long-term prospects. Allowing redevelopment agencies to keep their tax increment in 2012 still does not solve a grave long-term problem for those agencies. Indeed, the very fact that the speaker refers to the choice of whether or not to take redevelopment funds points to an uncertainty that can devastate agencies' planning strategies and their ability to float bonds. "Who's going to bond against an uncertain source?" said Devereaux. Adds Lisa Fall, administrative officer of the Long Beach Redevelopment Agency: "When we were going through the rating process, SERAF was clearly on the minds of the rating agencies." Redevelopment Needed to Implement SB 375 This crisis comes at the very moment when SB 375 is scheduled to go into effect, thus setting up another conflict between the state's efforts to balance its budget � including similar transfers of transit funding � and the implementation of SB 375. Eighteen of the state's metropolitan planning organizations have been working on their Sustainable Communities Strategies, and draft targets of regional GHG emissions are due from the Air Resources Board at the end of this month. Final targets are to be released in September. Though many planners and redevelopment officials express enthusiasm for SB 375's goals and the types of development that the law promotes, they have widely lamented that it comes with virtually no funding assistance. SB 375 will offer a modest array of incentives but, officials say, they pale in comparison with the costs of assembling land, providing affordable housing, and providing infrastructure for infill developments. "(Compared to) the value of the incentives in 375�the cost of steel and parking decks in multifamily development far exceeds any regulatory relief that's provided," said Devereaux. So,without a steady stream of redevelopment funding, those targets may become ever more difficult to reach. "These sorts of TOD, especially ones that are in redevelopment areas, are extremely difficult (to develop) in the first place," added Pahule. "Some projects that we consider mission-critical are not able to move forward." Redevelopment assistance is crucial to SB 375 in large part because redevelopment agencies are already doing the sort of work that SB 375 calls for. They operate in established urban neighborhoods that, though economically depressed, can accommodate higher density development. Redevelopment funds and planning have been at least partially responsible for the residential boom in many of California's downtowns. Gary Gallegos, executive director of the San Diego Association of Governments and RTAC member, said that the creation of San Diego's downtown development area was a "key to the success" of the addition of over 10,000 housing units there. "Most redevelopment areas are in the center cities," said Gallegos. "In most of these cases there are very few instruments that one can use to sponsor the proper kind of change, whether from a planning point of view or a design/construction point of view." Moreover, many of the state's redevelopment project areas encompass mass-transit systems, which continue to expand in part because they have funding for capital projects that was set aside before the economic crisis or that was approved in part as an economic stimulus. In the absence of redevelopment funds, many existing and planned rail lines will deliver passengers to parking lots and busy streets rather than gleaming new transit oriented districts. TOD Projects Now On Hold This dismal possibility is most palpable in the northern part of Los Angeles County's San Gabriel Valley, which is scheduled to welcome the first phase of the Foothill Extension of the Gold Line light rail line by 2015 and the second phase by 2017. Cities including Azusa, Montclair, Monrovia, and the eight others along the 24-mile extension have each laid out plans to take advantage of the line. Now many of those plans are in jeopardy. At the very least, officials say that almost every project in the pipeline will be delayed�and so will the environmental benefits. Azusa's 1,250-unit Rosedale development has been put on indefinite hold. The Monrovia Redevelopment Agency salvaged its 55-acre Station Square mixed-use project, but only by refusing to pay its SERAF payment. In doing so, it faces the "death penalty" of not being allowed to initiate any new projects until the payment is made. "All of our redevelopment funds are tied up in buying properties and assembling land for�Station Square," said Monrovia City Manager Scott Ochoa. If fully built out, Station Square could have as many as 3,500 units within walking distance of the Gold Line. Meanwhile, in Sacramento, Chris Pahule, assistant director for community development at the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency, estimates that fully 70 percent of the stations along the region's two light rail lines are encompassed by redevelopment project areas and may not be developed without redevelopment funding assistance. In Santa Monica, redevelopment plans call for infrastructure improvements to enhance stations along the planned Expo Line, which will connect the coastal city with downtown Los Angeles. Agle said that many projects to add bike and pedestrian connections to Expo Line stations are already moving forward but that bigger projects may be stalled. The city's redevelopment agency owns the land where the line will terminate and intends to build a major multimodal facility there�if it has the money. Ballot Measure Would Prohibit Future Transfers The California Redevelopment Association is currently sponsoring a ballot measure that, if passed in November, would prevent further transfers. Supporters of the measure say that it is crucial for regaining long-term stability and for ensuring that SB 375 can hit its long-term targets. Some tense rhetoric underscores the conflict between the state and local agencies. "If we lose the war, really all bets are off," said Agle. "Goodbye to all of these really important projects and, I think, goodbye to having an important tool to implement SB 375." Many transit oriented developments would have to wait indefinitely and thus risking the possibility that SB 375's benchmark years � 2020 and 2035 � will come and go while sustainable plans get supplanted by developments that are less than environmentally friendly. Unlike transit agencies, which can add or reduce service relatively easily, redevelopment deals in more permanent projects.  "If that land gets built on with the wrong kind of development, it's not a matter of just waiting for the resources to be available," said Devereaux. "That land is out of play for 40-50 years." Even though redevelopment agencies are not explicitly charged with mitigating GHGs, redevelopment officials say that they are acutely aware of the role that they can play in implementing SB 375, if and when they secure their coffers. "As we update our policy documents, we've been paying close attention to make sure that we've been consistent with the goals of the legislation," said Sacramento's Pahule. From its inception, SB 375 was not designed to provide funding for implementation or to help cities comply with the plans set forth by the MPOs. The final report of the Regional Targets Advisory Committee notes that SB 375's success depends on a complex web of market- and government-driven forces. It also acknowledges the challenges of promoting smart growth without dedicated state funding. "The current state budget issues have diminished the ability of cities to address these deficiencies by reducing redevelopment funding," states the report, which was published even before the funding take was finalized. "The most recent example of conflicting state policies is the disconnect between an emissions reduction strategy that encourages infill in built out areas and the current state budget that redirects the best source of funding for such development: redevelopment dollars." As redevelopment agencies across the state ponder their fate and scramble to keep projects afloat, the SERAF's harm to not only redevelopment but also the state's much-touted environmental efforts has become an ironic symbol of the tension between the state and local governments. "Certainly the RTAC made that connection," said Devereaux. "The report was available prior to the latest raid and the latest budget. If they weren't aware, shame on them." Contacts: Andy Agle, Director of Housing and Economic Development, City of Santa Monica, 310-458-2251 Greg Devereaux, County Administrative Officer, County of San Bernardino, (909) 387-5418 Gary Gallegos, Executive Director, San Diego Association of Governments, (619) 699-1900 Lisa Fall, Administrative Officer, Long Beach Redevelopment Agency, (562) 570-6615 Scott Ochoa, City Manager, City of Monrovia, (626) 932-5550 Chris Pahule, Assistant Director of Community Development, Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency, (916) 444-9210 John Shirey, Executive Director, California Redevelopment Association, (916) 448-8760

A couple of weeks ago, Shelley Poticha, the Obama Administration's point person on smart growth, gave a high-profile talk to a big Urban Land Institute crowd in Los Angeles. Her message, plain and simple, was that it's time for what she called "alignment."  As everybody knows, the federal government spends tons of money on all kinds of things associated with planning and development – highways, public transit, housing of all kinds, air and water quality regulation, economic development projects and on and on and on.  But nobody at the federal level thinks about how the funneling of all that money actually affects communities – which neighborhoods are strengthened, which are not, what the spatial pattern of spending is, whether all these funds are working at cross-purposes. The same is almost always true in states – especially here in California, where the state is now basically requiring locals to pursue smart growth while at the same time taking away funding for both redevelopment and public transit. "We are actually talking about how we align and leverage and focus our monies into communities so that they are used more powerfully," Poticha told the ULI crowd. "So they are more effective and not just dribbled out into a bunch of stuff that doesn't add up to anything in particular." Surely, this is planner Nirvana. For decades, planners have been talking alignment in one form or another, especially here in California.  We all know, for example, that it would be tremendously powerful to line up all state spending in pursuit of particular growth goals – spending transportation money only on projects that support an efficient regional growth strategy, for example – but it's been almost impossible to actually implement this. In Maryland, former Gov. Parris Glendening, the father of smart growth, proved that such alignment can be powerful – though fleeting if not accompanied by permanent institutional change. In California, SB 375 takes a baby step toward aligning regional land use strategies by mandating Regional Transportation Plans. The same is true on the federal level – and the Obama Administration's alignment strategy is the very conscious realization of an alignment policy approach long advocated by Bruce Katz at the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program and other smart growth advocates in Washington. But maybe it's worth asking one dangerous question: When you get right down to it, does anybody really want alignment? It's an amusing old axiom to say that the only thing people fear more than a federal government in disarray is a federal government that knows what it's doing.  Logical as alignment may be, it's also scary – threatening everybody's status quo, even the pro-smart growth local officials who ought to benefit from it. And so it might not last long. There are several reasons why alignment has never been politically popular in Sacramento or Washington.  One is the natural inclination of lawmakers to focus on narrow issues one at a time. Even on the overarching issue of climate change and the pathbreaking SB 375, the Legislature has fallen into this trap. AB 32 calls for greenhouse gas emissions reduction across the board. Meanwhile, SB 375 charges the Air Resources Board with overseeing regional land use plans that reduce emissions from cars and light trucks.  And if you're a community that wants to combine your emissions reduction efforts – energy, building, land use – too bad. SB 375 only deals with emissions from cars and light trucks. So if you go 100 percent solar, for instance, but still don't knock a single inch off your VMT, you're saving the world according to AB 32 but you're still in violation of SB 375.  A second is a tendency by even the most innovative bureaucracies to silo themselves and their work. The longer you work in any bureaucracy, the more narrowly you tend to define your job.  The third – perhaps the most powerful – impediment to alignment is that the constituencies and stakeholders that surround an issue tend to take a narrow view as well. Highway folks lobby for highways. Transit folks lobby for transit. Housing folks lobby for money for housing. Air quality folks lobby for stronger air quality regulations. Stormwater folks lobby for stronger stormwater regulations. Sometimes, the environmental advocates understand that money needs to back up regulation. So they might stretch themselves to lobby for housing or transportation money to be spent a certain way in order to help meet environmental goals. But in the end, their desire to care about this is limited. Environmentalists are environmentalists and regulators are regulators.  The bottom line is that they want regulations complied with, and they don't much care who foots the bill. And lobbyists who focus narrowly on state and federal pots of money have even less motivation to think broadly. If you're a lobbyist for highway contractors – or for public transit contractors, for that matter – you're obviously not very interested in cross-cutting efforts that reduce the need for travel. You want more concrete poured, not less. If you're a lobbyist for housing – even affordable housing – you tend to think about money for housing. It takes a very broad-minded person to think about a poor or middle-income person's entire household budget and how public policy can reduce the need for travel as a way to increase money to pay the rent. Or, for that matter, whether people are willing to live in smaller places, which cost less money, if they are closer to work. Then there's local government – which is usually where the alignment takes place. State and federal bureaucrats and their pots of money may be very compartmentalized, but typically local officials get creative. They sort through all those pots of money searching for money they can use to do what they want to do anyway. Want a new park but only have money for stormwater management? Build a big, grassy, water-permeable surface (i.e. a park). The local agenda is not always "aligned," but alignment is more likely to occur at the local level, since local officials deal with real communities and real neighborhoods where they – and their constituents – can see how the pieces fit together. However, as you can imagine, local officials (and remember that I am one myself) kind of like the idea that they are the ones doing the aligning. It's one thing to say that you are cherry-picking state and federal funds to put something together. It's quite another to say that you can't put a project together unless you comply with the state and federal government's idea of how things get aligned, rather than your own. The lesson here is probably to provide some flexibility within the alignment – and then institutionalize the alignment as much as possible before you leave office. Gov. Glendening's reforms in Maryland didn't stick because they weren't completely institutionalized and his successor didn't buy into them. So alignment may or may not work as a long-term planning and development strategy. But we in California would be well advised to figure out what Obama and Shelley Poticha mean by alignment and pitch our projects toward that notion over the next couple of years.