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If you think browsing court records in public policy lawsuits is a sensible use of time -- and since you're reading this publication, you may -- here's a warning that, if you don't work in California or federal government, the best time to read court documents in Sacramento Superior Court is before July 1. On that date, unless local court officials relent, online case records will become expensively paywalled. The fee plan, which is still tentative for now (comments are due June 6) has been criticized locally as a setback for public access, and as a special hardship for security companies and others conducting background checks or interested in criminal cases. The Sacramento Bee 's editorial board called it "unfortunate but not outrageous." But the fee plan's effects extend far beyond the local concerns of one county. Sacramento County Superior Court judges regularly hear matters of statewide importance, including disputes that both affect and shed light on the deep levers of California power relations. In the area of land use, such topics include water rights, state authority over major public works, taxation, and the post-redevelopment wind-down. Concerned Californians throughout the state will now have to pay to research such matters unless they qualify for exemption as participants in the case researched. Name searches will cost a dollar each, or somewhat less at bulk rates for frequent searchers. PDF document downloads will cost a dollar for each of the first five pages and 40 cents for each page thereafter, up to a maximum of $40 per document. Because of a fee exemption for California and federal governmental staff, private individuals and organizations will face a lopsided obligation to pay for research on cases where they are not direct participants. The fee plan's major way of accommodating researchers who can't afford document fees will be to let them visit the courthouse in person and view records at kiosks. That may be practical if the case is, say, a Sacramento eviction and the researcher is a local Sacramento tenant researching a landlord's course of conduct. It becomes less practical if the researcher is a civic activist living in Bakersfield and the case is, say, the document-heavy four-year litigation on the validity of the Monterey Plus Project that followed from the Monterey Amendment water rights agreement on water deliveries to Southern California. (This is the litigation that recently produced a decision invalidating the EIR for current management of the Kern Water Bank, discussed at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3456.) An advantage of the new system is that people with accounts can subscribe to notifications of filings in cases whether or not they are participants. Also, a researcher who knows a case number (or a criminal defendant's XREF number) may call up the case docket for free. It's just name searches and documents that cost. In news interviews and their own announcement memo, local court officials have attributed the paywalling to budget cuts and to the need to pay for the sophisticated new data portal that will be managing the paywalling process. The new portal won an award in November. The new portal, which went live in early April, is already requiring users to establish a free account to search for cases by party name or to download documents. Although searches and PDF downloads are currently free, they already must be obtained through an account that allows for "Purchases" of name searches and, for PDFs, a "Document Cart" and "Checkout" process. These processes take the user through the hair-raising step of racking up fees that would apply if the order were after July 1. In a major long-running litigation docket like the Monterey/Kern dispute, the cost for PDFs of the complex administrative and scientific record can get into thousands of dollars. Those thousands are currently hypothetical but as of July 1 they will be real enough. Below is a starting list of Sacramento case numbers, and links to lists of Sacramento cases, on widely followed issues with statewide effect such as water disputes, high-speed rail and post-redevelopment disputes. Readers are invited to share more case numbers in comments at the foot of this article or on CP&DR's Twitter account at http://twitter.com/Cal_Plan. Links: - Court notice describing the fee plan and explaining where to send comments by June 6: http://bit.ly/1oHb0xj - November 2013 press release on the court's award for its new access system: http://bit.ly/1ji7hBc - Court site's main explanation on the new fee system: https://services.saccourt.ca.gov/PublicCaseAccess/ - Public Case Access account creation page: https://services.saccourt.ca.gov/PublicCaseAccess/Account/CreateAccountType - Sacramento Bee on the paywalling plans: http://bit.ly/1jQJXzd - Sacramento News & Review on hardships for security companies: http://bit.ly/1nyfQ2s - Sacramento Bee on implications for criminal courts research: http://bit.ly/1sCUu3C - Sacramento Bee editorial -- "unfortunate but not outrageous": http://bit.ly/1jwY2SM Starting list of case numbers and listings of cases: Sacramento Superior Court Complex Case Calendar: http://www.saccourt.ca.gov/civil/complex-case-calendar.aspx Dispute between San Diego County and some cities in the county over post-redevelopment tax revenues: City of Chula Vista v. Sandoval , Case No. 34-2014-80001723 Dispute, currently on appeal, over the validity of California's cap-and-trade program: California Chamber of Commerce v. California Air Resources Board , Case No. 34-2012-80001313 and 34-2012-80001464 Monterey Plus and Kern Water Bank litigation described above, in two companion cases: Central Delta Water Agency, et al. v. CA Dept. of Water Resources , Case No. 34-2010-80000561 Rosedale-Rio Bravo Water Storage District v. CA Dept. of Water Resources , Case No. 34-2010-80000703 Challenges to the validity of High Speed Rail bond financing, now on appeal with 3d Appellate District (see news coverage at http://cbsloc.al/1jihRIn): John Tos vs. California High Speed Rail Authority , Case No. 34-2011-00113919 High Speed Rail Authority v. All Persons Interested... , Case No. 34-2013-00140689 Challenges to the Merced-Fresno scection of the High-Speed Rail project in litigation that is now mainly concluded: Case Nos. 34-2012-80001165, 34-2012-80001166 and  34-2012-80001168 The key opening post-Redevelopment case, League of CA Cities v Matosantos , decided in December 2013 (Many documents at https://www.cacities.org/AB1484lawsuit): Case No. 34-2012-80001275 The key post-Redevelopment clawback case, recently also appealed, of C ity of Brentwood v. CA Dept. of Finance , discussed at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3478: Case No. 34-2013-80001568. (Direct link to online docket:  http://bit.ly/1kdSwmQ.) Post-Redevelopment successor agencies' disputes with the state Department of Finance, all in Sacramento county courts, summarized with case numbers at the Gibson Dunn site: http://bit.ly/1mMsrP9 February 18 summary of post-Redevelopment court cases by the League of California Cities site, naming Sacramento County Superior Court judges and departments, and case numbers minus the uniform Sacramento County prefix of "34-": http://bit.ly/1jNWNdy. Verizon's property tax dispute with 38 California counties: Verizon California Inc. v. California State Board of Equalization, et al. , Case No. 34-2014-00157245 Readers, what other cases of statewide importance would you add?

Opponents of San Francisco's tech bus shuttle program filed May 1 for court review of the county Supervisors' decision to exempt it from CEQA review. The double-decker buses, which carry city residents to jobs on South Bay office campuses, pay the city a dollar every time a bus makes a stop. Opponents say the buses disrupt public transit but, more important, that they cause displacement by driving up housing prices along the bus routes. While the buses do reduce car trips to the campuses, they have been viewed as both a mitigation and a condition to mitigate. See our prior discussion at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3466. Respondents named in the suit alongside San Francisco municipal entities include Apple, Genentech, Google and multiple bus companies. Petitioners include SEIU Local 1021, Elizabeth Alexander, housing activist Sara Shortt, and a nonprofit, the Coalition for Fair Legal and Environmental Transit. See http://bit.ly/1kRgc0s . The San Francisco Superior Court case number is CPF 14 513627. Court documents can be downloaded via case number search at http://sfsuperiorcourt.org/online-services . Pomona can sue business for 1920s-50s fertilizer imports The Ninth Circuit will let the City of Pomona return to trial court with testimony by an expert witness on the likely origins of perchlorate molecules in the city's water supply. The court's opinion said Dr. Neil Sturchio of the University of Illinois at Chicago had offered testimony, based on "stable isotope analysis," that -- in the court's paraphrase -- the "dominant source of perchlorate in the Pomona groundwater is from the Atacama Desert in Chile" and had "the same distinctive isotopic composition" as perchlorate in naturally formed  sodium nitrate fertilizer that the defendant, SQM North America, "imported into southern California from Chile... between 1927 and the 1950s." In an evidentiary hearing under Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. , 509 U.S. 579 (1993), the district court had excluded Dr. Sturchio's testimony as unorthodox, taking the heart out of the city's case. The Ninth Circuit, however, found Dr. Sturchio's methods were sufficiently reliable, scientifically acceptable, and capable of being re-tested by others, to make his testimony at least worth hearing. The appellate ruling further agreed with the district court that the case should not be thrown out based on either the statute of limitations or SQM North America's argument that Pomona's claim was barred by the "economic loss rule" for being insufficiently direct. The Ninth Circuit found Pomona's suit could go forward because the city had a direct enough property claim on its groundwater rights, and a strong enough argument that recent discovery of the problem made the timing of its suit acceptable. The case is City of Pomona v. SQM North America Corp. , at http://1.usa.gov/PYHyqf. Water highlights Just a few links on California's topic of the year: EBMUD made its first use of an emergency water supply from the Sacramento River: http://bit.ly/SvnDRO Officials were near issuing curtailment orders to property owners to stop diverting water per established junior water rights: http://bit.ly/SdVC16 The state Department of Water Resources issued a major report showing low levels of groundwater where measured and gaps in monitoring statewide. See http://bit.ly/R8DgNS. The Sacramento Bee 's Matt Wiser unpacked the results at http://bit.ly/1ue4zG4 . CNN reported on Orange County's use of recycled water for drinking at http://cnn.it/1nOsPNa Some statewide ballot measure highlights Here's an unsystematic look at the lineup of local June 3 ballot measures: South Lake Tahoe's Measure P, if approved, would end a kiosk-based parking fee program in busy tourist areas. See http://www.cityofslt.us/index.aspx?NID=743 and Among measures in Los Angeles County, the city of Monterey Park will vote on Measure A to amend its general plan and zoning map, and to approve a specific plan to build a development of single-family homes. The city of Signal Hill will Measure U, to require a 2/3 vote for all "taxes, assessments and fees". See http://lavote.net/VOTER_ELECTIONS/Upcoming_Elections.cfm#06032014 and http://www.cityofsignalhill.org/index.aspx?NID=378. Measure U is supported by a group called Signal Hill Community First (http://www.signalhillfirst.org/) The Long Beach Press Telegram reports supporters lost a challenge to the way the city presented the measure on the ballot: http://bit.ly/1nkMTnX San Francisco's Measure B, which would require a vote for all future height limit variances on the waterfront, lost some of its point when the Warriors basketball team management up their contested effort to build an arena on Piers 30-32 near the Golden Gate Bridge, and instead picked an arena site farther south in Mission Bay near Third and 16th Streets. Considerable future development plans are still at stake, however, notably for the old Union Iron Works property at Pier 70. For Measure B see http://www.sfgov2.org/index.aspx?page=4279 and our February discussion at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3443. On the Warriors see http://bit.ly/Q9kLbg . On Pier 70, which for years was a backwater of warehouses, studios and a huge car impound barn, see developer Forest City's plans at http://pier70sf.com/ and artist Wendy MacNaughton's impressionistic history of the place at http://pier70community.com/. San Diego's Measures B and C, on the Barrio Logan Community Plan, are discussed at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3473. The Monterey Peninsula Water Management District's Measure O, which was the subject of a court battle over ballot arguments and descriptions, is discussed at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3467. On the Los Gatos "Albright Way Initiative" to allow construction of a headquarters for Netflix, see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3443 on the dispute over signature gathering that preceded the measure's placement on the ballot. Marin county's Measure B would create permanent structures for a farmers' market at Frank Lloyd Wright's historic Marin Civic Center building. The Marin IJ supports the measure and recounts some history of the prior referendum that led to strict voter-approval requirements for changes around the Marin Civic Center building: http://www.marinij.com/editorial/ci_25687438/editorial-marin-farmers-market-needs-permanent-home. See also http://www.smartvoter.org/2014/06/03/ca/mrn/meas/B/ and a snarkier appraisal of the plan (with some cinematic history of the complex) at http://www.northbaybiz.com/Columnists/Only_in_Marin/Organically_Grown.php. Also in Marin County, a coding error that placed the Measure A library parcel tax on ballots outside the library district was going to cost the county $100,000: http://www.marinij.com/marinnews/ci_25702340/coding-error-marin-s-june-primary-ballot-will Meanwhile, Del Norte County voters will have a chance this June to express dissatisfaction with southward parts of California in a highly traditional way: a referendum on secession to form the 51st state of Jefferson. For a current view on the measure, see http://www.sacbee.com/2014/04/26/6354931/viewpoints-siskiyous-political.html. For some history on the sometimes genuinely edgy Jefferson movement, which dates from 1941, see this account, written on the occasion of a separate Jefferson secession vote by the Supervisors of neighboring Siskiyou County in fall 2013: http://www.redding.com/news/2013/sep/03/live-tweets-siskiyou-county-supervisors-discuss-se/

As the California Legislature moves into spring horse-trading season, here's a review in links of some state-level legislation we're following that's relevant to land use, housing and the environment. In addition to the links provided here, the "Bill Information" section at http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/ has status updates and texts for all bills and helpful legislative analyses for most. AB 2493 (Bloom) - Post-Redevelopment funds retention This bill by Assemblymember Bloom, D-Santa Monica, would return some $750 million to successor agencies to finish redevelopment projects. By the end of April it had passed two Assembly policy committees and was headed into Assembly Appropriations. For Bloom's comments in the local Santa Monica Lookout see http://bit.ly/1jwkF9e. The League of California Cities, which supports it, has a tracking page and support letter at http://bit.ly/Q8J612. SB 1129 (Steinberg) - Post-Redevelopment SB 1129, a post-redevelopment cleanup bill with League of Cities support, would give cities' successor agencies more authority in several areas, notably to enter contracts. It was heard May 5 in Senate Appropriations and placed on the suspense file. for an endorsement statement by the City of Glendale see http://bit.ly/SvBvvz. The League's comments on this and a crop of other March-introduced bills on the Redevelopment wind-down are at http://bit.ly/1igufww. AB 2280 (Alejo) - Re-create some elements of Redevelopment Per the League of California Cities, which supports it, the Alejo bill (Discussed at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3480) has reached the Assembly floor, was read a second time May 1 and goes to a third reading May 8: http://bit.ly/OUOtRg SB 33 (Wolk) - Remove voter approval for post-Redevelopment IFDs SB 33, which would remove the requirement of a popular vote from infrastructure finance districts, was among the post-Redevelopment bills that remained formally dormant but still informally under consideration, as discussed at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3480. Although it has officially gone nowhere since September 2013, SB 33 is on the "Hot and Priority Bills" list of the League of California Cities at http://www.cacities.org/Top/News/News-Articles/2014/April/2014-League-Hot-and-Priority-Bill-List. AB 1404 (Leno) - San Francisco Redevelopment housing backlog The San Francisco-specific SB 1404, originated by the city government, passed the State Senate Committee on Governance and Finance, its second committee, per Legiscan's entry at http://legiscan.com/CA/rollcall/SB1404/id/361266 .The measure would both require and allow the successor to the city's redevelopment agency to replace over 5000 units of affordable housing that were destroyed during 1955-1975 "urban renewal". See http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3480. AB 2292 (Bonta) - Freight Rail, redevelopment sites AB 2292, per the Assembly Local Government committee's analysis, would "allow an infrastructure financing district in the Oakland Army Base, Howard Terminal or Coliseum City in the City of Oakland to finance public capital facilities or projects that include freight rail." All three sites are subjects of major redevelopment planning; the latter two are competing sites for pro sports stadiums. (See http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3476.) Per the author's statement in the analysis, "we need to include freight rail as an eligible expense for IFDs" to improve the city's transportation capacity and emissions reduction through rail use. AB 2549 (Ridley-Thomas) - Milpitas post-redevelopment The full Assembly has passed AB 2549, to create a local commission to address Milpitas' especially deep post-Redevelopment funding losses. It now goes to the State Senate. SB 391 (DeSaulnier) - Affordable housing via recording fees SB 391, which would raise funds for affordable housing with real estate recording fees, remains formally on the Assembly suspense file, having passed the Senate last year. SB 1132 (Mitchell, Leno) - Fracking restrictions This anti-fracking bill (see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3475) passed the State Senate Environmental Quality Committee 5-2 on April 30 per a statement (at http://bit.ly/RiQt7c) by State Sen. Holly Mitchell, the measure's cosponsor. The Los Angeles Democrat has expressed concern for her district as close to "the largest urban oil field in the country" in Inglewood. AB 2417 (Nazarian) - Recycled water AB 2417, on "purple pipe" distribution of recycled water, passed the Assembly Natural Resources Committee April 28. It would create an exemption from CEQA for new or existing recycled water pipelines of less than eight miles. The Associaton of California Water Agencies (ACWA), which backs the measure, said it goes next to the Appropriations Committee. See http://www.acwa.com/news/state-legislation/acwa-sponsored-ab-2417-clears-first-committee. AB 1739 (Dickinson) - Groundwater management Another ACWA-backed bill, AB 1739, passed the Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee April 30 and moved on to Assembly Appropriations. Per the water committee's legislative analysis it would require "sustainable groundwater management in all groundwater subbasins determined by the Department of Water Resources... to be at medium to high risk of significant economic, social and environmental impacts due to an unsustainable and chronic pattern of groundwater extractions exceeding the ability of the surface water supplies to replenish the subbasin." See http://www.acwa.com/news/groundwater/assembly-committee-approves-groundwater-legislation SB 1077 (DeSaulnier) - Tax per vehicle miles traveled Another item, this one "supported in concept" by the League, is SB 1077, which calls for a tax based on vehicle miles traveled. The Southern California Association of Governments has been talking it up (see http://bit.ly/1nkxKTG) but the measure was questioned last fall on privacy grounds (see http://lat.ms/1jwnuHj). the measure is through its State Senate policy committees and is set for hearing May 12 in Senate Appropriations. SB 1439 (Leno) - Ellis Act restrictions State Sen. Mark Leno's Ellis Act restriction measure, SB 1439 (discussed previously at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3477) now has a heavy weight of tech industry endorsers behind it (see http://beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=12611). The measure goes to hearing May 6 in the State Senate Judiciary Committee. Assemblymember Tom Ammiano's AB 2405, which would have limited the Ellis Act more strongly and provided tenant litigants with other procedural protections, failed to clear the Assembly Judiciary Committee on April 29. SB 1451 (Hill & Roth) - CEQA procedural restrictions A widely shared commentary by the Miller Starr Regalia law firm at http://bit.ly/1q9qPkX is arguing for SB 1451, which would limit the ways petitioners could place allegations of CEQA violations on the record. Principally, it would exclude allegations from court review if the alleged violations were known, or could have been known with reasonable diligence, during the public comment period, but were brought to the agency's attention at another time. The legislative summary and the Miller Starr essay describe the measure as designed to stop use of "document dumping" as a tactic to delay a decision or preserve a record. The bill has passed the State Senate Environmental Quality Committee and goes to hearing May 6 in Judiciary. SB 69 (Roth) and AB 1521 (Fox) - Restore Vehicle License Fee revenue These two somewhat different measures, both supported by the League (and discussed previously at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3464), would restore features of the 2004-2005 budget deal's "VLF-property tax swap" and transfer back vehicle license fee income to local jurisdictions, undoing the work of 2011's SB 89, which repurposed the vehicle license money to help with "realignment" additions to the functions of county carceral systems. (Compare http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/about_cdcr/docs/realignment-fact-sheet.pdf.) The two current bills would especially help recently created municipalities such as Jurupa Valley. Per the most recent AB 1521 legislative analysis, "SB 89 had the effect of eliminating over  $15 million in the Motor Vehicle License Fee (MVLFA) revenues in 2011-12 from four  newly incorporated cities (Menifee, Eastvale, Wildomar, and Jurupa Valley)." SB 69 passed the Senate last year, but in a different form focused on education funding. It was amended to substantially its current form in September 2013, then sat with formally unchanged status until a couple of weeks ago. It was amended in the Assembly Rules Committee on April 21. Meanwhile, AB 1521 passed the Assembly Local Government committee April 30. The legislative analysis showed no opposition on file. AB 2175 (Daly & Ting) - Renters' rebates This bill would grant renter's rebates to tenants at heftier rates than the current renter's credit, with payments ranging from $250 to $347.50 on a sliding scale for annual incomes at and below $42,588. Introduced in February, the measure passed the Assembly Revenue and Taxation Committee on Apriil 28 and now moves on to Appropriations. AB 1513 (Fox) - Residential property: possession by declaration The California Association of Realtors was sponsoring a measure, also supported by the California Police Chiefs Association, described as meant to assist landlords, security companies and police in removing squatters from vacant properties. It would allow a landlord to declare ownership of a property, register it as vacant, and challenge allegedly unauthorized occupants to obtain or present proof of a right to remain within 48 hours. Some tenant activists had begun campaigns against the measure because they argued it could create an extrajudicial eviction process, giving landlords an end run around the more procedurally complex and time-consuming procedures of the standard California "unlawful detainer" eviction. (See e.g. http://bit.ly/RjmiN5 and http://killthebillcoalition.com/about/) The Assembly Judiciary analysis of April 28 set out the dispute carefully. Opponents it listed included the statewide Tenants Together group and the Western Center on Law and Poverty. The measure has passed the Assembly Rules and Judiciary Committees and has been referred to Appropriations. And further -- The League of Cities' "Hot Bills" list was stating generally conservative positions on public records measures and on regulatory measures for bills involving massage businesses and marijuana dispensaries Here's just a little from ACWA on the water bond bills, which are a whole other subject: http://www.acwa.com/news/water-supply-challenges/three-water-bond-bills-advance-assembly-sb-1250-put-over-until-may-13

The Fitch Ratings service on May 1 announced it was ready to take a sunnier view of tax allocation bonds (TABs) administered by successor agencies in California's redevelopment dissolution. The changed view could affect both the sale prices of existing bonds and the interest rates available to successor agencies when they refinance their existing debt with refunding bonds. The announcement said, "Fitch will now consider California TAB liens to be closed and surplus housing revenues to be available for non-housing TAB debt service, as applicable. These changes likely will result in a moderate number of California TAB upgrades." It said that in the first days after California dissolved its redevelopment agencies, the service "considered the legislation's negative effects on credit quality, but excluded potentially positive effects." But on review, analysts had found two things to like about the successor agencies' wind-down role. First, if the successor agency's 20% housing set-aside of the tax increment is more than enough to make currently due payments on housing-related bond debts or other "enforceable obligations", then the overflow can now be used to pay off non-housing bonds. Second, because successor agencies are barred from increasing their bond debt, no additional liens are being created to compete for funds, hence "All TAB liens have been effectively closed." Susan Bloch, a partner with Burke, Williams and Sorensen who works on redevelopment wind-down, housing, and public finance issues, explained that since the existing housing set-aside funds would be either already redistributed or already encumbered, the new Fitch view mainly addressed the continuing influx of tax-increment funds. Referring to the semi-annual Recognized Obligation Payments Schedule (ROPS) process, she said, "Now all the money is in one pot and it gets allocated to the successor agencies twice a year to pay for enforceable obligations including the debt service." Property tax specialist Marty Coren of HdL Coren and Cone said housing construction would not be affected because the 20% housing requirement was already lifted by the dissolution of Redevelopment. For Tom Hart of the California Redevelopment Association, the new policy was "bittersweet because if the legislation... would've been more defining, Fitch wouldn't have had to downgrade in the first place and a lot of these issues about the bonding would've not materialized." Noting the large number of lawsuits over post-redevelopment financial disputes, he said the dissolution legislation "really put successor agencies in a bad position, and then you have the Dept of Finance making administrative decisions that could've been perceived as outside the legislation, and that's why there were so many lawsuits." At least one effect of the new Fitch policy is already visible: on May 2, citing the new policy among other factors, Fitch upgraded a subordinate bond issue by Oakley Redevelopment Agency from 'BB' to 'BB+' and changed its outlook from 'Negative' to 'Stable', while confirming existing ratings and outlooks for some of the city's higher-rated Redevelopment TABs. The authors of the Fitch report, analysts Scott Monroe and Yueping Liu, noted in an interview that the major benefit of savings on refunding bonds would flow to the overlapping taxing entities, which receive tax increment funds not needed for the successor agencies' approved "enforceable obligations". Since the only purpose of a successor agency is to wind down and close out redevelopment functions, they said it would be hard to define what benefit a successor agency would receive. Liu said the change probably wouldn't speed up the wind-down process unless it generated significant savings on a bond issue's interest obligations, or unless the debt was structured to be paid off faster. On the other hand, Monroe and Liu said issuers that had lower ratings might see a benefit in reduced insurance costs. Coren pointed to a separate new interpretation that could also affect ability to repay bonds. A DOF letter, dated April 2, suggested that the end of Redevelopment had also brought an end to a limitation that applies in project areas created before the AB 1290 reforms took effect in 1994. In those older project areas, bonds have been subject to limits on the total amounts of tax increment income that may be collected from project areas. According to the April 2 letter, the DOF "advises county auditor-controllers to not apply tax increment caps to bar payment of Finance-approved enforceable obligations" if those caps had not been reached as of Redevelopment's dissolution. DOF's interpretation, if correct, removes one possible barrier to paying off bonds for older project areas. However, Coren wrote that "The release of the Dept. of Finance letter triggered a discussion of the issue by the Technical Committee. The bond counsel members of the committee expressed reluctance to rely on the Finance letter as it has no force in law." Some question remained whether a successor agency might still need to set aside funds in escrow to be sure of meeting payments as of scheduled deadlines. The Fitch analysts said they rated refunding bonds issued by the Morgan Hill successor agency in November. They mentioned a privately placed issuance and another in progress that they could not discuss by name, and noted that Standard & Poor's has rated several more. Several large municipal successor agencies have now issued refunding bonds, including a pooled effort by Los Angeles County to coordinate several city-level successor agencies' reissues. Links: BusinessWire press release on Fitch TAB ratings: http://dlvr.it/5XxSbc BusinessWire announcement on Oakley: http://dlvr.it/5YRjBC On the LA County bond refunding program: http://ceo.lacounty.gov/RDD/122413%20Program%20Update.pdf ; http://ceo.lacounty.gov/rdd/Bond%20Refunding%20Program.pdf The DOF April 2 letter is attached.

The California Legislature's post-Redevelopment landscape is in a state of crumble and tentative growth. Like sprouts on a redwood stump, bills have crowded the space left by the 2011 abolition of local redevelopment districts and their tax-increment financing structures. The sprouts have begun variously to strengthen, clump together, or falter, but with little coherence: some of the most vigorous stems are tending in different, possibly incompatible directions. It's uncertain which if any will become new main trunks. The whole effort proceeds in a state of nervous awareness that Governor Brown has used veto power to shape post-redevelopment legislation to his liking -- mostly, to date, in the direction of Infrastructure Finance Districts (IFDs). Picture him surveying the new growth day by day, pruning shears in hand. In the current political moment, before the best-nourished saplings shoulder out the rest or the pruning shears descend, what's happening on the broad stump of Redevelopment is a quiet, nerdy debate about the proper functions of government and the reasons why redevelopment districts were created in the first place. It's an opportunity to reconsider what approaches to municipal structures and services are equitable and useful -- one that seems surprisingly little discussed among political activists or the larger public. The following seems to be the picture, based on reviews of the public record and conversations with Capitol insiders, most of whom asked not to be identified. Two dominant tendencies appear among the bills: one is to follow signals the Governor gave in January and February that he would look favorably on efforts to expand use of IFDs. The other main approach, which has many supporters other than the Governor, would re-create Redevelopment-like agencies under other names in diminished, restricted forms. The two approaches are in some tension but may not be mutually exclusive. Among the minor tendencies, SB 1260 uniquely seeks to hedge bets by replacing Redevelopment's old 20% affordable housing set-aside, plus a bit more. It would impose a 25% affordable housing set-aside requirement on either Redevelopment-type or IFD tax-increment districts. Then there are a handful of bills proposing special laws for local circumstances, including in Oakland, Milpitas and San Francisco. And there are breakaway efforts to meet traditional Redevelopment goals by other tax or debt mechanisms entirely. Two anxious bass notes could be heard under the experts' rapid-fire technical summaries. One was fear that none of the proposed approaches would really gather sufficient tax increment funds fast enough to fund needed (or wanted) projects. Another was fear that, since IFDs do not require any showing of disadvantage in a project area, the IFD approach might not include any requirement for poverty relief to replace Redevelopment's long-misused "blight" requirement. Infrastructure Structures As CP&DR has described previously (see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3429, http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3433, and Bill Fulton's February Insight column in CP&DR's PDF issue), Governor Brown indicated in January that he was willing to see the previously little-used IFD device expanded as tax increment financing -- but subject to limits: an exclusion from affecting school budgets, a "finding of completion" and wrap-up of all repayment disputes involving the sponsoring local government's former redevelopment agency, and a requirement that each IFD be approved by a 55% vote in the proposed district. On February 18, to the surprise and relief of some, Brown signed Speaker-elect Toni Atkins' AB 471, which allowed IFDs to overlap with former redevelopment districts. However, he did not budge on the requirement to first pay off all ex-Redevelopment obligations to the state's satisfaction. The many local governments that are in litigation with the Department of Finance over ex-Redevelopment money may thus have to compromise their existing claims in order to use the new funding sources. The Governor's abbreviated January thoughts on the subject appear at pp. 133-135 in his budget summary at http://bit.ly/1rzfckp (3.4MB PDF). His trailer bill expanding those thoughts, dated February 21, is on the Department of Finance site via http://bit.ly/1hCRcFN. Through a reference to existing code, the trailer bill says the requirement to approve an IFD would be a 55% vote that would vary according to the district's nature: if more than 12 registered voters lived there, they would decide on the ordinary basis of one person, one vote. If there were fewer resident registered voters, then the vote would be taken among the landowners, on a basis of one vote per acre or fraction thereof. Criticisms of these restrictions, and more fundamentally of the IFD model as envisioned to date, appeared in March from the Legislative Analyst's office at http://bit.ly/1mSq4YJ and in notes by the staff of the state Senate's fourth budget subcommittee at http://bit.ly/1itqyFp. SB 33 by Sen. Lois Wolk, D-Davis, would revoke the requirement of a vote for an IFD. However, Wolk told CP&DR in January (at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3433) that last year she held back SB 33 from the final Assembly vote that would have sent it to the Governor because his office "gave clear signals... that he wasn't read to sign it." As of late April there was no indication of any signal received to the contrary. But SB 33 was being mentioned as part of the picture. Dan Carigg, legislative director for the League of California Cities, said his organization supported it. He was not alone in suggesting the vote requirement made IFDs difficult to use in populated areas. On the other hand, the appearance of the trailer bill and the signing of AB 471 have been taken as indicators that Brown is willing to have more of a "conversation" about IFDs this spring than previously. Bills to expand IFDs in specific ways include AB 229 (Perez), for military base reuse and for other environmental and public-works projects in addition to standard IFD purposes; AB 243 (Dickinson), which would carry Brown's 55% vote requirement, somewhat expand standard IFD purposes, and also grant a 25% housing set-aside; and SB 628 (Beall), which would expand IFDs for transit and transit-oriented development, with a 25% housing set-aside. Some of these are formally inactive but all have been mentioned as part of the continuing discussion. Redevelopment Redux The measures that could re-create redevelopment districts are at some risk of a veto, but they were discussed as of late April as live bills that could possibly be brought forward for passage. The main such bills include SB 1, by Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, a bill emphasizing transit-oriented "smart growth" that has been on inactive status since September, and AB 2280, introduced this February by Assemblymember Luis Alejo, D-Salinas. Likely anticipating the Governor's objections, both SB1 and AB 2280, like the IFD bills, would require a finding of completion from the Department of Finance before the contemplated type of new district could be formed. SB 1 as of last September's legislative analysis had support from several local governments and associations of local governments, labor groups, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Western Center on Law and Poverty. Its primary emphasis is less on relief of traditional "blight" than on transportation, environmental and health problems to be remedied by meeting transit and sustainability goals. There is, however, a 25% affordable housing requirement. Carigg emphasized the League's support for AB 2280. (The League was opposed to Redevelopment's dissolution in the first place.) He did not consider it contradictory to support a redevelopment-type measure alongside IFD-related legislation, but called on the Governor to allow "a variety of tools in the toolbox". It might be possible, he suggested, for one city to create "an Alejo district" for a poorer area of town, "an SB1" for a transit-oriented project on a rail line, and "on the edge of town there's some new project or something" suitable for an IFD. As of an early-April legislative analysis, AB 2280 had support from several public employees' associations, the California Building Industries Association, the Western Center, California Rural Legal Assistance and the California Coalition for Rural Housing, in addition to the League. As of that date -- a little over two months past introduction -- it was a smaller list of endorsers than SB 1. Carigg highlighted provisions in AB 2280 that were meant as safeguards against aspects of redevelopment agencies that became notorious in the past. He said the League had worked extensively with Alejo on "accountability" protections because "it doesn't do anybody any good" to restore the "tool" of redevelopment-type financing only to have "some issue in the newspaper or something" that would lead to legislative re-restriction. The current AB 2280, which includes Speaker Toni Atkins among its coauthors, would create "Community Revitalization and Investment Authorities" on a restricted Redevelopment-type template. The simplest restriction would exclude school funding from the tax increment arrangements automatically. In response to redevelopment districts' histories of finding "blight" in unlikely places, AB 2280 would define "blight" partly by local statistics tending to indicate disadvantage, though partly also by the presence of two conditions that seem open to definitional hair-splitting: "deteriorated or inadequate infrastructure" or "deteriorated commercial or residential structures". In partial response to old and deep urban grievances over "urban renewal" removals of communities of color, AB 2280 would provide for two of five members of an authority's governing board to be local residents. Additionally it would grant local residents and landowners an opportunity every ten years to revoke the authority itself, if they could navigate a difficult double procedure resembling labor union certification: in order to qualify for an election to revoke the authority, opponents would first have to organize a "majority protest", which would be achieved "if protests have been filed representing over 50 percent of the combined number of property owners and residents, at least 18 years of age or older, in the area." A proposal not exactly in this category, and not itself having much of a chance, but drawing some related heat from property-rights activists, is the Rutan & Tucker "Jobs and Education Development Initiative". This is a statewide initiative measure that, if qualified for the ballot and approved, would restore redevelopment agencies wholesale, but with a lower housing set-aside. The Legislative Analyst's Office analysis is at http://www.lao.ca.gov/ballot/2013/130773.aspx. Opponents and skeptics have derided it as the "Return of the JEDI". (See e.g. http://ij.org/california-redevelopment) Hedging Housing SB 1260, by Sen. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, would apply a 25% affordable housing set-aside to either a Redevelopment-type or an IFD-type district, or to both side by side if need be. Like some of the piecemeal IFD bills mentioned above, it addresses the fear for affordable housing that follows from the lack of poverty-relief provisions in IFD law. A "Fact Sheet" from the Senator's office said it "harmonizes the housing provisions of redevelopment law (as proposed to be amended by SB 1 (Steinberg)) with those of Infrastructure Financing District law." Further, it sets requirements within the affordable housing requirement for targeting to moderate-, low-, and very-low-income residents. As of an April 2 legislative analysis the measure had formal support from California Rural Legal Assistance and the Western Center. The Santa Monica Mirror reported the Santa Monica City Council endorsed SB 1260 in March. http://bit.ly/1h2QZfr Carigg of the League of California Cities criticized the IFD end of the bill. He said an affordable housing set-aside could make a pro-IFD ballot measure more difficult to pass where affordable housing is unpopular, and if an IFD is intended for a small discrete project such a sewer line update, the housing set-aside could create enough extra complication to stop the mechanism from being used at all. City-Specific Bills A few city-specific bills are stating geography-based claims amid the political morass. San Francisco's city government is the driving force behind Sen. Mark Leno's SB 1404, which, per a "fact sheet" from Leno's office, would "provide a remedy for the destruction of low- and moderate-income housing units in San Francisco during urban renewal (1955-1975) that were never replaced." The bill is based on an argument that, owing in part to a bill by then-State Sen. John Burton in 2000, San Francisco's redevelopment agency effectively owes the city 5,947 units of unreplaced housing for Urban Renewal's wholesale destruction of densely populated housing, which would have been largely in the Western Addition and in the Yerba Buena region South of Market. The bill would allow tax-increment financing for such housing to continue to flow from six defined redevelopment project areas. Supporters listed in addition to city government figures are local and regional housing organizations. The Senate Local Government Committee's published legislative analysis is mildly skeptical. Another bill based on a claim of special crisis is AB 2549, brought by Assemblymember Mark Ridley-Thomas on behalf of Milpitas, which is embroiled in especially high-stakes litigation with Santa Clara County and the state over large, allegedly improper transfers of assets from the redevelopment agency to the city government that created it. An early version of the bill puts the loss at $39 million in local tax revenues with more money sought in the lawsuit. As of April 24 the measure was amended to refer generically to "recent losses of local funding" and "a lack of economic development tools." The meat of the bill hasn't changed, such as it is: it calls for creation of a commission of local dignitaries and area representatives to figure out what can be done about it, and especially how to continue encouraging "economic activity" in "the McCarthy Ranch area of the city near the Newby Island landfill". Assemblymember Rob Bonta, D-Oakland, has introduced a little-known economic development measure, AB 2292, that does not claim any crisis, but would provide for additional projects at three hotly debated Oakland locations: the former Oakland Army Base, Howard Terminal and Coliseum City. The first of these locations is the site of the much-debated Oakland Global development. The latter two locations are candidates for a proposed pro sports stadium complex. (See http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3476; http://oaklandglobal.com/index.php/project/history-of-site; http://thealamedan.org/news/development-report-meanwhile-oakland .) Assemblymember Bonta's office referred inquiries on the bill to a staffer who had not responded as of this writing. New Territory Some legislative plans for purposes that might once have used redevelopment money are moving into other kinds of political territory entirely. SB 391, by DeSaulnier, would fund housing with a statewide $75 recording fee for real estate documents -- see http://lat.ms/1eYa86W. The more technically ambitious AB 2729, by Assemblymember Jose Medina, D-Riverside, is titled "Infrastructure Financing" but refers to an entirely separate funding scheme. The bill, which is still in a discussion phase, would expand use of the California Infrastructure and Economic Development Bank, or "I-Bank", to finance more infrastructure surrounding shipping in all its forms, including airports. What Next? It's unclear when a break may appear in the current state of uncertainty about which post-Redevelopment bills are possible. The May budget revisions, with their news about the April tax season, could create an occasion for the Governor to announce a changed position, but nothing at that stage is certain. Which leaves the Legislature tending their respective bits of unevenly verdant regrowth, reaching neighborly accommodations as to gardening in some matters, but mainly waiting for the man with the shears to go to work.

How Will Demography Drive California's Destiny From Now On? Demography drives destiny, the old saying goes. And in the past few months, we've gotten a couple of pieces of important demographic news that are likely to help shape the future of California – if we can understand what they mean. The first one is pretty historic: Early in 2014 – that is, along around now – the number of Latinos in California will surpass the number of whites. (Each group has about 40% of the population.) This trend is likely to keep going for the foreseeable future – the latest estimate is that by mid-century, there will be 10 million more Latinos than whites in the state. And there's a ripple effect coming along behind it. For example: Just a few days ago, the University of California reported that, for the first time, the system had admitted more in-state Latinos than in-state whites. (http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?id=9508925) This is an enormously important symbolic step, given the fact that Latinos have been running so far behind whites in educational attainment – and, as a result, prosperity – than whites. The second one is a little less surprising but, nevertheless, historic: It's going to take a lot longer to get to 50 million Californians than we previously thought: 35 more years. The Department of Finance's Demographics Research Unit now believes that we won't hit 50 million until 2049. (http://bit.ly/1katfZ4) The bottom line: We're going to see a lot slower population growth than the state previously predicted. So, a California that's predominantly Latino and that's growing much more slowly than anybody previously expected. What does that add up to? The slowing population growth could potentially make it more difficult for the state to provide the public infrastructure necessary to provide a high quality of life for its residents in the future – in large part because we have built up such an infrastructure deficit since the passage of Proposition 13 more than 35 years ago. Population growth has often driven new development, which in turn has often financed new infrastructure, so that things seem to be getting better. But as the chart below shows, DOF's population growth projection over the next 40 years – which adds up to about 300,000 people per year – actually looks pretty realistic. I've often made the point that since 1940 – that's almost three-quarters of a century – California has averaged an increase of about 500,000 people per year. But if you break it down by decade, what you'll see is that this average was spiked by a couple of boom periods – the great middle-class population boom after World War II and the great Latino baby boom of the 1980s and ‘90s. The 300,000 figure represents the historic average, not counting the booms. But what's interesting is that it's the boom times – not the normal times – that stimulate extraordinary infrastructure investment and, often, the tax increases required to fund them. The postwar boom led to the construction of now-famous Pat Brown triad of the freeways, the state water project, and a vast increase in higher education facilities. The ‘80s and ‘90s boom led to a vast increase in rail transit construction on K-12 schools. The bust periods, by contrast, led to retrenching. California's population growth hit net-zero in the early ‘70s – just about the only time in postwar history that happened – and only a few years later Proposition 13 came along, virtually halting infrastructure construction for a decade or more. So if DOF is right – and there are no population booms ahead for California – then we probably won't see a big increase in public investment that will catch us up, right? The historic trend would seem to suggest that this is true. But that brings us to the political role of California's growing Latino population. As my friend Dowell Myers at the University of Southern California (https://priceschool.usc.edu/dowell-myers/) always likes to say, the important point about the ethnic change is not how many Latinos there will be in California's future, but what it means to be a Latino in California in the future. We don't know for sure what it will mean to be a Latino in California in the future. But here's what we know about what it means now: Latinos have different attitudes about government services and public investment than whites do. Polling consistently finds that Latinos are more supportive of higher taxes for government investment – especially jobs, schools, and housing – and more supportive of unions. In other words, Latinos in California today are, essentially, New Deal Democrats: They want the government to help them with upward mobility. That could lead to support for increased investment in infrastructure and other public services even if population grows slowly and steadily, as DOF projects. Of course, all this could change. There could be an unexpected spike in population. The world economy could change such that increased public investment doesn't lead to more prosperity and more upward mobility. Or the big bubble of Latinos moving through the chronological cycle now could change their political attitudes as they change. That, after all, is what happened to the whites – the same folks who voted for Pat Brown's expansion voted for Proposition 13 and against practically everything in the 1980s. That kind of change is probably a long way off. With Latinos focused on upward mobility, California may pull itself out of the current infrastructure deficit – and set itself up for a few more decades of prosperity.

As expected, the city of Brentwood has appealed a major April 2 Sacramento County Superior Court ruling that upheld a "clawback" of former redevelopment agency funds by the state Department of Finance (DOF). It's uncertain how much tax money statewide could be affected by the decision; state officials have said $3 billion or more. Judge Allen Sumner's decision in City of Brentwood v. California Department of Finance said the DOF properly told Brentwood to return $19.6 million in tax money that the city received from its own former redevelopment agency (RDA). Using tax increment funds collected under former redevelopment rules, the RDA made, and kept, an agreement that it would pay the city to work on a park, a community center, a "streetscape" project, and other public projects. DOF said $15.5 million of that money should be returned and redistributed among other local taxing entities such as schools, and another $4.1 million in bond proceeds should be returned to the RDA's successor agency. Among the scores of lawsuits over ex-redevelopment funds, the Brentwood case is significant because it answers a widely asked question: whether an agreement between a local government and its own RDA was an "enforceable obligation" if the agreement was signed, and the money paid to the local government, after January 1, 2011 – the date that marked the beginning of the end for California's redevelopment agencies. If an RDA owes a legitimate "enforceable obligation", then its successor agency may properly pay off the obligation; if an obligation is not enforceable, clawback follows. A DOF spokesman told the LA Times the decision affected about $3 billion at about 150 former RDAs. http://lat.ms/1fh1BvZ. A supplemental brief that DOF filed in January put an even higher value of $3.4 billion on transfers in "approximately 150 localities... from RDAs to their creator entities" between the start of 2011 and January 31, 2012, the day before redevelopment was abolished in California. But J. Leah Castella, who represented the city of Brentwood, questioned whether the total of genuinely similar transfers could be so high. "I have a lot of these cases," she said. "I feel like all of my cases are ones where the clawback was invalid but there are dozens of these cases around the state and I just don't know enough about the facts in each of those cases." Sumner's especially ambivalent decision almost completely reversed his tentative ruling. "There are parts of it that are similar " said Castella. But "it is really a 180." She said, "I have seen courts reverse tentatives before. I have not seen courts reverse tentatives that were this complex." The opinion reads like a three-act drama: after setting out the basic conflicts, it descends into a tangled wood of procedural history and precedent. Just as all seems murky if not lost, the court turns for guidance to the ancients. Led by the words of John Marshall and Oliver Wendell Holmes, it adopts ringing phrases on constitutionally mandated deference to the Legislature. It arrives at a decision in the state's favor but leaves plenty for an appellate court to chew on. Castella said the court did make clear from the start that the initial tentative ruling analysis was no more than tentative. "I think the court thought about this really hard," she said. While she saw a lot of reasons for the decision, she said, "at the end of the day they want the appellate court to decide the issue." In the opinion, Sumner recounted Redevelopment's dissolution by AB 1X 26 in 2011, the landmark Matosantos case (53 Cal.4th 231) upholding its legality, and the Legislature's followup passage of the AB 1484 dissolution measure in mid-2012. He found AB 1484 made the previously legal RDA-to-city type of agreement unenforceable, retroactively to January 1, 2011. Sumner found the Legislature both intended the clawback to be retroactive and had the power to make it so. As "subordinate political entities of the state," he wrote, the city or its former RDA could not object based on their respective constitutional contract rights. The tough part seemed to be convincing himself that the clawback was not barred by Proposition 22, the 2010 measure limiting transfers from RDAs "to or for the benefit of the State" or to other "jurisdictions". He reached that conclusion after first accepting several of the city's arguments: he noted that the transfers required by redevelopment dissolution would be solidly for the state government's benefit in that, for example, the largest share of the transfers would go to local school districts' budgets, allowing the state to pay correspondingly less. Further, he rejected several DOF arguments as unpersuasive because overly technical, and agreed there was a "fundamental difference" between funds still held by an RDA as of dissolution, and funds the RDA had already spent. After granting so many points to the city, in part on close readings of the Matosantos ruling, Sumner got past Prop. 22 by backing up to look at the big picture: the Legislature's power to legislate, and the long-established heavy presumption that it does so constitutionally. This is where the quotations from Holmes and Marshall came in on judicial restraint, framing the choice to declare a legislative act unconstitutional as a court's "gravest and most delicate duty". Braced with this new perspective, he found Matosantos "interpreted Proposition 22 more narrowly than the City argues," in that Matosantos found Prop 22's purpose was to stop legislative transfers from RDAs to county educational revenue augmentation funds (ERAFs) – and not to stop all reallocations of RDA funds. He wrote, "The clawback is not like the ERAF shift which Proposition 22 was adopted to end" in that it neither demanded a percentage of the tax increment, nor restricted transfers to schools. Further, "the clawback is directed only at the successor agency – not the RDA." Finally, Sumner found the Legislature had power to declare the agreements between the city and RDA unenforceable. The DOF order, which took the form of a "Due Diligence Review" (DDR) letter, included other instructions as well, notably an attempt to rescind a transfer of nine land parcels to the city for $10 each. The court found the land transfer issue was not ripe for review. Castella said it would come up when the city prepared its long-range property management plan, which would not be until after a resolution to the current litigation resulted in a finding of completion on the repayments. The Notice of Appeal was filed April 23, 2014. The case now goes to the Third District Court of Appeal. The April 2 decision text is on CP&DR's site at http://www.cp-dr.com/sites/default/files/20140402%20jt%20after%20hearing.pdf. The Sacramento Superior Court case number is 34-2013-80001568-CU-WM-GDS. The online docket is currently available free at http://bit.ly/1kdSwmQ. The pleadings are currently available for free download with free registration but as of July 1 a new system of steep records fees will apply. The DDR letter underlying the litigation is at http://bit.ly/1fc7drN The Gibson Dunn firm's extensive April 16 summary of statewide post-redevelopment litigation is at http://bit.ly/1mMsrP9 A dated but even more detailed summary, as of February 18, is on the League of California Cities site via http://bit.ly/1jNWNdy.

What's coming down in Sacramento this month is more politics than precipitation: bills at all levels of realism, tough reexaminations of old water deals, horsetrading and litigation on big projects, and calls from Gov. Brown to revise the "Rainy Day Fund" measure on this November's ballot in case of more dry years. The LA Times ' George Skelton called it "fighting season": http://lat.ms/QAaTb2 . Here's just a little of the mid-spring wrangle, in links: If anything in the current fuss is cheering municipal planners, it's a compromise proposal from Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg to put more proceeds of cap-and-trade auctions of pollution rights into affordable housing and public transit. The plan itself first went to the public as a detailed "strategy" paper rather than drafted legislation. It called for compliance with Steinberg's own sustainability measure, SB 375, and with other existing requirements on cap-and-trade proceeds allocation. The plan's "framework" called for up to $610 million in dollar-denominated yearly spending for watersheds, water projects, waste projects, a "climate dividend" on transportation fuels, electric vehicles and a small "Green Bank" of $10 million to "assist the financing of clean energy and other environmentally sustainable projects." Any additional cap-and-trade fees beyond that amount -- and the additional could be $3 billion to $5 billion -- would become "permanent sources" of funds allocated by percentage: Out of a 40% allocation to fund "affordable housing and sustainable communities," at least half would fund housing and the rest of that category's funds would go to planning and "smart growth" development. Another 30% would go to "transit construction and operations." Sen. Steinberg did reconcile himself to Governor Brown's insistence that the high-speed rail project be in on the funds: it would get 20%, permanently. The last 10% would go to highways and roads. Steinberg's own introduction statement on the new proposal is at http://bit.ly/1nkFMyg The "strategy" text is at http://bit.ly/1i45l3y . An endorsement and favorable description from the League of California Cities is at http://bit.ly/RGvifK The California Association of Councils of Government (CALCOG) likewise cheered the proposal. Its statement cast the new proposal as an extension of Sen. Steinberg's SB 375: http://www.calcog.org/DocumentCenter/View/291 CALCOG's general-purpose Cap & Trade monitoring page is at http://www.calcog.org/index.aspx?nid=96 StreetsblogLA and its readers mostly approve. The Streetsblog writeup figures that if the total cap-and-trade proceeds available were $5 billion, the sum for "affordable housing and sustainable communities" would be $1.756 billion: http://bit.ly/QpCuf8 Our own notes on cap-and-trade news as of late March discussed Sen. Steinberg's carbon tax proposal gambit, summarized Gov. Brown's initial proposal for spending the proceeds, and recounted complaints from the Legislative Analyst's Office that some of Brown's proposed spending -- including for high-speed rail -- had tenuous links to the stated goal of reducing greenhouse gases. (Subscription): http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3458 Morris Brown, an anti-tax critic of high-speed rail, recalled Sen. Steinberg's criticisms of cap-and-trade as a revenue approach, including its unpredictability, when the Senator was promoting his carbon tax alternative earlier this year. He does seem to have dropped those complaints: http://bit.ly/1ly0Gu0 The Fresno Bee noted some of the same: http://bit.ly/1gOlp52 In other cap-and-trade developments: The April 24 agenda of the Air Resources Board includes an offset protocol for methane capture at coal mines, although California is not itself a large producer of coal: http://www.arb.ca.gov/regact/2013/capandtrade13/capandtrade13.htm Ecosystem Marketplace has context on the mine methane issue at http://bit.ly/1i9xPtD . The Yurok Tribe created the first forestry offset protocol: the tribe will sell the value of the CO2 sequestered by trees within its project: http://bit.ly/1htBEJY Among housing bills, SB 391 revived a perennial attempt to fund affordable housing with $75 real estate transfer recording fees. LA Times coverage notes the dissolution of redevelopment agencies ended about $1 billion formerly collected for below-market housing, and that proceeds from a voter-aproved below-market housing bond are "nearly gone": http://lat.ms/1eYa86W For comparison, some other subsidized-housing costs: HUD's fiscal 2012 grants to California under the McKinney-Vento homelessness program totaled just over $259 million: http://bit.ly/1tujcEH  Average costs per unit of California's first tax-credit housing allocation round in 2011 worked out to $286,664: http://www.treasurer.ca.gov/ctcac/containment/presentation.pdf Under federal and state low-income housing tax credit programs from 1987 through 2013, California built or rehabbed 292,599 subsidized housing units with some $23 billion in federal tax credits and about $1.45 billion in state tax credits: http://www.treasurer.ca.gov/ctcac/2013/annualreport/projects.pdf Surprisingly high-powered tech industry sponsors lined up behind a limited version of legislation restricting landlords' use of the Ellis Act to empty rented housing by removing it from the rental market. The measure that has picked up heavy-hitting endorsements is SB 1439 (at http://bit.ly/Pp54wc), sponsored by State Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco. Leno's bill would limit the law to San Francisco only. It would not allow the Ellis Act to be suspended outright, but would allow the city's Supervisors to block use of the Ellis Act by an owner who has held a property less than five years, or at a building whose purchaser previously used the Ellis Act at another building. SB 1439 got its break when some of San Francisco's top political forces lined up behind it: Mayor Ed Lee, Salesforce.com, and venture capital investor Ron Conway. The measure passed the Senate's Transportation and Housing Committee April 1. Endorsers listed in the Senate bill's April 3 analysis include not only tenant, community and housing groups, but also the city government itself and many Internet companies. Apartment owners' and real estate organizations opposed the measure -- and, as the San Francisco Business Times noted, some tech companies stayed out of the discussion.  Attention the Leno version is overshadowing the more sweeping AB 2405, introduced in February by Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco. (See http://bit.ly/1kV2uKQ.) That bill would allow any county with a housing shortage to suspend evictions under the Ellis Act "until the county or city and county meets its portion of the regional housing need." It would also place confidentiality restrictions on court records of Ellis eviction cases. Initially it would have treated Ellises as civil cases on a slower calendar than regular evictions but it lost that provision in passing the Assembly Judiciary Committee. More from the SF Business Times : http://bit.ly/1iEsqcP From the San Francisco Chronicle : http://bit.ly/1i4OLAJ Prof. Hina Shah of Golden Gate University's law school, arguing what's needed is much deeper public intervention in San Francisco's housing market: http://bit.ly/RHkkXv In a unanimous en banc opinion, the Ninth Circuit backed the National Resources Defense Council's challenge to 41 long-term contract renewals for Delta irrigation water, holding that the Bureau of Reclamation should first have sought expert biological opinion on what could be done to protect the Delta smelt. The court found that when the contracts were under review in 2004 and 2005, the Bureau did consult the Fish and Wildlife Service, but not "adequately", and that the Plaintiffs' goal of forcing renegotiation of the contracts "remains available." The SF Chron 's Bob Egelko has more at http://bit.ly/1eYcByh The case is NRDC v. Jewell , decision text at http://1.usa.gov/1kz1Hiz The Associated Press reports the decision "won't affect water flows because protections for the smelt were kept in place during the lawsuit" but it does affect water planning prospectively. http://bit.ly/1fim5PU In negotiations separate from the Ninth Circuit ruling, the Dept. of Water Resources was near agreement with the State Water Contractors on provisions that may extend water contracts to 2085. The essential Maven's Notebook water blog has details at http://bit.ly/1ibhmz9 State and federal water officials announced a drought operations plan April 8. Multiple revisions and comments following from the announcement are posted at: http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/waterrights/water_issues/programs/drought/tucp.shtml . The state's own public drought page suggested it would frugally provide just enough for all: http://ca.gov/drought/top-story-4.html A more technical description, also by supporters, is available from the Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA) at http://bit.ly/1myha51 Grist 's John Upton argued it would "screw the environment" by retaining water in reservoirs at the expense of river flows: http://bit.ly/1hjMqwB The Sacramento Bee 's Matt Weiser also reported an earful of criticisms on the plan: http://bit.ly/1k2oZMV At first there was talk of blocking three water channels with extra barriers to hold back more flow, as the Bee reported April 9: http://bit.ly/1gOAPGq The March storms led to that plan's cancellation April 18, as Department of Water Resources officials announced they would raise water deliveries to their contractors from zero to 5%: http://bit.ly/1kOqGhU Gov. Brown called a special session, set to start in late April, on a "Rainy Day Fund" that, if the Legislature approves it by a supermajority, would appear on the November ballot. The term "Rainy Day" may sound odd now, in mid-drought, but it was applied four years ago to a mandatory state savings plan, ACA 4, that has only now made it to the ballot. Governor Brown wants to revise it, hence the proposal:  http://gov.ca.gov/news.php?id=18481 Skelton's "Fighting Season" column said the fund could make a helpful running mate for Gov. Brown as he seeks reelection in November. The Bee explains the proposed revisions to the existing "rainy day" measure already on the statewide November 2014 ballot: ACA 4, enacted in 2010 but held back from elections until this year: http://bit.ly/1eK46Hd ; http://bit.ly/1nDX3jl ACA 4 can be viewed via the Secretary of State's site at http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/ballot-measures/qualified-ballot-measures.htm The link to the ACA 4 text offered on the Sec'y of State's site is compressed at http://bit.ly/1jAH7vl The Delta tunnel project, AKA the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP), continued to bump into obstacles and, thus far, to dig its way through them. Friends of the River said the BDCP wasn't posting negative comments about its proposals on its official Web site. So the organization set out to post them all on its own site: http://t.co/b7B2r3OWu6 Maven's Notebook has been keeping up on the BDCP's workshops and conference calls to discuss plans and impacts one area at a time: http://mavensnotebook.com/tag/bay-delta-conservation-plan/ Assemblymember Jim Frazier took his own AB 1671 off calendar for the time being, according to ACWA, an opponent of the bill. It would require the state legislature to give specific approval for every federal water conveyance, including those for the BDCP project: http://bit.ly/1jATojq ; The bill is at http://bit.ly/1nlobWR Attorneys from the Best Best & Krieger firm posted a detailed analysis of the March Property Reserve ruling (see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3448), which required the BDCP to obtain orders for eminent-domain takings before it could send in staff to do precondemnation studies on potential tunnel sites. The BBK analysis -- at http://bit.ly/1hjYXAf -- suggested California Supreme Court review was likely, but if not overturned it could take up time and money from government entities and property owners alike by putting them all through the more complex eminent domain actions instead of the simpler "entry" procedure that the state had set out to use in the Property Reserve case. Quite a lot of California newspapers editorially announced in the past month that it was time to get serious about managing groundwater. A lot of people had been making sure they heard about it. Amid this buzz -- both politically generated and drought-driven -- Sen. Fran Pavley, D-Agoura Hills, now brings SB 1168 and other bills before her state Natural Resources and Water Committee April 22. KQED has details at http://bit.ly/1k3AKmh . The agenda is at http://sntr.senate.ca.gov/agenda The Governor's Office of Planning and Research has held a series of workshops, most recently April 16, on groundwater management. Much of the material is available at http://www.opr.ca.gov/s_groundwater.php . The California Water Action Plan, posted in January, has a substantial groundwater section that calls for state intervention where a basin "is at risk of permanent damage" due to overdraft: http://resources.ca.gov/california_water_action_plan/ The Chico Enterprise-Record suggests this effort has begun to filter out to local communities and officials as a warning to tend to local basins locally rather than risk state intervention. http://bit.ly/1hk6cId Maven's Notebook had near-daily coverage from early March through April 11 of legislative hearings on groundwater, including the Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife committee, jointly with the budget committee that considers resources and transportation; and the State Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Water: http://mavensnotebook.com/tag/groundwater/ The ACWA is publicizing recommendations for more careful "management and accountability" of groundwater basins: http://www.acwa.com/category/issues/groundwater Its recommendations are at http://bit.ly/QC6nJ9 .ACWA leaders placed this op-ed in the Modesto Bee: http://bit.ly/PpIlQR Some of the ACWA recommendations sound a lot like the March 11 Legislative Analyst's Office report that we wrote up at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3448 -- for example, at a very basic level, the call to recognize that groundwater basins' inputs, outputs and contents can and should be measured, and that surface water and groundwater are physically related to each other. A Stanford report is out from the Water in the West project: "Before the Well Runs Dry: Improving the Linkage Between Groundwater and Land Use Planning." See http://waterinthewest.stanford.edu/groundwater_landuse . Case studies cover the Paso Robles, Orcutt/Santa Maria, Butte County and Kings Basin groundwater basins. The Somach environmental litigation firm (item via Maven) suggested a Tulare County court ruling "may be a sign of things to come" in that it told a a private company, Sandridge Partners, LP, http://www.somachlaw.com/alerts.php?id=275, to stop pumping and moving water out of the local Tule subbasin for irrigation pending a trial on whether it has the right to do so. California's high-speed rail plan, like the water tunnel project, bumped along through practical obstacles while the Legislature argued about its funding. AP reported the State Public Works Board gave the California High-Speed Rail Authority power to take 14 properties near Fresno by eminent domain, out of 144 it had identified that it might need on the way to Bakersfield. http://bit.ly/1k2HpNj The rail authority issued its final EIR for the same Fresno-Bakersfield stretch, per the Fresno Bee , which says the EIR takes up 20,000 pages: http://bit.ly/1h5vvSJ The Fresno Bee reported construction may start in May, likely near Madera: http://bit.ly/PpP511 Persons with the courage to read the EIR are referred to http://www.hsr.ca.gov/Programs/Environmental_Planning/final_fresno_bakersfield.html Bakersfield officials already want a part of the EIR redone that they say would cut through a park and the landscaped Kern River Parkway: http://bit.ly/1qfIB2y The San Mateo Daily Journal reported the rail authority's latest business plan predicts 5% lower revenue, based on fewer trips than originally projected: http://bit.ly/1kVVsFF Some plan documents are among the April 10 agenda materials for the board at http://hsr.ca.gov/Board/monthly_brdmtg.html. In case you missed it, two ballot initiative petitions are still circulating against the high-speed rail measure. The texts of the measures, linked from the Secretary of State's site, are at http://bit.ly/1jlOABX and http://bit.ly/1a6fUMc The SF Business Times and E&E News reported the man promoting one of them has an idea to organize travel by vacuum-powered tubes instead: http://bit.ly/1pnYdEa ; http://www.eenews.net/stories/1059993099/print A March poll by the Public Policy Institute of California said 53% of adult Californians favored the high-speed rail project, which is stronger support than some previous results. The data did not address the California public's sentiments on travel by tube. http://ppic.org/main/pressrelease.asp?i=1483 via Sacramento Business Journal at http://bit.ly/1iF1VnD).

Stadium proposal is battling stadium proposal in Oakland, a mid-sized city with limited resources that wants to keep its name on big-time sports marquees. So far, professional sports team owners appear to be tilting toward a proposal to build a new football stadium, and possibly a new venue for baseball, on the current Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum site. At the same time, Mayor Jean Quan and some powerful downtown Oakland business leaders are pushing a competing project in a site closer to downtown, on the Howard Terminal; and yet Quan is hedging her bets by supporting the Coliseum-site option as well, just to make sure the city ends up with new stadiums to keep sports teams in the East Bay city. Any predictions, however, may be premature until August, when developers of the two competing projects are slated to file proposals with the city. One question for Oakland sports fans is whether the city or local developers can convince some restless local sports franchises that Oakland remains a good place to play ball and make big-league money. Subsidies in Oakland, a city with a broad swath of poverty and limited resources, are already a thorny issue among some City Councilmembers and Alameda County Supervisors, especially in view of the poor deal that the city made to bring the Raiders back more than a decade ago. As a venue for Major League Baseball and the National Football League, Oakland is a glass half full. The city has not shared equally in the rising tides of high-tech wealth that have lifted many boats in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. On the plus side are the availability of land, the support of elected officials and a central location in the Bay Area, in terms of both freeways and mass transit, especially in relation to neighboring San Francisco. In the minus column, however, is a public image of Oakland, fair or not, as an unglamorous place with some patchy, even dangerous, neighborhoods. Team owners are eyeing the suburbs. Despite the recent trend of building stadiums in downtown areas, Oakland team owners are aware that their fan base is made up largely of well-heeled suburbanites, who can afford season tickets. The San Francisco 49ers moved this year from the unpopular Candlestick Park in the tough Bayview Hunters Point district of the city nearly 40 miles east to affluent Santa Clara. In a similar bid to court the bulging wallets of Silicon Valley, the Oakland A's last year attempted to move the franchise to San Jose last year. Despite enthusiasm from local officials, Major League Baseball nixed the San Jose deal. (The proposed venue is less than six miles from the 49ers stadium in Santa Clara, and the 49ers want to control the South Bay baseball market. But the City of San Jose is still pursuing an antitrust appeal on the matter before the Ninth Circuit.)     One thing that's certain is that the status quo is a no-go. Both the city's baseball team, the Oakland A's, and its football club, the Raiders, are dissatisfied with the aging Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum. Football aside, the Coliseum qualifies as one of  the oldest stadiums in baseball, a sport that places a high value on newness. Neither team has adjusted well to the hybrid facility, which attempts to accommodate both sports by awkwardly reconfiguring the field for each. Baseball and football are not the only pro sports franchises itching to leave the city of Jack London behind. Basketball no longer seems a possibility in Oakland: On April 21, Oakland's basketball team, the Warriors, announced they were buying a 12-acre site in the Mission Bay area, near the UC San Francisco medical school campus. The purchase, which won praise from coastline-preservation activists including former mayor Art Agnos, is less controversial, and a far easier candidate for government approvals, than the previously intended site on the Piers 30-32 just south of the Bay Bridge.  The forced marriage of baseball and football at the Coliseum has bred discord between the sports and made headaches for Coliseum management, a joint effort of Oakland and Alameda County. The squeakiest wheel among team owners is arguably Lew Wolff of the A's, who angered many Oakland fans last year by attempting to move the team south to San Jose. For the inconvenience of staying in the Coliseum, Wolff wants a consolation prize in the form of a giant new scoreboard. He wants the scoreboard so much, in fact, that the A's owner has proposed relocating the team "temporarily" to another Northern California stadium until the Coliseum buys and installs the new hardware -- an idea described as "flying-unicorn nuts" by Mercury News sportswriter Mark Purdy. When the stadium balked at paying for the signage, Wolff said he could pay the bill if it were amortized over five years and offered to sign a lease extension for that duration. Surprisingly, Coliseum officials said no. The reason was concern about alienating the Raiders. Last year, team owner Mark Davis, the Dutch Boy-coiffed son of the legendarily flinty Al Davis, signed a one-year lease extension at the Coliseum. The younger Davis, who appears no less decisive than his dad in the bid to elevate the Raiders brand, apparently believed that the old Coliseum was soon to be demolished (or that the Raiders were soon to be playing in another city). Accordingly, the Coliseum may not have five years to wait for Wolff to pay off his new scoreboard. New development at the Coliseum site may solve problems for both teams, however. The program calls for two new stadiums, along with plentiful housing and retail on 800 acres. Colony Capital, a real estate financier, assumed control of the floundering project after the previous developer, Forest City, dropped out of the deal, presumably for lack of financing. To date no deal has been publicly announced, although Colony Capital, a real estate finance firm, is lobbying strongly for the project. Colony must assemble a development team and come up with a preliminary design before approaching the city for a building permit. According to the Mayor's office, however, the deal needs another $500 million to $600 million, and even in the high-rolling world of commercial real estate, that sum is considered a lot of money.  Coliseum City is just a recent example of the growing trend among developers to use sports stadiums as "anchors" for large-scale development. Recent stadium developments nationally, such as the proposed Atlanta Braves stadium in suburban Cobb County, Ga., routinely include plans for retail, commercial and/or housing development, on a large scale. An optimistic way to view this stadium-plus style of development is that sports facilities attract investment and credibility to the immediate area, and cities can use stadium projects as a way to pursue large-scale urban reinvestment schemes. A skeptical view is that developers and team owners impose high costs of stadium development on the public sector while using the generous development rights attached to the project to enrich themselves with multi-family and retail projects. Oakland's rival to Coliseum City is Howard Terminal, a waterfront site controlled by the Port of Oakland. On March 1, port officials removed an obstacle to stadium development by reviewing, and turning down, three alternate uses for the waterfront site. As a precondition for conveying the 170-acre site to stadium builders, the port had to demonstrate that commercial development would not displace any important maritime use. With that formality out of the way, the port appears open to proposal from a group of Oakland businessmen calling for multiple stadiums at Howard Terminal. The waterfront site was endorsed by Mayor Jean Quan, who has also spoken glowingly of the Coliseum project. Quan's endorsement may be a mixed blessing: Quan is an unpopular mayor with limited political capital. Further, Quan embarrassed herself, and potentially the financiers behind the Coliseum project, by incorrectly stating that the crown prince of Dubai was a partner in the deal.  (Her spokesperson later backtracked on the claim.) With or without Quan's support, the Howard Terminal proposal looks jinxed, largely by the disinterest of the team owners. Davis, the Raiders owner, has come out publicly in support of the Coliseum City project. Wolff, for his part, says the A's will never play at Howard Terminal, nor is he willing to sell the team to a new owner who would field the team at the port location. If developers are serious about building a new stadium complex in Oakland, they may have do it without subsidies. A number of elected officials, including several Alameda County Supervisors and Oakland City Council members, oppose tossing public money into a new stadium deal. Those officials have a genuine basis for concern: Oakland has still not paid off the $200 million spent on improvements to the Coliseum 20 years ago, as part of the arrangement that brought the Raiders back to Oakland from Los Angeles. Taking on that debt was a tall order for a city whose budget for FY 2013-14 is $430.16 million. The next proverbial shoes to drop are a feasibility report for Howard Terminal, to be followed by actual proposals in August. At that point the city expects at least one of the projects to be far enough along to sign an exclusive-right-to-negotiate with the city. Will Oakland, the long-suffering suitor of sports teams, participate in either project? "We'll see then," says mayoral spokesperson Sean Maher.

It has been a busy few weeks in toxics and nuisances. Southern California air quality enforcers battled lead, arsenic, chromium-6, red jalapeños and chicken manure. The Bay Area AQMD adopted a new greenhouse gas control program. A study found air pollution is worse in communities of color. Another found further evidence that pollution from traffic is bad for your heart. The Ninth Circuit heard oral arguments on rail yard emissions, the state water board proposed three new TMDL standards, and the state public health department proposed new chromium 6 rules for public drinking water. All over the state, activists and local governments worked to discourage fracking in local wells, and local officials from Berkeley to Sacramento grew concerned about rail movements of oil from fracking. Vice Magazine accused Chevron of founding a local news site to buffer its image, and a crowd turned out to debate the EIR for Chevron's proposed plant upgrade to treat higher-sulfur crude. As told in links: In Vernon, in the LA industrial corridor, it's hard to tell how much of the lead recently found in soil may be from the Exide Technologies plant. The plant recycles lead-acid batteries such as car batteries and has a long history of complaints and accusations over lead and arsenic emissions. Driven by local outcry, overlapping regulatory, legislative and political efforts are afoot to clean up its emissions or shut it down: Exide's statements; most recently April 8, regretting denial of its request for more time to meet a new "negative pressure" standard for operations: http://www.exide.com/en/about/news.aspx The AQMD's page on Exide's alleged violations and responses, including near-daily violation notices since repair work began March 22: http://www.aqmd.gov/prdas/AB2588/Exide/Exide.html The AQMD's April 11 filing for an Order of Abatement: http://www.aqmd.gov/news1/2014/ExideOrderOfAbatement.htm State Sen. Ricardo Lara's SB 712, to suspend Exide's operations pending renewal of its operating permit, which has reportedly not been renewed since 1981: http://bit.ly/1fUnNH2 An FAQ from Southern California Public Radio: http://bit.ly/1hM2gnY; April 11 update: http://bit.ly/1qXwiZ4 March LA Times coverage: http://lat.ms/1gfoYWp; http://lat.ms/PBHM6P Three activist groups working on the matter: Communities for a Better Environment: http://www.CBECal.org East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice: http://www.eycej.org California Environmental Justice Alliance: http://caleja.org/ The South Coast AQMD pursued Hixson Metal Finishing, a chrome plating and anodizing plant in Newport Beach, over alleged emissions of carcinogenic hexavalent chromium, also known as chromium 6. See http://www.aqmd.gov/news1/2014/HixsonPR.htm and http://lat.ms/PyfHgX. In a dispute over nuisance odor effects from chili peppers, the city of Irwindale declared the Sriracha hot-sauce plant a public nuisance: http://lat.ms/1i3M3q4 . The Pasadena Star News and LA Weekly reported the South Coast AQMD received variously 61 or 73 complaints but 41 of them came from the same four households, and only four of the complaints were traced back to the sauce plant. They reported the AQMD conducted "chili-grinding bench tests of its own" and later was working with the company to improve its filters but did not issue a notice of violation. But Irwindale's consultant, equipped with a Nasal Ranger Field Olfactometer, found fluctuating odors that at times "burned eyes in some locations": http://bit.ly/1f6wu0T; http://bit.ly/1gIuTi9 Yes, the Nasal Ranger is a real item: http://www.nasalranger.com/ The company at first offered reassurances that it had an 18-month supply and would make necessary changes before that ran out: http://lat.ms/1iBqY8v More recently owner David Tran talked about leaving Irwindale and got plenty of offers to move his plant elsewhere: http://lat.ms/1gIstjM ; http://lat.ms/1hbtrUP Sriracha is made with red jalapeños from Underwood Ranches in Kern County, which has said it won't stop planting the peppers: http://bit.ly/1lj4oDk The sauce is inspired by a Thai recipe originally enjoyed with seafood: http://t.co/pyOl2q5SJi (via @sonnylebythebay) It has also been celebrated in cookbooks, cocktail recipes and a festival: http://lat.ms/1nvgKJT and a film: http://bit.ly/QupxAN This "Sriracha hoarder" was pictured last December in mid-forage: https://twitter.com/805foodie/status/413025524290572288 In late March and early April, the owner of the former Escondido Country Club fertilized part of the property with chicken manure, creating an alleged "Level 5 stench". Cited by the county and facing possible court action and fines, the owner brought in a cleaning service to remove it -- while also saying it had made a legal use of a legal product. Neighbors reportedly said the manure was dumped on the part of the property nearest the densest group of homes, and they told reporters the grass there was dead anyway. The owner, Stuck in the Rough, LLC, has been in a dispute with the same neighbors for two years over its plan to build houses on the property. http://bit.ly/RwVjhA ; http://bit.ly/1gzamQE ; http://golfdig.st/1r6qwCv The Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) adopted a "10-Point Climate Action Work Program" for greenhouse gas reduction: http://bit.ly/1tktzLf . The Marin I-J quoted several Marin County climate and environmental activists as approving: http://bit.ly/1f6ExLb A University of Minnesota study found nitrogen dioxide, a pollutant from cars and other engines, is pervasively worse in neighborhoods where people of color live. The study found differences based on income as well as race, but the racial differences in pollution were more dramatic. Emily Badger wrote it up for the Washington Post at http://wapo.st/1kxTJpR . We already knew pollution from traffic is bad for the heart, but the ARB just hosted a talk on a new aspect of the badness: damage to "the expression of genes in pathways that are important to adverse cardiovascular outcomes." http://www.arb.ca.gov/research/seminars/delfino2/delfino.htm Courthouse News took the trouble to cover 9th Circuit oral arguments in the NRDC litigation over diesel emissions from rail yards: http://www.courthousenews.com/2014/04/10/66960.htm The State Water Resources Control Board has opened comment periods for proposed changes to "Total Maximum Daily Load" (TMDL) standards for pollutants in three coastal areas. All of these have been locally approved but now are in new comment periods before consideration by the state board: Separate metals and toxics changes for Ballona Creek, and a toxics change for Marina Del Rey, have comments due May 13 at noon per State Department of Water Resources notification emails. See items marked R13 and R14 at: http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/losangeles/water_issues/programs/tmdl/tmdl_list.shtml A new TMDL for toxicity and pesticides in the Santa Maria River Watershed was approved by the Central Coast Water Board January 30. Comments are due to the state board by noon May 21. The proposed new standard is at http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/centralcoast/water_issues/programs/tmdl/docs/santa_maria/pesticide/index.shtml The California Dept. of Public Health has proposed a rule saying all the chromium 6 you should drink is about 10 parts per billion. Some others say it should be less. The LA Times ' Boxall says it's the first drinking water standard for that chemical in the U.S.: http://lat.ms/1mlmSV4 The proposed reg is at http://www.cdph.ca.gov/Pages/NR14-038.aspx Yes, that's the "Erin Brockovich" pollutant. No, Ms. Brockovich is not pleased: http://bit.ly/1tkwALv Neither is the NRDC: http://www.nrdc.org/media/2014/140415.asp At first, concern about trains carrying oil from the North Dakota fracking fields came across as climate-focused activism -- a campaign serving big-picture environmental goals as much as any one locality. This spring, however, it began to resonate more as a local safety concern -- one that politicians with pragmatic public images could get behind. This from the Bee , first posted in late March, describes cooperation among cities to protect local safety on the route taken by oil trains from the North Dakota fracking operations to refineries in Benicia, Martinez and other coastal cities: http://bit.ly/QvvPzU. Environmentalists represented by Earthjustice have sued Kinder Morgan and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District to block shipments of crude oil from North Dakota by rail through the city of Richmond. Earthjustice's statement is at http://bit.ly/1lGTQBH. The CBS affiliate KPIX had more at http://cbsloc.al/1mHdGwH By early April Sacramento officials were addressing the subject in earnest:. http://bit.ly/1mKFu3a Citing last year's Lac-Megantic disaster in Quebec, Assemblymember Roger Dickinson, D-Sacramento, announced April 17 that he would introduce legislation to train and inform local first responders about petroleum shipments through their areas, and to set up contingency plans and grant programs for responses: http://bit.ly/1jU6x95 ; http://bit.ly/RytZPX The Valero and Tesoro companies, whose large refineries have been mentioned in the oil trains debate, have said little on their Web sites on the subject, but Tesoro did announce in February that it was updating its rail car fleet with new safety designs: http://bit.ly/1mmNtkE The movement against fracking in California oilfields likewise has changed tone this spring, shifting from high-minded big-picture rhetoric to local anxiety about water use, water safety, earthquake risks, and emissions: The Chico Enterprise-Record reports Butte County hasn't added an oil or gas well in "more than two decades, and nobody has ever sought permission to conduct a 'fracking' operation," and the county's water director told the Supervisors that local geology wasn't best suited for it anyway. So the Supes' 4-1 vote to have an anti-fracking ordinance drafted for Butte County may have been a bit on the symbolic side: http://bit.ly/1jld3E1 On the other hand, Los Angeles' City Council has actual wells at stake as it moves toward a fracking ban within the city limits (see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3448). There are equally real stakes for the Mitchell-Leno fracking bill, SB 1132, to block all "well stimulation treatments" until a study could be completed on public safety requirements to be attached to future such treatments. The Culver City Observer , in Democratic Sen. Holly Mitchell's district, quoted Mitchell saying, "The largest urban oil field in the country is in a predominantly minority, residential neighborhood of my district." http://bit.ly/1eRnEte The bill, which has won its first committee approval, is at http://bit.ly/1eMTtmP. Culver City's Council was edging toward adoption of a proposed fracking ban in March but has taken no definite action as yet. Fracking was an issue in the April 8 Council election there, in which sitting councilmembers Jeff Cooper and Jim Clark were reelected: http://bit.ly/1egvcQo ; http://bit.ly/1kMWLqh ; http://bit.ly/1kMX7gP Long Beach has resisted calls to limit its lucrative oil facilities more strictly while the town of Carson has issued a temporary ban on oil and gas drilling that it might extend. (See http://bit.ly/1gVMEOO via CaCities.org.) In Santa Barbara, an informal hearing on fracking, hosted by Assemblymembers Das Williams, D-Santa Barbara, and Mark Stone, D-Scotts Valley, filled the Supervisors' hearing room with people interested to hear political and scientific expert speakers on tracking and regulating the practice in California: http://bit.ly/1r0B5cd KQED has a special report online about fracking as a use of water on the Monterey Shale deposit near Wasco outside Bakersfield, where water rights are fiercely disputed. http://blogs.kqed.org/science/audio/with-drought-new-scrutiny-over-frackings-water-use/. With oil producers and processors on the whole less than popular, the Chevron refinery in Richmond has founded an online community paper, the Richmond Standard , that announces on its front page: "We aim to provide Richmond residents with important information about what's going on in the community, and to provide a voice for Chevron Richmond on civic issues." The eternally brash Vice Magazine has loudly criticized the paper as a public relations ploy: http://www.vice.com/read/crude-journalism . The lefty East Bay Express reported an activist who had bought a ticket to a Chevron event in Oakland on "energy and sustainability" was removed before he could distribute a handout mocking the Standard : http://bit.ly/1mmy0n6 So is the Standard slanted? It does seem a little heavy on Chevron's charitable and environmental initiatives. See http://richmondstandard.com. As for more contested matters, here's the Standard 's writeup of a recent community meeting on an EIR for a refitting at Chevron's plant that "would allow crude with higher sulfur content to be used": http://bit.ly/1ngqWZF Here's the San Jose Mercury News on the same meeting: http://bit.ly/QnjUV8

A pair of local ballot measures supported by the Port of San Diego Ship Repair Association will remain on San Diego's June 3 city ballot thanks to an April 4 court decision. Measures B and C are an effort by the "Protect Our Jobs Coalition", in which the shipyards are significant members, to overturn a recently approved community plan update for the mixed-use Barrio Logan neighborhood. More than half the 1000-acre plan area is part of the Port of San Diego or the Naval Station. The plan's goals include health and safety protections for residential areas, new housing development, and an effort to insulate residential and industrial uses from each other. The San Diego Union-Tribune wrote, "the shipyards feared the plan might interfere with their suppliers and possibly lead to loss of contracts and a decline in their contracts ? even after five key blocks were set aside as a buffer between industry and housing." The Environmental Health Coalition, which supports the community plan update, petitioned to disqualify the shipyards' measures from the June ballot, alleging the signature campaign to qualify Measures B and C for the ballot had used misleading statements to gather signatures. The disputed statements contended the Barrio Logan Community Plan would interfere with San Diego's working waterfront, harming local maritime jobs and allowing residential development to encroach on industrial land. In a written ruling, Judge Randa Trapp found most of the disputed statements were matters of opinion and therefore permissible. But she did find one claim had been outright misleading: that the initiative would save 46,000 jobs and $14 billion in annual revenue. She found those figures in fact referred to the economic activity of "the entire maritime industry" in the area, not just of the shipyards. Her decision said the specific figures were taken out of the signature gatherers' materials midway through the campaign but "the signatures prior to the change were still counted." Despite this finding, Trapp ruled that "the balance of equities favors having the matter go to a vote." Although the shipyards' Protect Our Jobs Coalition campaigned to put Measures B and C on the ballot, they will now be campaigning for a "No" vote on each measure. The measures ask, respectively, whether the City Council's resolution and its ordinances updating the plan shall be approved. Accordingly a "No" vote sides with the shipyards and a "Yes" vote sides with the plan update. That leaves the Environmental Health Coalition campaigning for a "Yes" vote on the very measures it tried to take off the ballot. The ship repair association has been represented in the matter by Bradley W. Hertz and Jim Sutton of the Sutton Law Firm, a prominent campaign law firm. Relevant links: U-T coverage with texts of the court decision, parties' statements: http://bit.ly/1sxtraS Barrio Logan Planning page: http://www.sandiego.gov/planning/community/cpu/barriologan/ Measures B and C and plan text: http://www.sandiego.gov/city-clerk/elections/city/140603.shtml CP&DR Publisher Bill Fulton is Director of Planning for the City of San Diego. He did not participate in the drafting of this article.

When a new shopping center at the edge of town might skim off customers from existing businesses, how far can a planning department go to protect against "urban decay"? Quite some distance under current CEQA law, and a little farther in light of an April 1 partial publication order from California's Third District appellate court. The order gives the weight of precedent to the core of a February 28 decision in California Clean Energy Committee v. City of Woodland . The February ruling overturned an EIR for a new shopping center, saying it did not impose enough mitigations of the urban decay risks and did not fully justify its rejection of a mixed-use alternative. The court got requests to publish the decision not only from the Davis-based California Clean Energy Committee (CCEC) as successful plaintiff, but also from the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment; the Santa Cruz environmental law firm of Wittwer Parkin; and noted Los Angeles attorney Beverly Grossman Palmer of Strumwasser & Woocher LLP, representing the Santa Monica Coalition for a Livable City. (The Santa Monica group is in its own separate litigation against a large development project proposed for the Bergamot stop on the expanding LA County light-rail line, but that matter is not mentioned in Palmer's letter.) The city and developer opposed publication. Amanda Berlin of the Remy Moose Manley firm, which represented the city of Woodland, wrote, "The decision focuses on the record for the Gateway II project, so if the decision remains published, it's not clear whether it will have significant implications for other cities." But Ryan Moroney, an associate with Wittwer Parkin, said the opinion helpfully stated a need for "objective measurable criteria" in mitigation measures, whereas "We see a lot of EIRs that have this sort of wishy-washy mitigation measure that says, 'We're not sure what we're gonna do but when the time comes we're gonna do our best'." He said it re-enunciated CEQA's basic purpose: "The whole principle is you're supposed to mitigate to the extent feasible if you've identified impacts." And while some deferral of mitigation measures may be allowed, "you've got to really have a plan about what you're going to do." At issue in Woodland was an edge-of-town shopping center known as Gateway II, proposed by Petrovich Development Company, LLC. Petrovich's Gateway I, an existing 49-acre residential and commercial development, was already completed and leasing when the company proposed Gateway II. The Woodland Daily Democrat reported the existing Gateway Center now contains a Costco, Target and Best Buy. Woodland's City Council granted annexation and zoning approvals for the Gateway II project but reduced it from the proposed 234 acres to 61.3 acres, and imposed mitigation measures to reduce urban decay both downtown and at the existing County Fair Mall. The Council's approval resolution predicted the project "would result in physical deterioration and urban decay" of existing retail centers, especially if existing big box retailers moved to the new property -- though it said changes imposed on the project would "avoid or substantially lessen" such effects. Plaintiff CCEC argued the mitigation measures weren't enough. The trial court mainly sided with the city but the Third District held the city should have done more under CEQA to protect its existing retail businesses. The parts of the decision that were granted publication mainly considered whether the city imposed correct and sufficient requirements to mitigate "urban decay" effects. The city had required the developer to seek a master conditional use permit requiring uses that would not compete directly with existing downtown retail; to prepare its own market study; pay half the cost of two city planning studies; and work with the County Fair Mall on a strategic land use plan. The court found the market study should not have been delegated to the developer to prepare and that it failed to require specific mitigations. It found the rest of the measures weren't improper, but lacked enough clear promises of action to protect existing retail elsewhere in town. The court was not reassured by the city's plan to conduct later more detailed reviews of individual construction plans that would be tiered on the initial larger-scale approvals. Palmer's letter, provided by the Santa Monica group, emphasized aspects of the ruling that limited deferred mitigation and required enforceable criteria in promised mitigations: notably, "fair-share" payments for measures whose cost and methods are not yet spelled out, and abatement efforts "lacking any 'criteria for success'". She described one holding as "a logical extension" of Sundstrom v. County of Mendocino (1988) 202 Cal.App.3d 296, "which held that development of mitigation measures may not be delegated to unaccountable agency staff members." She wrote that the Woodland case went a step farther in the same area by refusing to delegate the task of developing mitigation measures to the project proponent. Palmer's letter further noted findings that an issue was sufficiently preserved on appeal "so long as the 'specific objections' are raised by any member of the public". In a less detailed section of the opinion that Palmer's letter likewise flagged as important, the court agreed with CCEC that the city gave inadequate reasons for turning down a mixed-use alternative that would have developed 93 acres of housing and commercial uses, including "a local-serving commercial town center" with housing above the shops, on a 154-acre annexation parcel. It said the draft EIR emphasized claims that mixed-use or reduced commercial use alternatives were economically infeasible, but the city's final decision claimed without real evidence that the mixed-use alternative would have worse environmental impacts than the proposed project. Further, the court accepted CCEC's argument that the energy impacts, including transportation effects, were not properly analyzed. Palmer saw importance there in the court's finding that reference to state energy standards were not enough because they "do not address several impacts that are within the scope of CEQA, such as transportation impacts, and the question of whether a project should be built at all." In sections of the decision that remain unpublished, the court rejected a CCEC objection based on alleged noncompliance with the city General Plan rather than CEQA, finding CCEC asserted it too late in the litigation. The court also refused to call the city the "prevailing party" in deciding who should pay for preparation of the record. The CCEC organization has a modest public profile despite some environmental litigation and regulatory successes in recent years. Public records show CCEC shares an address with its lawyer, Eugene Wilson, in Davis. Reached for this article, Wilson declined to comment about the case or the organization. Two members of the original three-judge panel, Justices Ronald Robie and Andrea Lynn Hoch, issued the publication order. The third member, Justice Elena Duarte, joined in the original decision but not in the publication order. Links: The case: http://www.courts.ca.gov/opinions/documents/C072033.PDF. Online docket including notes on the publication requests: http://bit.ly/1qrIrFt. Analysis on the Remy Moose Manley site: http://bit.ly/1eqAi2b. Background from the Woodland Daily Democrat : http://bit.ly/1sKwbBK. On Santa Monica's Bergamot Transit Village litigation: http://bit.ly/1sTQL2J