Paul Shigley's blog

The California Air Resources Board will take over many duties of the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research (OPR) by the first of the year.
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At the risk of repeating what I and about a million other people have already said I’ll say it again: California could learn a lot from Portland when it comes to transit and its climate-related benefits.

In the Portland metro area, transit is efficient and relatively inexpensive for riders. In the Bay Area, the most transit-rich region in California, 28 different providers don’t add up to an efficient “system,” and transit operators are raising already high fares.
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One person’s infill is another person’s environmental disaster.
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The Bay Area can accommodate the next 25 years' worth of growth – 2 million additional people and 1.7 million new jobs – entirely through infill development, according to Greenbelt Alliance. The San Francisco-based advocacy group unveiled the all-infill strategy in a plan called “Grow Smart Bay Area” on Wednesday, June 10.
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The future of the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research appears very much in doubt. On Wednesday, the Legislature’s Conference Committee on the Budget recommended eliminating OPR only hours after Gov. Schwarzenegger called OPR “a total waste.”

The Los Angeles Times quotes the governor saying, "The Office of Planning and Research ought to be about planning and research to come up with great policy answers, which this office doesn't do.”
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The committee charged with recommending how the Air Resources Board should establish greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets under AB 32 and SB 375 spent much of its first half dozen meetings talking in about the technical details of measuring emissions and modeling for future emissions. That changed on Wednesday, June 3, when Regional Targets Advisory Committee (RTAC) member Richard Katz said he’d had enough.
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There is no better example of the conundrum in which Gov. Schwarzenegger and all Californians find ourselves than the controversial oil drilling deal off Santa Barbara County.
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The state will appeal a Superior Court decision blocking the state from shifting $350 million of tax increment revenue from redevelopment agencies to schools

In the midst of the state’s larger budget crisis, the amount at issue in the litigation suddenly appears piddling. Still, the case, if pursued, could be important, especially to redevelopment agencies.
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Seven years ago, Bill Fulton and I wrote a lengthy story for Governing magazine about San Bernardino County. We didn’t write the headline, but it was appropriate: “Addicted to Corruption.”

Apparently, the county still has not entered rehab.
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Public policy regarding the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is in an age of “absolutely” and “absolutely nots,” according to Jeffrey Mount. But policy could enter an age of reason within a decade, he said.
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