Two Years Of Nothing At The Capitol

"Life in the Slow Lane" is the headline of a piece in The Economist that provides a very interesting analysis of the lack of infrastructure spending in the United States.

Because the story is in The Economist, it comes at the topic from a European perspective. No doubt this will trouble conservatives because, well … I'm not sure why conservatives fear comparisons with other prosperous, industrialized, democratic societies. Anyway, I think the story is worth reading.

California is on the verge of "five major, protracted water crises" and must change its system of governance to address the urgent situation, according to "Managing California's Water," a comprehensive examination of the subject recently produced by the Public Policy Institute of California.

The report recommends creating a Department of Water Management that is headed by an appointed director whose term overlaps different governors' administrations. This department, which could have cabinet-level status, would house a "public trust advocate" to ensure water is put toward reasonable uses and, for the first time, would have significant groundwater oversight.

Proposition Thirteen.

There, I said it. But I'm not the only one uttering those words during the ongoing discussion of the State of California's enormous budget gap. Just maybe, we can no longer ignore the elephant in the room.

The state's fiscal problems are as big as an elephant, and the reasons for them are legion. But, make no mistake, the largest contributor to those problems -- by far -- is the system created by and in reaction to Prop 13.

This is how far out of whack things have gotten in Sacramento: Jerry Brown is now the one who sounds sane.

Earlier this week, Brown canceled the planned sale of 11 state-owned office complexes to a group of private investors calling themselves, ironically enough, California First. The deal would have netted the state about $1.2 billion, equal to roughly 5% of the state budget deficit.

The clamp on local governments in California grows only tighter and tighter.

The number and detail of state mandates continues to increase. The ability to raise revenue continues to decrease. The amount of litigation never decreases. Redevelopment is in doubt. Keeping a city or county out of financial or legal trouble seems to get more difficult every year.

Those were the implicit – and sometimes explicit – messages during the UCLA Extension Land Use Law and Planning Conference in Los Angeles last Friday. As always at the conference, expert practitioners and analysts reviewed last year's lawmaking, rulemaking and courtroom activity, and speculated about the year ahead. It was difficult to detect many rays of light for cities or counties.

For all of the Legislature's fretting this year, the consensus in Sacramento is that among the state's overwhelming crises, land use ranked as a low priority this past legislative session. The legislative session that ended Aug. 30 included relatively few land use bills and, of those, they were of relatively minor import.

0-and-4. That's the Third District Court of Appeal's record in California Environmental Quality Act cases at the state Supreme Court since 2007.

Earlier this month, in Stockton Citizens for Responsible Planning v. City of Stockton (see CP&DR Legal Digest, March 15, 2010), the state Supreme Court unanimously reversed a Third District ruling regarding the statute of limitations for filing a lawsuit that challenges a city's notice of exemption from CEQA review.

A California Environmental Quality Act amendment that could ease Walmart's entry into new markets appears to be speeding toward approval in the state Legislature.

Assembly Bill 1581 (Torres) would exempt from CEQA review the alteration of a vacant retail structure of up to 120,000 square feet so long as the use is consistent with the applicable general plan and meets certain energy and water efficiency thresholds. The exemption would sunset on January 1, 2014.

The California Environmental Quality Act does not apply in reverse, the California Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

Overturning the First District Court of Appeal, the Supreme Court ruled that, with a few exceptions, CEQA analysis must be limited to the project's impacts on the environment (and, by extension, the project's environmental impacts on its own population) but not the environment's impact on the project.

Among other things, the ruling would seem to suggest that a CEQA analysis cannot analyze and mitigate the effect of future sea level rise or other climate change effects on a proposed project. >>read more