HOA's members need not testify about their own side's strategy meetings

San Diego County's major suburban transit district is getting in on transit-oriented development -- in some cities that are historically wary of housing.

Court rules that vague carbon offsets approach for new development violates CEQA and invalidate the Climate Action Plan.

Appellate court concludes that subdivision was just a residential development in disguise and therefore in violation of the Williamson Act. >>read more

The Fourth District rules that San Diego County created a significance threshold for GHG emissions -- even though the threshold was supposedly a recommended method never adopted by the county. >>read more

The City of Carlsbad acted correctly in including traffic from a vacant store in its environmental baseline for a shopping center renovation, the Fourth District Court of Appeals has ruled in an unpublished case.

Westfield, the shopping center operator, proposed demolishing and reconstructing the vacant Robinson-May store in Plaza Camino Real, a shopping center originally built in 1969. Westfield's changes actually resulted in a reduction in the overall square footage of the shopping center. >>read more

Tuesday's California Supreme Court ruling in a CEQA case involving San Diego State lays down an important marker: State agencies can't claim that a mitigation measure is infeasible just because they didn't get a legislative appropriation to pay for it. It's the second time the Supreme Court has rejected an argument by Cal State that fiscal considerations under state law should trump CEQA. >>read more

In reviewing a project's consistency as part of an environmental review, a city need not comply with every single general plan policy so long as it concludes that most general plan policies are being followed, the Fourth District Court of Appeal has ruled.

In a case involving a proposed bridge and parking garage in Balboa Park, the appellate court also overruled a trial judge's ruling that the City of San Diego violated its own municipal code by concluding that there would be "no reasonable beneficial use" of the famed Plaza de Panama if the bridge project were not built.

The case involves a proposal to remove automobiles from the Plaza de Panama in order to avoid conflicts between pedestrians and automobiles. The proposal would include construction of a new bridge, the Centennial Bridge, that would connect the historic Cabrillo Bridge to a new underground parking garage south of the Plaza. 

The City of San Diego did not violate the California Environmental Quality Act when it used as a baseline situation conditions that existed after emergency repairs were made under a CEQA exemption, the Fourth District Court of Appeal. The plaintiffs had argued that the city used the post-emergency baseline as a way to avoid CEQA review of a larger project.

The ruling overturned a trial court's ruling, and was a defeat for perpetual plaintiffs' attorney Cory Briggs, who frequently files CEQA lawsuits against the City of San Diego. The only victory Briggs got on appeal was a refund of his client's $100 appeal fee charged by the city.

The California Supreme Court has accepted Cleveland National Forest Association v. SANDAG, the controversial case that raises the question of whether a governor's executive order must be taken into consideration in CEQA analysis.

In a split decision, the Fourth District Court of Appeal has upheld the Coastal Commission's conditions on two property owners' reconstruction of a seawall in Encinitas after it was destroyed in a storm, including limiting the new seawall's permit to a 20-year term. >>read more

The proposed CEQA Guidelines prohibiting lead agencies from categorizing traffic congestion as a significant impact will likely trump any significance finding tied to local general plans that contain a level of service standard, state officials said at a forum on the draft guidelines Friday in San Diego.

California's Fourth Appellate District on Friday struck down a special hotel tax that San Diego hotel operators had willingly imposed on themselves, as members of an unusually defined special district, to raise money for the city's convention center expansion. The court ruled that the tax required a two-thirds citywide popular vote for approval.

Under Proposition 13 as broadened in 1996 by Proposition 218, special taxes must be approved by a two-thirds vote of "the qualified electors" of the affected district, also expressed as "the electorate" of the district.