Election Day 1998 sure looked like a watershed for ballot-box zoning in California. That was the day that voters in Ventura County and five cities there passed the so-called SOAR (Save Open-space and Agricultural Resources) initiatives, which created an almost "air-tight" system of urban growth boundaries around the cities and agricultural preservation in unincorporated areas. In the months after that election, California began to look like "SOAR-land". Reporters from around the country troo...

Planning for a long stretch of rural lands on the fringe of suburban San Diego County continues to be a roiling controversy played out in the courts, the election booth and the Board of Supervisors chambers. The county lost the latest round in the courtroom recently when Superior Court Judge Judith McConnell ruled that the environmental impact report for the general plan amendment covering 191,000 acres was inadequate. The ruling pleased environmentalists and the state Attorney General's office, but the...

Who says urban planning isn't partisan? It has certainly been many a planner's working assumption that local land use decisions in California are not affiliated with any political perspective, but are merely "good planning." In fact, since the days of 1910s reform Governor Hiram Johnson, local government has been legally devoid of party-affiliated elections. But with the assertive emergence of the Green Party in Election 2000, the fact can no longer be ignored: national political party platform...

A federal appellate court has overturned a land exchange between the Bureau of Land Management and a private company that hoped to develop a regional landfill in Imperial County. A unanimous three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said the BLM grossly underestimated the value of its land where the landfill was proposed. The BLM relied on an appraisal that said the "highest and best use" of the 1,745 acres in question was open space or mine waste storage. The appraisal did not...

Environmentalists were victorious in one of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals' first interpretations of a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the Clean Water Act. The Ninth Circuit held that two environmental organizations could sue a Northern California lumber company for alleged Clean Water Act violations because the supposed pollution harmed members' recreational use of a creek. In January, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that South Carolina citizens could sue the operator of a hazardo...

A development agreement between San Luis Obispo County and the developer of a subdivision and resort did not amount to an unconstitutional contracting away of the county's police power, the Second District Court of Appeal has ruled. The opinion validates development agreements as legitimate planning tools and appears to erase any lingering doubts about the constitutionality of the practice.

The Second District Court of Appeal has overturned a City of Los Angeles decision not to permit construction of a billboard, and the court indicated the city could be liable for revenue the would-be sign builder lost. The opinion by Justice Rueben Ortega strongly suggests that political pressure from the mayor's office influenced the city's Board of Building and Safety Commissioners. The board initially refused to revoke the billboard permit on appeal. After the mayor's office intervened, t...

The Department of Energy could sell 47,000 acres in an area with five endangered species to Occidental Petroleum without consulting the Fish & Wildlife Service, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal has ruled. The federal legislation authorizing the sale of land outside Bakersfield allowed the sale to go forward without an endangered species consultation, and without Occidental applying for a new "take" permit under the Endangered Species Act, the court held. National Petroleum Reserve –...

With tens of thousands of public employees migrating to its downtown every weekday, Sacramento is very much a company town. So it is no surprise that a gigantic new building — by far the largest in the Central Valley — at 10th and I streets provides offices for state workers. Nearly 3,100 employees of the six agencies and the administrative office that comprise the California Environmental Protection Agency are scheduled to finish moving into the new CalEPA building by the middle of this mon...

The State of California's 2000-01 budget and various pieces of legislation created several new programs and expanded some existing housing programs under the Department of Housing and Community Development. They new programs include: o Jobs-Housing Balance Improvement Program. $110 million. Covers three areas: — Economic development grants to local agencies in "housing rich" areas to attract new businesses and jobs. — Incentive grants to cities and counti...

Federal housing officials violated the free speech rights of three Berkeley residents who protested plans for a homeless shelter in their neighborhood, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled. The court ruled that a Department of Housing and Urban Development officials' eight-month investigation into the activities of project opponents trampled on rights that were clearly protected by the First Amendment. The court held that the five HUD officials (one of whom is now deceased) are...

The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed a lower court judgment giving an Indian tribe the right to regulate the use of fee-patented private property within a reservation boundary. The unanimous three-judge panel ruled that an Indian tribe has the authority to regulate land owned by nonmembers only when given specific Congressional approval or when then land use directly affects the tribe's political integrity, economic security, or health and welfare. The case involved a small timber ha...

The U.S. Supreme Court has accepted for review a takings case from Rhode Island. The case centers on the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council's denial of permits to fill 18 acres of wetlands and a pond in the town of Westerly. The landowner, Anthony Palazzolo, first sought permission to dredge and fill the marsh and pond in 1962 so that he could build 74 houses. He filed several subsequent applications but did not receive the approval needed to proceed. The state age...

With affordable housing ranking as a major issue in nearly all of California, the Davis administration and the Legislature responded this year with a gigantic increase in funding for housing programs. However, they did not adopt the significant policy changes supported by the building industry and some housing advocates, and the governor even vetoed one of the few important housing bills approved by lawmakers. Housing programs will receive about $570 million of this year's state budget — up from about...