Three years ago — back when California had money — Gov. Gray Davis came up with a clever idea to push more money into transportation projects in a way that would benefit his core political constituencies without raising taxes. Today, Davis's Transportation Congestion Relief Program appears to be self-destructing, along with the entire system of funding state transportation projects.

In response to a new state law that mandates the easier regulatory processing of second units, cities and counties across California have been revising their regulations. Most jurisdictions are relaxing their rules, although some cities and counties appear to be adding performance standards that could discourage second-unit development.

Voters in the Contra Costa Water District will decide early next year whether to quadruple the capacity of five-year-old Los Vaqueros Reservoir in the hills east of Mount Diablo. The reservoir expansion would increase water reliability and improve water quality but would not provide more water for growth, water district officials insist.

California State University is not required to fund mitigation measures that offset a new campus's traffic and fire safety impacts, the Sixth District Court of Appeal has ruled.

A Bush administration framework for Western water is drawing praise from some surprising circles, while normal administration allies are showing skepticism or outright hostility.

An appellate court has reinstated a Santa Monica Rent Control Board lawsuit against a landlord that a trial court had dismissed as a SLAPP suit. The lawsuit was the board's legitimate attempt to get a judicial determination that the landlord was violating local rent control laws, the Second District Court of Appeal ruled.

The Fifth District Court of Appeal has upheld an environmental impact report's water analysis for the proposed University of California, Merced, campus.

"Buildout" is a funny term. It is the word that most planners use to describe what their town would look like once everything that is called for in the general plan has been built. In today's world, buildout is easily quantified. Most cities and counties can point to their general plan and identify precisely how many houses and how many square feet of commercial and industrial space buildout involves. In California, where the Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) is always bird-dogging loc

In their effort to address the disproportionate health risk faced by working-class blacks and Hispanics, air-quality regulators in Southern California may soon find themselves playing a greater role in local land-use decisions — a prospect embraced by environmental justice advocates but alarming to many in the business community.

Stanislaus County, the City of Patterson, and a North Carolina-based developer have teamed together on a business park that all parties hope will bring employment to an area that has seen rapid housing development but minimal job growth.

An administrative hearing that the City of Beverly Hills conducted for an adult business permit renewal violated the business's right to due process, the Second District Court of Appeal has ruled. The problem was that a city attorney — who earlier had contended that the business failed to submit a complete permit renewal application — also advised the hearing officer who considered the business's appeal of the decision to deny the renewal application.

A Southern California housing developer that has aggressively fought a wide variety of government fees in recent years has lost a building permit and plan review fee case at the Fourth District Court of Appeal. In a terse opinion, the unanimous three-judge appellate panel ruled that Barratt American's claims were either time-barred or attempted to rely on the wrong statutes.

The California Supreme Court has ordered the publication of another round in the litigation involving a doughnut shop owner and the City of Hawaiian Gardens.

Cities and counties are charged with the responsibility of developing not only communities in which people live and work, but also with protecting the health of the surrounding natural environment and agricultural lands. To achieve balance between these core values, advocacy groups and government agencies alike have taken interest in understanding the available supply of land and the capacity for planned growth in their regions.