Although it made no grand announcement, the California Chamber of Commerce's Board of Directors has voted to oppose Proposition 98, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayer Association's eminent domain initiative on the June ballot.

The Coastal Commission's ability to prevent development by designating environmentally sensitive habitat areas appears to depend on the existence of a certified local coastal program (LCP).

In a case from Sand City, the First District Court of Appeal said the Coastal Commission could not overturn Sand City's approval of a 495-unit housing project based on the Commission's conclusion that the site is an environmentally sensitive habitat area (ESHA). The court said that because Sand City's LCP did not designate the site as ESHA, the Commission could not do so during an appeal of the housing project. However, in a case from Los Angeles County, the Second District Court of Appeal ruled that the Commission could reject a landowner's coastal development permit in part because the site is not covered by a certified LCP.

Add Tucson to the list of cities in the Intermountain West that fear California-style growth � and is thinking about California-style solutions to forestall California-style problems.

A controversial 225-square-mile annexation of territory in San Mateo County by the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District has been upheld by the First District Court of Appeal. The court rejected annexation opponents' arguments that the San Mateo County Local Agency Formation Commission's approval of the annexation was flawed.

A hot potato — or should I say a hot sugar beet — is headed back to the Delta Protection Commission, which is scheduled on March 27 to reconsider a proposal for the first housing development within the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta's "primary zone" in 15 years.

The hearing comes at a time when concern about Central Valley flood safety and the overall health of the Delta is at an all-time high, a setting that must have project proponents feeling like a smelt swimming too close to a State Water Project pump.

Will transportation and land-use planning get its share of dough from federal climate change programs? Not if the coal industry has its way.

That was the message from a Capitol Hill staffer at a plenary session of the American Public Transit Association's annual legislative conference in Washington, D.C., on Monday. To combat the coal industry, smart growth and public transit lobbyists will have to prove they have an important national asset that can help meet the climate change challenge.

Just about everyone has assumed that a "cap and trade" mechanism would be part of the implementation of California's AB 32, the greenhouse gas emissions reduction law. But cap and trade may not come about without a big, and potentially very political, fight from environmental justice advocates.

This is going to sound like sour grapes, I know. But it's not. Honest. It's a real policy beef – and one that I've had for a long time.

I own a Prius. But I don't own an access sticker that gets me into the carpool lanes. That's because I bought my Prius in December of 2006 – the exact time when the State of California doled out the last of 85,000 "Clean Air Vehicle Stickers."

State lawmakers introduced hundreds of bills just before the February 22 deadline, and many of them concern land use.

At the time of the Legislature's deadline, we were putting together our big overview of land use legislation, so we were not able to look at every last bill. The late introductions don't change the fact that SB 375 (Steinberg) is the most important piece of land use legislation currently circulating. But we want to make sure you know about all the important and just plain weird land use bills.

If you live in the Bay Area, where everybody thinks they are the coolest people on earth, or in Los Angeles, the world's biggest experiment in infill development, it's hard to swallow the idea that Sacramento may be ahead of us on planning. But it's true.

Unlikely as it may the seem, Sacramento Area Council of Governments – the six-county regional planning agency commonly known as SACOG – has actually made the idea of higher-density projects conforming to the regional plan seem cool, even to suburban politicians.

Alaska's "bridge to nowhere" would really be a bridge to sprawl - and that's why it'll be a crucial issue in the upcoming Senate re-election campaign of 84-year-old Ted Stevens.