As with most things in life, one person's gain is another person's loss, and public-private partnerships are not exempt from these types of tradeoffs. To the state engineers and their representative union, the contracting out to private engineering firms of engineering services traditionally performed by Caltrans engineering staff represents one of those zero-sum games. This becomes the backdrop to a challenge to the Phase II improvement work on Doyle Drive, the highway approach to the southern terminus of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Against the protests of many environmental and community groups -- but with the support of developers and builders -- Gov. Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 226 (Simitian) yesterday, ushering in what some consider a new era of reform to the California Environmental Quality Act.  

SB 226 includes the following alternations to CEQA: 

This month – October 10, to be exact – marks the 100th anniversary of initiative and referendum in California. It's hard to imagine that Gov. Hiram Johnson, the godfather of the constitutional amendment, could have imagined all the different ways that the initiative process would be used – especially by the moneyed interests that were his target in 1911. But it's equally hard to imagine that Johnson could have foreseen the way the initiative and referendum process would transform planning and development in California.

Jim Kennedy may have taken the most thankless job in all of California planning. The former planning director of Contra Costa County and longtime board member of the California Redevelopment Association, Kennedy succeeds former executive director John Shirey, who recently became city manager for the City of Sacramento.

There was a time when the biggest opponents to infill development were the interstate highway, the barbeque grill, and the American dream. Following the failure of Assembly Bill 710, you might be able to add advocates of affordable housing to the list.

If you want to know where Jerry Brown is going on redevelopment, just take a look at AB 664 – a bill he signed in late September designed to help San Francisco finance facilities for the 2014 America's Cup race.

With friends like the cities of Palo Alto, Redwood City, and San Mateo, who needs enemies? Certainly not the California High-Speed Rail Authority. 

The retirement of Peter Douglas, the 26-year executive director of the California Coastal Commission, has unleashed a tsunami of superlatives from admirers: "legend," "tremendous," "staunch advocate." For decades, Douglas has been a lighting rod of both praise and criticism for the Coastal Commission. Some say that, under his direction, the commission has protected coastal resources that otherwise would have been lost. Others say that during his tenure the commission has been too strict, too capricious, and too dismissive of property rights.  

P.J. O'Rourke once referred to the United States government as a "vast, rampant cuttlefish," writhing and squirting ink all over the place to no useful effect. I think D.C.'s tubluence has far exceeded even that metaphor, but taking its place lately are California's municipal general plans.

Frighteningly enough, this is the 27th year I've attended the California Chapter, American Planning Association, conference and at least the third time here at the Fess Parker in Santa Barbara. Memories both good and weird haunt me here; I remember, for example, standing in the corridor outside the Santa Barbara ballroom in 1995 watching TV as the O.J. Simpson verdict came in.