The Legislature doesn't get credit for doing many things right these days, but lawmakers appear to be making at least one bipartisan strike for fiscal sanity.

Few definitive trends emerged in the handful of local land use ballot measures that were decided across the state yesterday. Voters in Costa Mesa, Mission Viejo, Pleasanton, Sutter Creek, and Brentwood maintained status quo with votes that either limited development or rejected new land use provisions. Meanwhile, Redlands voted to allow new big-box stores, Eastvale voted to exist as a city, and Santa Clara voted to allow and partially fund a football stadium that, when full, will add the population of a small city to the heart of Silicon Valley. 

Read on for complete results, with links to CP&DR's preview coverage:

To supporters, the wisdom of Senate Bill 375, the 2008 law that promotes emissions reductions through coordination of transportation and land use, lies in its holistic approach to planning and its kitting together of disparate elements of the urban fabric. But, in light of budget crises at all level of government, one piece that is essential to SB 375's success is rapidly coming off the rails: money to run buses and trains 

 By Morris Newman

Dammit, it's not fair! Residents of affordable housing get all the lucky breaks. Just look at all the money they're getting from all directions: local government, the local power company, the feds, the green-building lobby. Case in point: the Casa Dominguez development in East Dominguez Hills, an unincorporated area of south Los Angeles County, even has a child care center and a medical clinic, on site.

Use of redevelopment funds by a city-formed nonprofit organization to develop school administrative buildings and a housing project with units reserved for low- and very low-income residents was valid and did not require voter approval, the Second District Court of Appeal has ruled. 

In reaching its decision, the court had to interpret the various restrictions in redevelopment law as well as Article 34 of the state constitution.  

Article 34 as part of the California Constitution, adopted by voters in 1950, had the effect of requiring voter approval of "low rent housing projects." Over time, the Legislature has codified various interpretations of Article 34, excluding from the voter approval process certain types of affordable projects. On a parallel path, the Legislature has modified redevelopment law to ensure that cities spend a certain amount of their tax increments on affordable housing. 

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When it comes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions in California, one size does not even come close to fitting all.

That's all I could conclude after the SB 375 Regional Targets Advisory Committee (RTAC) and metropolitan planning organization (MPO) representatives touched on an amazing array of policy and technical issues during an all-day meeting on Tuesday.

All right, I could also conclude that what has been a highly technical process may be on the verge of becoming very political.

(Please note that the word "draconian" does not occur once in the following post concerning the ongoing budget debacle. Readers susceptible to cliché-induced seizures (CIS) can read this article without ill effect.)

By his own characterization, the governor's latest proposal attempts to close the $19 billion shortfall in the coming year's budget almost entirely through cuts. For CP&DR readers, it's probably unnecessary to explain that many of these cuts affect – or have effectively eliminated – services for low-income people, not limited to affordable housing, health care and early childhood education. Hell, we can't even afford our prisons—an irony well deserved by the Lock-'em-Up State. 

With state and local government revenues shrinking throughout California, planners are increasingly looking to the federal government – and especially transportation funds – to pay for local planning efforts, especially if they involve infill and transit-oriented development efforts. But the two major possible sources of funding – the transportation reauthorization bill and the climate bill – are both stalled with little hope of passage anytime soon.

The climate bill has been caught, at least for the moment, in the crossfire of the immigration debate. So let's get back to that later and focus instead on the bill that ought to have no trouble passing: the transportation reauthorization bill.

In the first-ever appellate court decision regarding the California Environmental Quality Act and climate change, the First District Court of Appeal has held that the future development of a plan for greenhouse gas mitigation constituted improperly deferred mitigation. For that reason and others, the court ruled the environmental impact report for an oil refinery project was invalid.