The Legislative Analyst's Office released possibly the most obvious report in its history last week. The LAO said it's a bad idea to spend one-time revenues on ongoing expenses, and it's an even worse idea to generate those revenues by selling things you're going to need for many years.

The LAO concluded that the Schwarzenegger administration's plan to sell 11 state-owned office complexes to help balance the state budget was a "poor fiscal policy." The state would get a pile of money from the sale, but then it would have to spend more piles of money in future years to lease the office space from the new owners.

Yeah, no kidding. The idea is not akin to cleaning out the garage and selling a bunch of junk to pay the light bill. It's more like selling your dishes and flatware to pay for groceries. You'll have food, but you'll still need something with which to eat it.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Last year shopping mall giant Westfield floated a proposal for a 49-story tower in Century City, part of a master plan to reinvent one of the great prototypical edge cities.

Not long ago, when California's economy was booming and concerns about rising seas were mounting, California tapped into its environmentalist traditions to pass popular laws that promised to lead the nation in greenhouse gas mitigation. While there are no sure signs that the global climate has cooled, the same cannot be said for the state's support of anti-climate change legislation. 

In supporting the City of Stockton's refusal to accept a lawsuit filed by a citizens group against a proposed big-box store, the California Supreme Court has, for the second time in two months, made clear that if a public agency provides notice of a California Environmental Quality Act decision, legal challenges to that decision may be barred by the shortest statute of limitations, among several that the CEQA statute provides for, applies to legal challenges regardless of the context of the challenge.

0-and-4. That's the Third District Court of Appeal's record in California Environmental Quality Act cases at the state Supreme Court since 2007.

Earlier this month, in Stockton Citizens for Responsible Planning v. City of Stockton (see CP&DR Legal Digest, March 15, 2010), the state Supreme Court unanimously reversed a Third District ruling regarding the statute of limitations for filing a lawsuit that challenges a city's notice of exemption from CEQA review.

This month more Census forms will arrive in California mailboxes than in those of any other state. And, while anxieties about response rates and undercounts persist nationwide, it is likely that California will fill out and submit more of them than will any other state. In its rawest state, the resulting data will give planners their most fundamental piece of data - the sheer number of people the state must accommodate. >>read more

The hottest web meme of the past two days -- in urbanist circles at least (I shudder to think of what the hottest overall meme is) -- is the chart of the most photographed cities and landmarks in the world.  Last year a team of Cornell researchers assumed the guise of part Web trawlers and part econometricians and, with the help of photo-analysis software, identified every photo on the Flickr photo-sharing site that could recognizably be associated with a city.  It ranked the top twenty-five cities and then the top seven most commonly photographed subjects in each. 

Gov. Schwarzenegger is going around the state urging lawmakers to approve a measure that would provide $200 million in tax credits for homebuyers. The governor claims the measure will save or add thousands of construction jobs.

His claim is hardly new. But is there any real basis for it?

In planning, as with anything else, the progress does not arrive merely with the flow of time. The enthusiasm and ideas that swept over these pages in the first decade of this century -- smart growth, downtown revitalization, AB 32, SB 375, and all the rest -- are now met with delay, deferral, and, in some cases, bankruptcy.