CP&DR

Costly Options Presented to Remedy the Salton Sea

Feb 1, 2000

Environment Watch, Larry Sokoloff, Salton Sea, Vol. 15 No. 02 Feb 2000

The Salton Sea is sometimes referred to as Southern California's Lake Tahoe, and while efforts to save the northern lake took shape 20 years ago, officials only now are making big decisions about the future environmental health of the southern water body. The Salton Sea (which is also sometimes called a lake) has been in a downward environmental spiral in recent years. Rising salinity, warnings about eating its fish, oxygen depleting algal blooms, and the deaths of thousands of birds and fish ...

Swap of Sales Tax for Property Tax Will Get Hearing: Assembly Speaker's Commission, Others Support Finance Reform

Feb 1, 2000

Featured Articles, Paul Shigley, Vol. 15 No. 02 Feb 2000

A commission appointed by Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa has recommended local governments swap sales tax revenue for a bigger cut of property taxes. The proposal is one of several intended to reduce city and county dependence on sales tax. However, it remains unclear whether lawmakers and Gov. Davis will take meaningful steps toward altering the complex fiscal system this year. It is a two-handed situation. On the one hand, recommendations of the Speaker's Commission on State and Local G...

San Jose's Montgomery Hotel: An Expensive Souvenir

by Morris Newman on Feb 1, 2000

Deals, Morris Newman, San Jose, Vol. 15 No. 02 Feb 2000

The preservation of the Montgomery Hotel in the City of San Jose could be likened to a brick rescued from a burning house by its owners. By itself, the brick would have little or no value. As a souvenir of a vanished house, however, the brick becomes a treasured relic. That analogy might help outsiders understand the rationale behind the extraordinary labor and expense that the San Jose Redevelopment Agency has devoted to saving what is, by all accounts, a handsome but rather ordinary buildin...

Failed Sale of Highway 91 Toll Lanes Refuels Debate

Feb 1, 2000

Paul Shigley, Public Development, Vol. 15 No. 02 Feb 2000

A proposed public bailout of the owner of Highway 91 toll lanes in Orange County has died amid allegations of financial improprieties. The experience with the 91 Express Lanes, which even privatization supporters call a "fiasco," appears to put a damper on what little interest remains in constructing private highways. "This is not something that anyone should expect to become the dominant mode of highway building," said Marlon Boarnet, a University of California, Irvine, planning professor who ...

Proposition 218: State Supreme Court to Hear L.A. Apartment Tax Controversy

Feb 1, 2000

CP&DR Staff, Legal Digest, Vol. 15 No. 02 Feb 2000

The California Supreme Court will decide a case involving the City of Los Angeles's inspection fee on apartments. In December, five of seven justices voted to grant the petition from Los Angeles, which lost a Second District Court of Appeal ruling on a lawsuit filed by apartment owners. (See CP&DR Legal Digest, October 1999.) The Los Angeles City Council approved the $12 annual inspection fee on each of the city's approximately 750,000 apartments in July of 1998. The fee was intended to generat...

Clean Water Act: Citizens Can Sue Violators, U.S. Supreme Court Rules

Feb 1, 2000

CP&DR Staff, Legal Digest, Vol. 15 No. 02 Feb 2000

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that citizens can sue alleged polluters under the Clean Water Act. The high court's January decision in a case from South Carolina was a significant victory for environmentalists, who argue that the government sometimes does not adequately enforce the Clean Water Act and other environmental protection laws. On a 7-2 vote, court ruled that Friends of the Earth (FOE) had standing to sue Laidlaw Environmental Services over the company's violation of a National Poll...

Property Rights: Miners' Rights on Public Land Gain Support in Ninth Circuit

Feb 1, 2000

CP&DR Staff, Legal Digest, Vol. 15 No. 02 Feb 2000

The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has sided with a miner in a feud between the miner and the U.S. Forest Service. In interpreting the Mining Law of 1872 and the 1955 Multiple Use Act, the court ruled that the Forest Service could not kick a miner off his claim in the Tonto National Forest, and that the Forest Service may not have had justification for increasing a reclamation bond requirement. In an opinion that recounted the history of mining laws in the United States, Circuit Judge Andrew K...

Landowners Need the Final Answer Before Making Claim

Feb 1, 2000

CP&DR Staff, Legal Digest, Vol. 15 No. 02 Feb 2000

Property owners who never filed a development application have no basis for a takings claim, the Fourth District Court of Appeal has ruled. The court also said a landowner whose one application for a specific plan amendment that was rejected also has no takings argument. The case arose from the City of San Diego's lengthy planning process for the East Elliott community, a former Navy base that the federal government sold during the 1960s. As early as 1981, the city conceded that a 1971 East Ellio...

EIR Can Postpone Detailed Study of Related Road Project

Feb 1, 2000

California Environmental Quality Act, CP&DR Staff, Legal Digest, San Diego County, Vol. 15 No. 02 Feb 2000

An appellate court has ruled that an environmental impact report for a proposed San Diego County rock quarry was closer to acceptable than a trial judge had ruled, but the EIR still lacked a proper analysis of air quality impacts. The Fourth District Court of Appeal overturned San Diego Superior Court Judge Judith McConnell's ruling that the rock quarry EIR improperly deferred study of highway widening, and that the EIR failed to account for prior illegal mining on the property. Still, the unanimou...

City Must Pay for Temporary Takings: L.A.'s Delay in Issuing Permit Earns Landowner $1.2 Million

Feb 1, 2000

CP&DR Staff, Legal Digest, Vol. 15 No. 02 Feb 2000

Delays by the City of Los Angeles in issuing a permit to demolish a burned-out hotel amounted to a temporary taking, the Second District Court of Appeal has ruled. The unanimous three-judge appellate panel upheld a trial court's ruling that awarded the landowner $1.2 million, plus interest, for the inverse condemnation. The court upheld the trial court's monetary award after concluding that the city's delay in issuing the demolition permit was not part of the normal development review process, and...