The Three Fishes

Once, three fishes lived in a pond. One evening, some fishermen passed by the pond and saw the fishes. 'This pond is full of fish', they told each other excitedly. 'We have never fished here before. We must come back tomorrow morning with our nets and catch these fish!' So saying, the fishermen left.

When the eldest of the three fishes heard this, he was troubled. He called the other fishes together and said, 'Did you hear what the fishermen said? We must leave this pond at once. The fishermen will return tomorrow and kill us all!'
The second of the three fishes agreed. 'You are right', he said. 'We must leave the pond.'



But the youngest fish laughed. 'You are worrying without reason', he said. 'We have lived in this pond all our lives, and no fisherman has ever come here. Why should these men return? I am not going anywhere - my luck will keep me safe.'

The eldest of the fishes left the pond that very evening with his entire family. The second fish saw the fishermen coming in the distance early next morning and left the pond at once with all his family. The third fish refused to leave even then.

The fishermen arrived and caught all the fish left in the pond. The third fish's luck did not help him - he too was caught and killed.

The fish who saw trouble ahead and acted before it arrived as well as the fish who acted as soon as it came both survived. But the fish who relied only on luck and did nothing at all died. So also in life.

How to Comment on a CEQA Document

Better late than never

Swinging for the fences, California sports teams keep asking lawmakers for special deals

The Oakland A's want to move out of the Coliseum and have asked the Legislature for help fast-tracking approval of a new arena. Photo by Kwong Yee Cheng for Creative Commons.

Swinging for the fences, California sports teams keep asking lawmakers for special deals

By Laurel Rosenhall | June 14, 2018 | LEGISLATURE, POLITICS


It’s become almost a summer tradition in the California Capitol.

As basketball season hits its final buzzer and baseball season gets into full swing, it’s also peak deal-making season for legislators rushing toward their August adjournment. Now is when professional sports teams hoping to build new stadiums staff up with Sacramento lobbyists, typically seeking to speed up construction of their new digs by persuading lawmakers to grant them exceptions from state environmental rules.

Lawmakers are considering two such proposals this summer—one to help the Los Angeles Clippers build an arena in Inglewood, another to help the Oakland A’s construct a stadium in Oakland.

They’re the latest in a long string of legislation to assist professional sports teams. In the last decade, lawmakers passed bills that fast-tracked new venues for the Sacramento Kings, Golden State Warriors and San Francisco 49ers. They also approved bills meant to help build new football stadiums in Los Angeles and San Diego that never came to pass.

The proposals routinely stir up debate over California’s environmental laws and whether to grant special deals for wealthy sports franchises. Making the debate even more poignant now: A lag in home construction has contributed to skyrocketing rents and increasing homelessness. Though lawmakers have taken steps to speed up projects that include homes for low-income residents, they have not granted housing developments the same favored treatment they’ve given sports teams.

“It’s bad to have two systems of law—one for rich people and one for everybody else. And that’s what we’re seeing,” said David Pettit, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group that fought a bill last year to waive some environmental rules for a new Clippers arena.

At the heart of the debate is the California Environmental Quality Act, a nearly 50-year-old law that some see as a sacrosanct protection and others as an excuse for lawsuits that drag on so long they doom ambitious projects.

With environmentalists staunchly against loosening its requirements, Democrats who control the Legislature have resisted making sweeping changes to the act. Instead, they’ve approved a series of one-off arrangements to help individual teams by: expanding the use of eminent domain to acquire land, making it harder for courts to delay construction, or limiting the length of time for resolving environmental lawsuits. They even passed a law in 2011 entitling big projects to expedite environmental lawsuits under certain conditions, but teams continue to seek special deals for broader relief.

Lawmakers don’t always approve them. Last year they shot down the Clippers’ request—but it was unusual because moneyed interests were lobbying on both sides. Owners of the Forum, a nearby concert arena, lobbied hard against the Clippers. The dueling interests combined spent more than $1 million lobbying on the bill, and owners of the Forum aired commercials attacking the state senator who carried it. A few months after Forum owners killed the bill, they showered legislators with $45,000 in campaign contributions.

Assemblywoman Sydney Kamlager-Dove, a Los Angeles Democrat carrying this year’s version of the Clippers bill, said she expects another tense fight. The Clippers want to build their arena about a mile from the Forum, creating competition for big events.

“With so much money on the line,” she said, “I can only suspect that they’re going to pull out the stops to defeat this.”

Opponents of the Clippers arena point out that the team’s proposal would impact much more than construction of the arena alone, which would cover just one-sixth of the land for the entire development project. They say it could allow stores, offices or homes to be built on the site without the normal environmental review—even if an arena is never constructed.

Kamlager-Dove and other supporters of big sports projects cast them as economic boosts to their communities, bringing construction jobs during the building phase and concessions jobs afterward. These benefits can be lost or delayed, they say, by environmental litigation. The Clippers and A’s bills this year would limit the timeline for environmental lawsuits to nine months.


The Los Angeles Clippers photographed by David Jones for Creative Commons.

That’s a critical perk for developing a new Oakland A’s stadium with surrounding shops and homes, said Assemblyman Rob Bonta, an Alameda Democrat carrying the bill for his hometown team.

“They can’t allow the project to be delayed forever. They need some certainty,” he said. “This is not something to benefit rich and powerful folks. It’s to benefit a community that needs housing, that needs good jobs.”

The courts have argued that limiting the time to review environmental lawsuits unfairly puts those cases at the top of the heap, denying ordinary Californians equal access to justice.

“A case involving elder abuse or asbestos litigation involving dying plaintiffs would move back in the line. A personal injury action involving a severely brain damaged child, whose parents are simply seeking to get their recovery to take care of that child, would move back in line. And there are not lobbying groups that come to this Legislature to represent those interests,” Dan Pone, a lobbyist for the Judicial Council, said at a hearing earlier this year.

Lawmakers approved the nine-month limit for the Kings and Warriors arenas, but this year rejected applying it challenges over community plans and construction of new housing.

And yet they’re on the cusp of approving a bill as part of the state budget that would place the nine-month limit on environmental lawsuits over a project close to home: a $1.2 billion re-make of their Capitol offices.

Sen. Steve Glazer of Orinda, who carried the bill to expedite court review of environmental lawsuits over housing that was shot down by fellow Democrats, called out the irony in a hearing this week:

“And now we have here… this expedited process not for billionaires and their stadium projects, but for us, the politicians, and our own building. So where does that help us on our issues of affordable housing, when we’re going to provide that fast-track for us but not for everybody else, except for the wealthiest and the most powerful?”

CEQA: What’s Really Behind CA’s Affordable Housing Shortage?

CEQA: What’s Really Behind CA’s Affordable Housing Shortage?

ERIC BIBER 02 OCTOBER 2017




CALIFORNIA--On Friday, the Governor signed a package of housing bills intended to help address the soaring costs of housing in many metro areas in California. Follow-up coverage of that package has (rightly) indicated that those bills are a drop in the bucket in terms of addressing California’s housing crisis.

One theme that emerges in that coverage and also coverage of other CEQA legislation (as well as a recent op-ed by two economists) is an argument that the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), is a significant contributor to the housing crisis. The question is, is that really correct? The answer is fairly important if the legislature is (appropriately) going to continue looking at this issue in the next legislative session.

The main argument goes along these lines – there is a lot of regulation of housing development in California. More regulation increases the cost of supplying housing, and therefore the cost of housing. Less regulation would facilitate more housing supply, and lower costs.

It may be that overall, regulation of land-use development in California is a significant contributor to the state’s housing crisis. But CEQA is only a part of the overall regulation of California’s land-use development, as I’ve noted in an earlier post. If CEQA is a significant obstacle to housing development, then I would argue that changing CEQA in ways that minimize the loss in environmental protection and maximize the benefits in increased housing production should be our goal. But in order to determine whether changing CEQA is a prudent strategy, we need to understand in a better way how local land-use processes are affecting housing production in California.

Indeed, targeting a state environmental review statute may do little to address the housing supply crisis if local regulation of land-use development through planning and zoning rules is the real issue. In general, in California if you want to develop a major housing project, you need approval from the local government. That approval process can be complicated, and it varies across jurisdictions.

One important way it can vary is the extent to which the local government gives itself discretion to approve or disapprove a project that a developer wants to pursue. Some development can occur “as of right” – in that the zoning and other land-use rules mean that a project, if it falls within certain guidelines, does not need any additional scrutiny by the local government to approve it. As long as the project meets those standards, it can get a building permit.

Other development requires some form of discretionary approval by the local government – and what types of issues require discretionary approval by the local government can vary across jurisdictions. And here is the key thing: CEQA only applies to a project if the local government’s land-use approval process is discretionary. If the project is “as of right,” as a general matter, no CEQA compliance is required.

So that leaves some important questions: How much development is actually occurring as of right versus through a discretionary form? If CEQA review is occurring, in what form (there are multiple levels, with differences in how burdensome they can be)? And why is a local government choosing to make certain kinds of development as of right or discretionary?

That last question is key – local governments in many circumstances have control over whether to make land-use development discretionary or not, and that is the trigger for CEQA. If the regulatory burden that purportedly slows down the development process is primarily coming from local government decisions to make land-use permits discretionary, and different jurisdictions are treating similar projects differently—and they are doing so in response to strong political or fiscal pressures—then changing CEQA may do very little to address our housing supply crisis.

Some local governments may choose to maintain discretionary review over many projects – including the associated public participation requirements and the possibility for lawsuits afterwards – if the political and fiscal pressures to retain discretionary control over land-use decisions persist. Indeed, some cities may even create their own versions of CEQA to put that kind of analysis back in.

The stakes here are high. Misguided CEQA reform could undermine environmental protection throughout the state, without meaningful improvements to our housing crisis.

None of the articles about CEQA playing a role in housing costs do a granular, project-level analysis of how CEQA is contributing to the problem of housing costs. (That’s only fair – journalists have limited time and resources to do those kind of long-term research projects. For an excellent example of data collection about housing production by each city by Liam Dillon, a journalist at the LA Times, see this article.) But none of the existing academic studies of housing costs and regulation, whether national or California-specific, do that kind of analysis either.

I’m part of a team of researchers here at Berkeley that is doing that work now. We hope to have initial results in the summer of 2018, results that can better inform the debate and make sure that we properly diagnose, and therefore properly address, the connections between our important land-use and environmental laws and the housing crisis in California.

(Professor Eric Biber’s teaching and research interests are environmental and natural resources law, administrative law, and property. Prior to joining Berkeley in 2006, he worked as a litigator in the Denver office of Earthjustice, a public-interest nonprofit organization specializing in public lands and other environmental cases. He is a member of both the Colorado and California bars. This perspective was posted originally at Legal Planet)

Examining the Local Land Use Entitlement Process

Getting it Right: Examining the Local Land Use Entitlement Process in California to Inform Policy and Process

FEBRUARY 2018
*

California’s housing affordability crisis has rightly received a great deal of attention by state lawmakers, the press, academics, and ordinary Californians. Important questions raised in this discussion are: What laws or regulations might impede housing construction in high-cost areas? What solutions might help reduce those barriers with a minimum impact on other important values, such as environmental protection, public participation, and equitable treatment of low-income communities of color? More specifically, does state environmental law (the California Environmental Quality Act, CEQA), or local land-use regulations, constrain housing development?

To help answer that last question, we collected data on all residential development projects (of more than five units) over a three-year period in five Bay Area cities (San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, Redwood City, and Palo Alto). We analyzed the law applicable to these residential development projects, including the local zoning ordinances, and interviewed important actors in the residential development process in each of these five cities.

We are collecting data and examining other cities in California now, but provide our findings from these first five below.

KEY FINDINGS

We found that these local governments are imposing discretionary review processes on all residential development projects of five or more units within their borders. That means even if these developments comply with the underlying zoning code, they require additional scrutiny from the local government before obtaining a building permit. This triggers CEQA review of these projects. In other words, what drives whether and how environmental review occurs for residential projects is local land-use law. Our data shows that in many cases, these cities appear to impose redundant or multiple layers of discretionary review on projects.

We also found that the processes by which local governments review residential development projects under their zoning ordinances and under CEQA varies from city to city. As a result, developers seeking to construct residential projects often must learn to navigate very different and complicated land-use systems, even if they work in the same region. This appears to particularly burden smaller development projects. Our data also shows that these cities rely on streamlined CEQA procedures for the majority of their residential projects, including many large projects. The effectiveness, however, of those streamlined procedures in terms of reducing timeframes for project approval varies greatly from city to city, indicating that a range of non-legal factors (such as practices in planning departments, or the amount of resources dedicated to planning) may impact development timelines.

Finally, our own research process also revealed that the kind of project level data that we collected, while essential to crafting effective solutions to the California housing crisis, is not easily available. We therefore recommend that the legislature develop a consistent and uniform data reporting pro-gram for this data, which will benefit policymakers, developers, and the public as a whole.

*
IMMEDIATE POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS

The value of improving access to good data cannot be overstated. Although top-down state reform of environmental regulations (or local regulation over land use) may encounter substantial difficulties, something the state could do now would be to provide guidance to jurisdictions on how to provide better access to accurate project-specific data on land use approvals, and require all jurisdictions to maintain relevant data in a central repository.

Though all our five cities make efforts to provide access to project approval data, this access could be greatly improved by providing the information in a centralized repository that uses consistent terminology across jurisdictions. To the extent that processes are so dissimilar that they cannot be analogized, this centralized repository should contain explanations. Smaller steps would also be welcome. Linking existing geographic information systems (GIS) or zoning data with assessor parcel information and building permit systems, for example, would be a great first step, particularly because housing element law at the time only required annual reporting based on building permits issued not numbers of units entitled. In our experience, it is not always easy to cross-check housing element reporting obligations with building entitlements because not everything that gets entitled is immediately built. Linking these systems to provide this data could make housing element reporting more robust.

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Download the Report:

Getting it Right: Examining the Local Land Use Entitlement Process in California to Inform Policy and Process (Feb 2018)

Developer asks "How do we kill local control?"

Bill Witte, CEO of Relative California asks CASA how they kill local opposition to real estate projects. He cites the city of Brisbane, CA (pop 4500) as fool hardy to favor profitable commercial development over a massive expansion of housing that will triple the population. Mr. Witte obviously has many millions of dollars to make if the California legislature and regional government develop "teeth" to punish communities from opposing real estate projects for the "public good". This is cronyism. Local democracy must remain strong against strong arm tactics of other government bodies. The local community will be forced to build the infrastructure, grow their government and deal with the increased crime, traffic and other headaches of urban living. Stay strong Brisbane!

Affordable housing may be limited by new state environmental rules

29Feb, 2016Matt Fleming

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A new rule designed to promote urban development and curb both car usage and greenhouse gas emissions may end up making cities less affordable and more congested, critics say.

The rule would modify how traffic is evaluated during a critical phase for planning for building developments, shifting the focus from traffic congestion to the increase in miles traveled. New building projects would be viewed as adversely affecting the environment if they increase vehicle miles traveled by more than a regional average without offsets.

The Brown administration — which was tasked with creating the new rule by the Legislature — believes this shift will encourage the development of urban housing, bringing people into the cities and giving them more transportation options beyond the car.

“This proposal will actually help affordable housing projects, especially near transit,” said Christopher Calfee, General Counsel for California’s state Office of Planning and Research. Calfee said the new proposed guidelines will streamline the process as it removes other factors, like aesthetics and parking — from being considered to be negative for the environment.

But critics say applying this standard in instances outside of specific urban areas near major transportation spots — areas called Transit Priority Areas — will hurt the development of housing in suburban and rural areas where property values are lower, and hurt local economies by thwarting new development.

“We’d prefer to see approaches that continue to incentivize transit, incentivize (re-purposing old buildings),” said Richard Lambros, the managing director of the Southern California Leadership Council. Lambros was critical of the new rule, saying while it benefits areas near mass transit, it could limit the development in lower cost, suburban and rural areas.

Greenhouse gasses

When the Legislature tasked Brown’s administration with writing the new rules in 2013, it asked that the new rule “promote the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, the development of multi-modal transportation networks, and a diversity of land uses.” This coincided with a statewide goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by 2030.

In addition to promoting alternative means of travel, the new regulations impose a “road diet,” meaning limiting the amount of new road lanes built — a 4 percent cap statewide between now and 2030.

“We respect that we’re trying to achieve important (greenhouse gas) reduction goals in California, but we can’t develop the policy to do that in a way that doesn’t account for unintended consequences,” said Lambros.

But the Brown administration contends that this doesn’t put a cap on roads (although road diet is OPR’s term), providing instead a threshold for when the mileage standard is considered significant.

“Some new roads will actually decrease (the new standard called Vehicle Miles Traveled),” said Calfee. “Others will increase it. Even if that increase is significant, lead agencies may override the impact and still approve the project.”

Lawsuits

The 46-year-old California Environmental Quality Act requires developers to obtain an Environmental Impact Report during the planning period, which evaluates a project’s impact on the local environment. This public document advises local governments when they are deciding to approve or deny a project, and it’s in this report that the new guidelines will be applied.

Local governments are not actually required to deny a project based on a negative report. However, many proposed developments end up being fought in court — by environmentalists, opposing developers and so on — so cities and counties can overlook these guidelines at their own peril. In other words, overlooking the environmental impact report makes a project less defensible.

“It gives more ammunition to people who want to stop capacity projects for whatever reason,” said Hasan Ikhrata, executive director of the Southern California Association of Governments, whose group is concerned that the new rule will subject hundreds of projects in their six counties to new standards midstream, which they say are largely un-achievable.

History

Under CEQA (pronounced see-qua), many factors were considered in an environmental impact report — a requirement for new development. Some of the factors were transportation, aesthetics and parking.

The 2013 bill said that parking and aesthetics in certain instances in the Transit Priority Areas were no longer considered significant impacts on the environment. These areas were created by the Legislature to encourage high-density development in areas where there is existing or proposed public transportation — like areas near metro stops.

The bill also tasked the Brown administration to come up with new guidelines on determining the transportation impact, as the old guidelines were based on traffic congestion — making congestion worse was considered an adverse impact.

The proposed modification shifts the focus from congestion to vehicle miles traveled, as compared to the regional average. So, increasing the average amount of miles that vehicles travel compared to the regional average is considered adverse if it’s without plans to offset the mileage.

Affordable Housing

So with the new standard, close proximity to proposed or existing mass transit is certainly helpful, and critics say it’s an unofficial requirement. Because there are existing roads and generally adequate access to public transportation, high density projects near urban centers will fare better in the CEQA/environmental review process.

But areas further away from the urban center would likely be more affected. Critics say this could affect the access to affordable housing, since property values and rents usually fall the further away development gets from the city. Many critics aren’t against the new standard, just it’s widespread application.

“We’re ok with (the new standard),” said Ikhrata. “But what we’re saying is you shouldn’t subject every project to this test. This should be done on an overall system, and be able to mitigate in other places. No project is going to pass that test.

VIDEO : "Won't the massive developments affect Miller Creek Water Shed too?"

At the May 13, 2013 Marin County Planning Commission meeting,  Lucas Valley Resident, Pamela McKnight comments the effect of development on the Miller Creek Watershed.  Specifically, she mentions the email sent by Kate Crecelius about the possible sale of the Idylberry School for housing and the effect it will have on run off.  In the staff report found at Planning meeting video, agenda and staff report,   you can view Commissionor Crecelius remarks.

We thank Pamela McKnight and other residents for speaking up for our community and demanding commonsense planning that respects the character of the community and its long standing community plan.


Miller Creek is a pristine watershed.

California's Blue Utopia

  

by Robert J. Cristiano 01/04/2013

The Progressive wing of the Democrat Party sits at the left end of their spectrum. JFK’s liberal positions would be regarded as moderate today. Progressives have a unique vision of what a blue state utopia would look like that begins with clean air, clean water, and green energy. Over the last twenty years, with the backing of the public employee unions that control the political process in California, the Progressives have managed to neuter the Republican Party and turn California Blue, owning every elective office in the state. They did not need much help according to Dan Walters, who stated, “Even the most anti-immigrant, anti-gay marriage, anti-tax, anti-abortion Republican activist must now recognize that with the party's wipeout in last month's elections, continuing down its recent path is a plunge into complete irrelevance”.

In 2012, the progressive Democrats captured a super majority in both houses so that with their Progressive governor, they no longer require a single Republican vote to pass any form of legislation, leaving conservatives an “irrelevant” minority. As an independent businessman, I have created many jobs and opportunities. But despite my contributions to society, and the taxes I have paid over the last thirty plus years, the Progressives believe I need to pay more so that I pay “my fair share.” Only when I pay my fair share can their blue vision of utopia be fulfilled.

What is my fair share? Under existing Federal and State income tax rates, I will pay 50% of my income in taxes. In California alone, my “fair share” on a million dollars of income is $133,000 each year. In exchange for my taxes, I receive little from the state. In addition, I pay gasoline taxes that pay for the upkeep of the highways. I pay airline taxes that maintain the airports I use. I pay among the highest in the nation sales tax on what I consume. I pay property taxes for the schools my grown children no longer use (they have already left California). I pay utility taxes for the upgrade of infrastructure. I pay higher health insurance rates. I already pay more than my own way.

I used to develop new homes in California and paid development fees, school fees, park fees, bridge & thoroughfare fees, endangered species fees, utility hook up fees, and processing fees to employ the city workers who reviewed my plans. Such fees totaled $40,000 to $75,000 for each new home built in California. I more than paid my own way. Such new homes are no longer feasible in California considering that home prices have fallen between 20-40% since 2008. And with the new regulations to be imposed in 2013 with the passage of the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, housing and energy will cost even more making new houses even less attractive than they are now.

A problem in Blue Utopia
The number 1 topic of conversation amongst the despised 1% in California today is when you are leaving California or whether you can leave. Property owners who cannot move their apartment building or office complexes can move their homes and change their residency. On a flight from Austin, Texas to Orange County last week, I sat next to the owner of a substantial manufacturing business whose plant is in the inland southern California community of Ontario. He lives in Austin, flies in on Monday and home on Thursday. He spends less than 180 days a year in California. His savings in state income taxes more than pays for his airfare, hotel and rental car expenses. His home and gas and energy all cost less in Texas. More significantly, he will not expand his plant in California and intends to move his plant and people to Texas over the next five years.

What do the progressives have to say about a successful businessman wanting to move out of the state? Some like Paul McCloskey who recently attempted to pass a ballot measure for a Wealth Tax imposed on those leaving the state, would like to follow the French. France imposed a 75% tax rate on anyone making more than one million Euros per year. France’s Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said about people leaving France for lower rates, “We cannot fight poverty if those with the most, and sometimes with a lot, do not show solidarity and a bit of generosity," McCloskey’s proposal would impose an additional 17.5% tax on those with incomes exceeding $150,000 ($250,000 joint) and 35% on incomes exceeding $350,000/year. He would use the extra income to purchase shares of California public companies to “influence their environmental policies and practices”. While his ballot measure did not succeed, it is sobering to think the Democrats do not need a single Republican vote to pass legislation such as this.

So many of the 1% are quietly leaving. The exodus has already begun. Spectrum Location Solutions reported that 254 companies left California in 2011. Despite claims of an upturn, a press release by the State Controller’s office last week revealed tax revenues from both personal income taxes and corporate taxes fell during the month of this November. Revenue from personal income dropped 19 percent below projections while corporate tax revenue was down a whopping 213.4 percent. Such declines will continue unabated for years to come as the California brain drain proceeds.

When a government becomes a one-party state, nothing can stop the utopians and zealots of either party. In California, there’s no brake on progressives imposing its vision of Blue Utopia on its people. California may have clean water, clean air and green energy but at the expense of its people, prosperity and fiscal health.

The problems in Blue Utopian society will be similar to the unintended consequence of protecting the Delta Smelt in the Central Valley. The Blues labeled this tiny fish, previously known as “bait,” as an endangered species. The Endangered Species Act was created to protect the American Bald Eagle but now extends protection for the Delta Smelt, forcing water to be diverted from the farms of the Central Valley to the Pacific Ocean. The Delta Stewardship Council shows the water cutoffs had no effect on the smelt population. But it did a devastating effect on another endangered species: the California family. When 300,000 acres went fallow, 37,000 jobs were lost. Unemployment has reached 40% in some areas of the Central Valley. Food lines have appeared in the world's most fertile agricultural valley. Farmworkers were forced to accept bags of carrots grown in China. Orchards that existed for decades died without water. The Central Valley now needs food stamps to feed its residents.

The Blues are excited to impose their vision of Utopia on California. I, for one, will not be here to see it. My home goes on the market next month. My company has already re-located to another state. My children have already moved away seeking a future more promising than anticipated here in California. It is ironic because that is why I left my parents in Cleveland, Ohio to come to California four decades ago. I will be sad to leave my home and friendships acquired over decades. But I realize our leaders will neither notice, and if they did, they would not care.
 
As the tax revenues continue to fall (as they always do when rates increase), the Blues will rail against the remaining 1%, claiming that if only “they” would pay their fair share, things would be perfect. They will raise rates, fees, costs, and penalties again on the business class, and will do so as long as they hold power.

But there is a problem in Blue Utopia. Short term, the state may be supported by the occasional Internet or Housing Bubble, but the money will finally run out. When it does, maybe they will ask us to come back to the Golden State. They will promise to lower rates and turn the water back on. But it is already too late for the dead orchards of the Central Valley. And it will soon be too late for all but a handful of entrepreneurs of California.

¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨

Robert J Cristiano PhD is the Real Estate Professional in Residence at Chapman University in Orange, CA, a Senior Fellow at the Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco, CA and President of the international investment firm, L88 Companies LLC in Washington DC – Newport Beach – Denver - Prague. He has been a successful real estate developer in California for more than thirty years and now makes his home in Austin, Texas.

California Supreme Court to Decide Major CEQA, Climate Change Case

Justices' Latest Grant of Review Continues Supreme Court's Focus on Environmental Law

To paraphrase former President Ronald Reagan, there they go again.

The California Supreme Court on Wednesday granted review in an important case at the intersection of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and one of the state’s most important climate change laws.  The case, Cleveland National Forest Foundation v. San Diego Association of Governments, is the latest in an unprecedented series of CEQA cases taken up by the Supreme Court.  It’s also the justices’ first opportunity to confront the important legal and policy issues presented by the landmark 2008 climate change legislation popularly known as SB 375.

SB 375, formally titled the Sustainable Communities and Climate Protection Act of 2008, for the first time links California regional transportation planning and funding with state land use regulation and planning–the ultimate goal being to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from California’s transportation sector, the state’s single largest source of those emissions.  The legislation does so by requiring each of the state’s regional transportation agencies to incorporate a “sustainable communities strategy” (SCS) into its periodically updated regional transportation plan.  SB 375’s objective is to incentivize more sustainable land use and transportation practices, thereby reducing California’s aggregate GHG emissions.

The San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) was the first regional transportation agency in California to adopt an updated transportation plan with an SB 375-required SCS component.  SANDAG did so after a lengthy regulatory process that included preparation of an environmental impact report (EIR) under CEQA to assess the overall environmental consequences of its proposed transportation plan and SCS.  The regional plan and SCS that SANDAG ultimately approved, while projected to achieve short-term GHG emission reduction goals, does not meet those goals over the long term.  Critically, however, the SANDAG EIR did not identify and address this inconsistency; nor did EIR focus on potential mitigation measures to address the projected environmental impacts of the regional plan’s GHG emissions.

Environmental organizations and housing advocates sued SANDAG, challenging the EIR’s adequacy under CEQA.  California Attorney General Kamala Harris intervened in the litigation on behalf of the People of the State of California and in support of the plaintiffs, a controversial decision that dramatically raised the stakes and profile of the litigation.

The trial court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and Attorney General Harris, a development reported inan earlier post by Legal Planet colleague Ethan Elkind.  SANDAG appealed, and a divided panel of the Court of Appeal affirmed, finding the EIR prepared by the agency in support of its regional transportation plan and SCS to be legally deficient in numerous respects.  (Ethan did a nice job of covering that decision as well in another previous post.)

SANDAG then sought review from the California Supreme Court regarding a number of perceived flaws in the Court of Appeal’s 2014 opinion.  All seven justices of the Supreme Court concurred in today’s decision to take up the case, but they limited review to a single issue which they reframed as follows:

 Must the environmental impact report for a regional transportation plan include an analysis of the plan’s consistency with the greenhouse gas emission reduction goals reflected in Executive Order No. S-3-05 to comply with the California Environmental Quality Act?

(Executive Order No. S-3-05, issued by former Governor Schwarzenegger in 2005, establishes the GHG reduction targets for 2020 and 2050 that SB 375 is designed to help achieve on a statewide basis.)

The California Supreme Court’s grant of review in Cleveland National Forest Foundation is noteworthy for several reasons:

• First, it continues and underscores the Supreme Court’s continuing interest in–some would say obsession with–environmental law in general and CEQA in particular.  (I commented on this noteworthy trend in a recent post.)  The justices’ grant of review again brings the number of CEQA cases pending before the Court to nine and the number of pending environmental cases overall to 20–both records in California Supreme Court history.  Cleveland National Forest Foundation, moreover, is the second currently pending case before the justices to involve the intersection of CEQA and climate change, joining California Building Industry Assn. v. Bay Area Air Quality Management Dist. (which I discussed in the above-referenced, earlier post).
• Cleveland National Forest Foundation, while a CEQA case, also represents the first opportunity for the Supreme Court to address and apply SB 375, an important and particularly innovative component of California’s suite of laws designed to reduce the state’s aggregate GHG emissions.  The Court of Appeal decision in the case [now vacated as to the issue the Supreme Court will review] gave an expansive interpretation to SB 375 and the long-term objectives the legislation is designed to achieve.  It will be interesting to see if the Supreme Court applies a similarly muscular construction of SB 375 or, alternatively, adopts the more technical and limited interpretation of the legislation advanced by SANDAG.
• Finally, another reason that watching the Cleveland National Forest Foundation case play out in the Supreme Court will be fascinating spectator sport is that it involves a veritable Super Bowl of CEQA advocacy.  The public interest plaintiffs are represented by managing partner Rachel Hooper of Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger, one of the very best environmental and land use law firms in  California.  Attorney General Harris, aligning herself with plaintiffs, is ably represented in the case by Principal Deputy State Solicitor General Janill Richards, herself a veteran, accomplished environmental litigator.  And SANDAG’s counsel before the Supreme Court is Margaret Sohagi, one of California’s most experienced and respected CEQA experts.  To say that this key California Supreme Court case will be ably litigated on all sides is a serious understatement.

Ericka Erickson advocates Multifamily homes in Single Family Neighborhoods to Stop Segregation

see full June24, 2013 Planning commission meeting here

Ericka Erickson,  Marinwood Mom, Housing Advocate, and recently appointed Planning Commissioner will be submitting her recommendations for the Housing Element SEIR  (Environmental Impact Report) for Unincorporated Marin and the Housing Element that puts 70% of all affordable housing for unincorporated Marin in Marinwood-Lucas Valley on July 8th.

In her professional life she is a housing advocate and community organizer with Marin Grassroots (www.maringrassroots.org) where she is an advocate for "social equity"  In the above clip, she argues for the inclusion of the Los Ranchitos  affordable housing site in a single family neighborhood because single family home zoning is a "tool for segregation".  

We have no idea what data she uses to support this assertion but clearly zoning policy is being established on these ideological grounds.  So essentially, if multifamily homes have a right to be anywhere,then single family neighborhoods will become illegal in Marinwood-Lucas Valley.  

This is another good reason that you must speak out against the Housing Element.

See related story: Ericka Erickson, our newest planning commissioner

The Apartment building next door to you? Planners advocate placing multifamily homes in single family neighborhoods to "combat racism". Essentially this outlaws single family neighborhoods in favor of multiunit dwellings. Radical proposals like these have been implemented in Seattle over the outrage of the community. http://www.onehomeperlot.com/

It doesn't sound like a "planning exercise" to me.  These housing advocates are demanding immediate implementation of the Housing Element to build in our neighborhoods

Here is the petition being solicited by www.maringrassroots.org

Housing Element Petition

Dear Marin County Planning Commission,

            As advocates supporting social equity, racial justice, inclusivity, and fair housing in Marin County, we are writing to support the draft 2012 Housing Element.

            We recognize that the Planning Commission Staff has analyzed the best approach to increase affordable housing in Marin County in order to satisfy compliance with HUD.  We support policies and zoning designations in the Housing Element that allow and encourage affordable housing. We recognize that supporting affordable housing can be implemented best when the Marin County is following the State Housing law and the Housing Element draft guidelines.

            We urge the Planning Commission of Marin County to adopt the Housing Element in its current form and advocate for expanding affordable housing options that include lower to mid range incomes. Marin Grassroots issues the following recommendations in order to ensure that affordable housing is implemented to the fullest extent in accordance to the Marin County Housing Element:

1. In agreement with section V-9 2.k, (Promote and Ensure Equal Housing Opportunity), we support making information available regarding equal opportunity housing through a new and more inclusive study of Analysis of Impediments (AI) to Fair Housing. We ask that the Planning Commission be proactive and begin the AI immediately, in order to ensure that the barriers to fair housing choice are studied to their fullest extent. Additionally, members of the Action Coalition for Equity (ACE) be included as identifying stakeholders. We also encourage that the written material addressing equal opportunity housing rights is available at all public locations, including transit hubs.

2. Form a Steering Committee within 3 months of approving the Housing Element, to advise and oversee the implementation and timing of the Housing Element. The committee should ensure that the Housing Element programs work towards furthering the platforms of Title VI to affirmatively further fair housing by fostering inclusive housing patterns throughout Marin County regardless of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status, or disability and ensuring that all programs are being conducted in a non-discriminatory manner.

3. Increase funds and resources for grant programs and government assistance to better incentivize local anti-displacement due to market rate housing and discrimination including lower-income status and race. Fund mitigations in Marin County, such as land banking and housing rehab.

We will be following and supporting the Marin County Housing Element. Thank you for your support to increasing fair housing and removing all barriers to discrimination to housing in Marin County.

Relax Environmental Red Tape?

You gotta have a chuckle listening to these guys justify ignoring responsible environmental planning for their "Smart Growth" projects.  They sound like any other business people crying "unfair" when the rules are difficult for them. 

The earth and the community does not care whether the negative environmental impact is caused by "for profit housing" or "non profit housing" , "smart growth" or "subdivisions".  Irresponsible environmental policy makes us all poorer.

The point of CEQA is to protect the earth. It is not to penalize developers.  We should not have special exemptions for "smart growth developers".   Is there really a difference when protected species die when an affordable housing is built vs for profit housing?

They also reveal the tactic of changing "red tape" as an essential legal strategy to shift the legal burden to the county to avoid legal action by the "pesky NIMBYS" that may have a problem with their development.  So according to them, low income, Smart Growth developers should have special legal protections not available to ordinary citizens or private developers.

In this video they acknowledge that high density infill development DOES CAUSE MORE POLLUTION AND TRAFFIC.   Somehow, they feel they should get a free pass because they are keeping pollution out of areas they didn't develop.

Some logic.

Do we really want these fools bringing pollution and traffic into our community so they can make a quick buck?

PLAN BAY AREA POLICY MAPS outline upzoning, new fees, and incentives for developers in Marinwood-Lucas Valley

Click on MTC Plan Bay Area Policy Maps

and please study the shocking changes planned for the Bay Area.

discussed at the MTC Board Meeting on July 13, 2012

The MTC published these policy maps to help planners visualize the "opportunities within the grand vision" of the One Bay Area Plan.  They call for massive urbanization throughout the Bay Area through a combination of upzoning, transportation funds,  urban growth boundary, development fess (or penalties) and grants.   

You'll find that you may have to pay a fine of up to $50,000 (above current development fees) to discourage residential development in outlying areas.  Non-residential development may have to pay a fee of up to $20.00 per square foot.   Other development in the "approved areas" (such as the Marinwood Priority Development Area) may receive grants for building.   The Marinwood PDA is a "transit neighborhood" and will be upzoned to 50 units per acre vs. 4 single family houses per acre on most streets now.  We will add from 1500 to 4000  housing units to the current area East of Las Gallinas.

Make no mistake, the One Bay Area Plan is nothing short of a radical scheme to reshape the bay area communities, economy, transportation, and government.  This overambitious central plan will create an effective  "city state" and strip away property rights, local democracy and economic opportunity for millions. 

Supervisor Susan Adams needs to address the community with the Truth. She has served on the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) for over 9 1/2 years including two years as Vice President.  

Supervisor Susan Adams spent 9 1/2 years on ABAG

and served as the Vice President for 2 years.

Enough, Ms. Adams! Please tell us of the full Plan Bay Area plans for Marinwood-Lucas Valley!

www.marinrecall.org

Marin Supervisor Steve Kinsey is the President of MTC

How to Stifle Dissent about Affordable Housing in Marin

True Democracy requires True Freedom of Speech.

By Mimi Steel

These days, if you look at most government meetings that require public input, they are billed as “visioning sessions to build consensus”.  To the untrained ear, this sounds like a noble goal but the goal of these sessions is anything but noble.  Visioning is a term of art that refers to the Delphi Technique.  The technique was designed to make sure that the public “chooses” the outcome desired by the organizers.  A good way to describe “ visioning” is that it is  the meeting equivalent of a multiple choice test, except that  the correct choice(s) or best answer(s) are probably not one of the options and there is no place for mark “none of the above.”

The Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) are in the middle of developing a 25 year soviet style top down plan that combines housing, transportation and land use.    This regional plan would force some drastic changes to communities throughout the region (7 million people in 9 counties and 109 cities).  Until a year ago, very few people were aware of the plan.  Those who were aware were generally stakeholders who stood to benefit from the policies and their uniformed/misinformed surrogates.    Then suddenly some Bay Area concerned citizens crashed the party and the game changed.  They quickly realized that the sessions, conducted using “visioning,” were manipulative and deceptive .

With average citizens showing up at these meetings and voicing their dissatisfaction with the plan and the disingenuous meeting format, MTC-ABAG realized they had a potential public relations disaster on their hands.  Board Member Ecklund expressed concerns that the process was not successful on July 19, 2012, listen here. The MTC-ABAG board discussed that the visioning sessions were “painful” on November 9, 2012, listen here . Both videos clearly acknowledge there were problems with the execution of the public outreach sessions.  So they changed the format for the new sessions coming up in January 2013 in a letter entitled  Plan Bay Area Public Engagement Letter dated December 7, 2012 . Different format, same objective of giving the appearance of public input while controlling the outcome of the debate.

It’s time for MTC-ABAG to come clean and develop a format that insures fair, honest and open dialog at the next round of public input sessions to discuss Plan Bay Area / One Bay Area.  Here are some suggestions:

•  Public outreach meetings for One Bay Area (Plan Bay Area) must be conducted in the evening in every county to allow working, taxpaying citizens to attend.
•  Sessions must be televised and covered on local radio programs in each county so that the public really does have an opportunity to get engaged and weigh in on this
•  Promoters, supporters and surrogates of MTC/ABAG must be clearly identified as they have a vested interest in promoting the favored plan. These entities or individuals will not be eligible to vote on the plans.
• The format must be changed from the previous “visioning sessions” to an open forum where a panel of concerned citizens can present information on each of the key areas. Each panel will have 10 minutes to present or refute MTC/ABAG arguments presented to date. This format will provide for diversity of opinion and give citizens their fair share of time to speak on these subjects:
• The effectiveness of smart growth concepts—where have these concepts been successfully employed? Where have they not performed as claimed, and the consequences
• The issue of public transit vs individual automobile
• The issue of forced, subsidized high density housing near mass transit
• The issue of whether zoning authority should lie with a nine-county panel rather than locally elected city councils and planning boards:
• The ethics of demanding that a city comply with the One Bay Plan or lose their road repair funds.
• The assumption that you can balance jobs and housing to insure minimum commutes
•  MTC-ABAG must present the annual measured and recorded GHG levels for all nine Bay Area Counties from 2000-2010 to comply with California Executive Order 5-3-05..By presenting these figures MTC/ABAG will provide the 2010 baseline GHG levels for periods going forward. If measured (not calculated) GHG did not go down then –on what basis can you assure us that this 2030 plan will accomplish any reductions? If it did go down, what proof do you have that your plans were the actual cause of the reduction?

The taxpaying, concerned citizens of the Bay Area are awake and aware of what is going on.  We are not going  away .  We want an honest debate on the issues.  If citizens decide they do not want the plan for their  town or county, they should be free to walk away from it without any repercussions, such as loss of road repair funds.  We look forward to MTC-ABAG rethinking their public input strategy or there will be more “painful” experiences moving forward.

Marinwood-Lucas Valley is receiving 71% of all affordable housing in Unincorporated Marin