CaliforniaCityNews.org

Its Official - Howard Jarvis Eminent Domain Measure is All Wet

By Mike Madrid

For the past few months there has been a rather lopsided debate over whether or not the rent control/eminent domain measure that is gathering signatures and being funded by Apartment Owners and Mobile Home Park operators would blow up Republican plans for new water storage and delivery in California.

New Housing Is Being Blamed for Global Warming – Why?

By W. Wes Keusder
Chair - California Building Industry Association
(originally printed in the Sept-Oct issue of California Builder)

At a time when California still needs between 220,000 and 240,000 new homes and apartments every year just to keep pace with our state’s population growth, some policy-makers have decided that they should impose immediate further restrictions on housing because building housing contributes to global warming.

In fact, our Attorney General recently filed a lawsuit challenging San Bernardino County’s general plan and is warning other jurisdictions that their plans may be targeted as well unless they take the impacts of climate change into account when planning for growth.

Fight Sprawl, Save the Earth?

The Urban Land Institute (ULI) has released "Growing Cooler - Evidence on Urban Development and Climate Change," stating that 'urban development is both a key contributor to climate change and an essential factor.'  Also, a new collation of environmentalists suggest reducing sprawl is essential to fighting off global warming.  Catch it in the CoCo Times.

League of Cities' President Speaks!

Exclusive! New audio interview with newly minted League of California Cities President Jim Madaffer, who shares his views with California City News on housing, eminent domain, and what will determine success for city governments in 2008.

Rent Control and the Law of Unintended Consequences

By Mike Madrid

While cities can be very innovative and creative in finding public policy solutions, by and large local governments are a pretty conservative bunch. More often than not cities follow  the example set by others and don’t often stick their necks out when it comes to breaking new ground in controversial areas.  So it’s with some fascination that we watch the current rent control measure being circulated by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayer Association and funded in large part by the mobile home park and apartment owners lobbies.

Prop 1B and You

Prop 1B allocated approximately $20 billion for improvement to the states transportation infrastructure. Will your city be seeing any of those dollars? A city by city breakdown is available here.

Legislative Bingo - The story behind the story

By Mike Madrid

This morning the Sacramento Bee ran a story about lawmakers playing a silly game on the floor of the legislature called "legislative bingo." The game goes something like this: a lobbyist, staffer or another legislator gives another lawmaker a "word", usually a very arcane word that has little or no bearing on anything related to the legislative process. The lawmaker who is given the word then has the challenging task of incorporating the word or phrase into his or her floor speech when arguing for or against a bill. Sounds harmless enough, and it is, but imagine the frivolity that ensues when words like: Darth Vader, Woody Woodpecker, Gorgonzola and 'leather and lace' begin to make their way into the record of public debate on pressing issues like health care, water issues and education.

A brief history is in order to set the context of how this game came to pass. Like many a good idea, funny or otherwise, this 'game' did not come about in the legislature or through the creativeness of a lobbyist or staffer in the capitol.  No, it's origins came about during the Gore vs. Bush recount following the 2000 Presidential election...

The Public’s Right to Know – Batting .500

A pair of significant decisions – one judicial, the other legislative – impacting the public’s right to local government information have surfaced in the last couple weeks.  The legislature was kinder to local governments (for once) than the courts, but both issues raise some interesting questions about public information and cities’ responsibilities to their residents – and we hope you’ll make good use of our Comments section at the bottom of this story to state any opinions you might have. 

ACA 8 Goes Down to defeat - The fight for eminent domain reform continues

By Mike Madrid

(Tuesday September 11, 2007) Shortly after 9pm the California State Assembly fell short of giving Californians eminent domain reform on a party-line vote of 45-30 (Assembly members Galgiani - D, Parra - D, and Horton - R abstained from the vote). The defeat of the legislation now means that the battle for eminent domain reform moves to the statewide ballot where two major associations are looking to advance their respective versions of reform before the voters.

Californians for eminent domain reform, a broad based coalition of local governments, environmentalists, and business organizations are in the process of securing enough signatures to qualify their measure for the June 2008 ballot. Their measure protects single family owner occupied housing from "private to private" transfers, meaning no one living in their home can have eminent domain used against them and have their property then sold to a private developer.

The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and the California Farm Bureau are also advancing a measure that seeks to both limit the use of eminent domain for all property and eliminate rent control throughout the state. The measure has come under harsh criticism from ACWA (the Association of California Water Agencies), leading Republicans in the legislature and high-ranking officials in the Governors administration for provisions that eliminate the possibility of eminent domain being used for water storage and delivery in California. Californias drought and chronic water problems have made this a centerpiece of the Governors and rural Republicans' agenda. In fact, on the same day as ACA's defeat, the Governor called for a special legislative session to convene on water issues.

The competing measures set the stage for an interesting political showdown between the two organizations. The League of California Cities, the primary sponsor of the Californians for eminent domain reform measure has a proven track record of sponsoring and passing, as well as defeating ballot measures in California, most notably a similar eminent domain reform measure that masked a "regulatory takings" provision similar to the current Jarvis measure (Proposition 90). The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, while a potent name with many conservatives in Sacramento, has shown little success at fundraising and sponsoring statewide ballot measures in recent memory. The California Farm Bureau hasn't been this actively engaged in a ballot measure since the "Big Green" initiative in the early 1990's.

While the legislative part of the reform effort appears to have ended, the iniative phase is just ramping up. The Howard Jarvis measure has raised over $1 million with almost that same amount needed to qualify the measure. Fundrasing has slowed dramatically for the measure after the damaging water flaw was uncovered. It appears donors are reluctant to contribute to a measure that will likely have significant opposition from the political, business and agricultural community - especially after comments from Governor Schwarzenegger's administration publicly expressed concern.

Both initiatives will have until early to mid November to submit nearly 800,000 valid signatures in order to appear before the voters in June 2008.

 

Gadfly Update

Visit our Gadfly Hall of Fame for the latest in gallery humor -- on and off the dais and from around the globe. 

And to get us in the mood, Mayor Quimby, illustrating how 'the system works':