Meaningful Parking Reform Dead in California (For Now)
AB 710, the eminently sensible parking reform bill, died a sad death in the State Senate during the last-minute frenzy on bills last week. The bill would have prevented local governments from maintaining excessively high parking minimums for development projects located near transit stops, unless they can document a need for high parking requirements. Of course, developers could add more parking as the market requires, but gone would be the mindless local mandates. ...
CONTINUE READINGIf Textualism Isn’t Dead, It’s Badly Wounded
This one is too good not to blog. Strictly speaking, it's an immigration case, but it has interesting implications for all statutes and especially environmental ones. Jawid Habibi is a lawful resident alien, but not someone you'd want to hang around with. He was convicted of domestic misdemeanor battery in California, and then received a 365-day sentence pursuant to state law. Then ICE wanted to deport him under 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43)(F), which allows deportatio...
CONTINUE READINGPaper or Plastic…or Neither?
Paul Koretz is a Los Angeles City Councilmember who represents most of the city's west side (including UCLA) and large chunks of the San Fernando Valley. And he's got a proposal that environmentalists love: Hoping to reduce the billions of grocery bags circulating throughout the city, an L.A. councilman Tuesday called for a sweeping ban on single-use paper and plastic bags. By including paper bags in the ban, the proposal goes beyond similar measures taken recentl...
CONTINUE READINGCEQA and Infill: A Good Year in California
Yes, the last-minute CEQA bills that Rick detailed were controversial. Yes, the bills carving out an expedited process for a sports stadium and $100 million projects, as Eric discussed, make many people question the process. But for those who care about climate change and infill, these bills will likely lead to better environmental outcomes than the traditional CEQA process would have produced. And they certainly offer more for environmentalists than critics seem to ac...
CONTINUE READINGMajor, Proposed CEQA Amendments Sent to California Governor Jerry Brown
In the waning hours of its just-concluded session, the California Legislature passed and sent to Governor Jerry Brown a package of bills that, if signed into law by Brown, will represent the most significant amendments to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) in many years. I believe it's likely Brown will approve some or all of them. My colleague, Berkeley Law Professor Eric Biber, has previously commented on one of the bills currently on Governor Brown's d...
CONTINUE READINGFrom the Language Police Blotter
What is the plural of "Prius"? Many people I know say "Prii," but a professional writer friend, who knows about language, insists that because "Prius" is not actually a Latin word, it has to be "Priuses." In the movie The Social Network, Mark Zuckerberg's antagonists are known as "the Winklevii" although they certainly were not Latin. Strictly speaking, I suppose, they should have been known as the Winklevossen. Maybe the idea is that in the same way you can pic...
CONTINUE READINGExtra! Extra! Read All About it!
Here's a scary thought. There's an important new development in environmental law. OK, that could be scary, especially if it involves the current Congress. But the really scary thought is this: what if you don't find out about it because you forgot to check Legal Planet that day? Fortunately, the remedy is at hand. If you look on the right side of the page, you'll see a place where you can fill in your email and get instant updates about new Legal Planet posts...
CONTINUE READINGA dangerous bill
California is known in the United States for its aggressive environmental laws, some of the most aggressive in the United States. One of the key reasons for that reputation is the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). CEQA is similar to the federal National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in that it requires a public review of the environmental impacts of proposed government actions before any commitments to the project are made. CEQA, however, is generally ...
CONTINUE READINGTen Fatal Flaws in the “Regulatory Uncertainty” Argument
A current conservative refrain is the regulatory uncertainty is holding back the economy. Consider an editorial entitled "Obama's regulatory flood is drowning economic growth": Businesses large and small face more uncertainty today about the federal regulatory environment than at any point since the New Deal . . . . Seeing this tsunami of red tape flooding out of Washington, company owners and executives wisely opt to delay new hires and investments until they have a c...
CONTINUE READINGLatest polling data on climate change and political parties
The Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University is out with its latest poll today, on "Politics and Global Warming: Democrats, Republicans, Independents and the Tea Party." The poll examines the difference in views among members of those four groups on a variety of climate- and energy-related topics. First thing to note is the breakout of the Tea Party as a category separate from the others, consisting of all respondents who self-identified that...
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