Saturday, December 20, 2014

Agenda 21 in California Update

Seven Reasons Why Plan Bay Area is Illegal & Bad Policy for California, Posted on December 19, 2014 Written by Timothy V. Kassouni, kassounilaw.com
Plan Bay Area is a mon­u­men­tal land use doc­u­ment pre­pared by the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Trans­porta­tion Com­mis­sion (MTC), and the Asso­ci­a­tion of Bay Area Gov­ern­ments (ABAG), for the osten­si­ble pur­pose of reduc­ing green­house gas emis­sions by 15 per­cent by the year 2035, as required by for­mer Gov­er­nor Schwarzenegger’s Sen­ate Bill 375. Kas­souni Law is cur­rently lit­i­gat­ing the legal­ity of this plan in Alameda County Supe­rior Court, and a final deci­sion is expected within the next sev­eral weeks. These are the top seven rea­sons why the plan is a bad idea:
1) The plan vio­lates equal protection.
One pro­vi­sion of the plan allows devel­op­ers of low income hous­ing a free pass when it comes to com­ply­ing with the myr­iad and wildly expen­sive Cal­i­for­nia Envi­ron­men­tal Qual­ity Act (CEQA) process. How­ever, there is no dif­fer­ence between the envi­ron­men­tal impact of a low income project, and a non-low income project. This is a clas­sic exam­ple of an equal pro­tec­tion vio­la­tion, and pun­ishes prop­erty own­ers who do not wish to pan­der to MTC and ABAG projects designed to coerce large swaths of peo­ple into high den­sity parcels. Con­versely, prop­erty own­ers who wish to use their land for Plan Bay Area projects are given pref­er­en­tial treat­ment by skirt­ing California’s envi­ron­men­tal regulations.
2) The plan will increase hous­ing costs.
One of the main fea­tures of the Plan is the diver­sion of the pop­u­lace and new devel­op­ment into densely pop­u­lated areas in the Bay Area. Much of the unde­vel­oped land under Plan Bay Area will remain just that, unde­vel­oped to reduce drive times. This arti­fi­cially caps con­tin­ued land devel­op­ment for res­i­den­tial use which will drive the cost of  already expen­sive Bay Area hous­ing even higher.
3) The plan is not fea­si­ble, there­fore illegal.
Accord­ing to an inde­pen­dent study com­mis­sioned by the MTC and ABAG, the plan can­not come close to its green­house reduc­tion tar­get. It will fail unless sub­stan­tial leg­isla­tive changes are made, includ­ing the abol­ish­ment of Propo­si­tion 13, which was enacted in 1978 to help ensure that prop­erty taxes do not increase expo­nen­tially as the cost of real estate increases, and which also requires a 2/3 vote to increase taxes. Plan Bay Area rec­og­nizes the need for increased tax­a­tion to pay for its imple­men­ta­tion and thereby seeks to abol­ish Prop 13 for more rev­enue. It is highly unlikely that leg­isla­tive changes of this type will be enacted, as Propo­si­tion 13 con­tin­ues to retain the sup­port of Cal­i­for­ni­ans. Sim­ply put, in Cal­i­for­nia, it is ille­gal to imple­ment laws that are inca­pable of suc­cess­ful out­comes and Plan Bay Area will be unsuc­cess­ful if MTC and ABAG are not able to fund Plan Bay Area’s imple­men­ta­tion by increas­ing taxes and gut­ting Prop 13.
4) Even if imple­mented, the plan will have no effect on the environment.
Assum­ing that MTC’s and ABAG’s inde­pen­dent study was wrong and the Plan hit its tar­get, it would only reduce global green­house gas emis­sions by less than one-half of one per­cent, accord­ing to the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency. A minis­cule drop in global emis­sions which would do noth­ing to affect cli­mate change.
5) The plan has the prac­ti­cal effect of tak­ing away local auton­omy over the land use process.
The Cal­i­for­nia Con­sti­tu­tion has a pro­vi­sion com­monly known and the “home rule” guar­anty, which grants cities and coun­ties com­plete auton­omy over the land use process, includ­ing the prepa­ra­tion of gen­eral plans, zon­ing ordi­nances, and issuance of build­ing per­mits. The Plan usurps this local auton­omy by cut­ting off bil­lions of dol­lars of fed­eral fund­ing unless these local gov­ern­ments rezone prop­erty and force most con­struc­tion into pri­or­ity devel­op­ment areas to cre­ate high pop­u­la­tion den­sity land parcels. How­ever the United States Supreme Court has likened ulti­ma­tums of this sort to a “gun to the head.” Our State Con­sti­tu­tional frame­work should not be upended with extor­tion tactics.
6) The plan replaces local gov­ern­ment with rule by unelected bureaucrats.
Our state is premised upon local gov­ern­ment, wherein the vot­ers of cities and coun­ties can decide issues of land use free from state inter­fer­ence. The plan, how­ever, was drafted and enacted by a hand­ful of unelected bureau­crats who have been given the power to decide what is best for the Bay Area and its residents.
7) The plan is an out­moded solution.
Other than the move­ment of res­i­dents into small parcels, the plan offers anti­quated solu­tions to reduce green­house gas emis­sions. Far less costly, and more in keep­ing with the cul­ture of the Bay Area the plan should have accounted for advances in tech­nol­ogy.  Tech­nol­ogy lim­its the need to drive and will con­tinue to do so expo­nen­tially with more advance­ment thereby expo­nen­tially reduc­ing emis­sions. The reader of Plan Bay Area is left scratch­ing his/her head won­der­ing if this plan is a dinosaur of a 1950′s land plan­ning com­mis­sion when mov­ing pop­u­la­tions would have been the only solu­tion. One is left to pon­der, are Bay Area res­i­dents giv­ing up their civil lib­er­ties when they have many alter­na­tive and  viable options to reduce green­house gas emissions?
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