Articles

As reported in this Capitol Weekly story, the Coastal Commission is facing a major budget cut of 10% this year.  Projections are that the Commission will have to lay off 19 to 25 members of its 125-member staff.  The Commission's budget expert, Susan Hansch, says that the budget cuts "will devastate the Coastal Commission and ...

Pacific Legal Foundation has filed a 60-day notice with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service for violations stemming from FWS's decision to list the polar bear as a threatened species.  The notice was filed on behalf for the California Cattlemen's Association, the California Forestry Association, and the Congress of Racial Equa ...

Perhaps highlighting the potency of our amicus brief in Mt. Holyoke Homes v. California Coastal Commission, the Coastal Commission filed its response.  Mt. Holyoke concerns a home owner's attempt to defend a coastal development permit (approved by the City of Los Angeles) against a disgruntled neighbor’s appeal. Although the facts a ...

Larry Gilbert spoke to PBS TV host Huell Howser about why he would produce a 14 part miniseries about the supposed successes of redevelopment in California without any discussion of its failures and its costs. When I asked him to include redevelopment stories that were not successful, or to mention that they are not all … ...

Yesterday the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and the Wild Fish Conservancy filed a complaint against the United States Navy.  The lawsuit alleges that the Navy has failed to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act because Explosive Ordnance Disposal training operations in Puget Sound are being conducted without ha ...

Earlier this year, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California held that the National Marine Fisheries Service's 2004 Biological Opinion on the effects of California and federal water projects on endangered and threatened salmon was arbitrary and capricious.  As result, NMFS must complete a new BiOp, but the question re ...

Yesterday's Wyoming Tribune-Eagle contains an article devoted to how the candidates for Wyoming's lone house seat feel about the ESA.  Apparently, all agree that change is needed: "The sad thing about politics in America in 2008 is that we got good at politics and completely lost sight of policy," said Cynthia Lummis, a Repu ...

Today's Casper Star-Tribune contains a nice summary of the gray wolf injunction, including reaction to the decision from Ed Bangs, the federal gray wolf recovery coordinator.  In the article, Bangs asserts that one of the central assumptions of the worst-case scenario for the wolf that led in part to the decision is "patently impossi ...

Former California State Senator Jim Nielsen has an important article on eminent domain in California after the passage of the League of Cities' Prop. 99: Not even two months have passed since Prop. 99 became law and public agencies are already exploiting ways to circumvent the voter approved ballot measure that the California League of … ...