71–80 of 180 posts
Good. I wish they'd sign more such laws to deal with all the property developments across San Francisco that are stuck in years-long "environmental review" or other similar bureaucratic hurdles put forward by NIMBY groups.
Sadly there's too much actual capital and political capital in play.
A college town that was filled with ordinary college commotion is largely silent day and night. The streets of Berkeley, California near campus are empty for more than a year now. University Avenue, a major road leading to campus is quiet day and night, it used to be filled with cars, music and daily activity. Half of restaurants and most retail have closed in the last two years; parties are hidden due to covid-19. W…
This is so far from reality I have a hard time even knowing how to respond. Just in case people who don’t live here think the Bay Area cities have become this dystopian hell hole as described, no, they absolutely have not. Life is honestly nearly back to normal. I’m going out to dinner with a friend in Berkeley tonight. The streets will not be empty or filled with drug addicts.
This is a place that has big issues, no matter how much you manage to ignore them on your way to the nice restaurant for dinner with your friends.
Seems like an odd move to undercut the checks and balances courts are supposed to have over legislation. Enacting a law solely to undercut a court's decision seems spurious, and may blow back on both the legislation and the school.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also it's good when courts enforce poorly written laws as a forcing function to have law makers (legislature) write useful laws. Sometimes the laws as written are nearly useless
I don't agree. That's an overly-simplified, idealistic view. Real people suffer real harms from the unintended consequences of poorly written laws. Our courts should help serve as a last line of defense against that, when appropriate.
The bill we need is something that blanket allows building of multistory multifamily housing across the state without local review. Sort of something similar to the law we passed around ADUs but for multistory multifamily housing.
Seems like an odd move to undercut the checks and balances courts are supposed to have over legislation. Enacting a law solely to undercut a court's decision seems spurious, and may blow back on both the legislation and the school.
More like – legislature passed a law, a certain group of people took advantage of the law in ways the general public didn't intend, the courts said "we have to rule by the letter of the law", legislature amended the law, now most people happy again. This is exactly how the process should work.
This appears to be politicians attempting to have their cake and eat it too. Environmental review laws are passed specifically because of the concerns raised by the citizens they represent. Whenever citizens then used those laws, the politicians step in and prevented that. It appears that they are attempting to appease two groups of constituents at the same time.
If anyone did this other than a politician it would be called breach of contract or possibly fraud. But yet, you call it "the process".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is so far from reality I have a hard time even knowing how to respond. Just in case people who don’t live here think the Bay Area cities have become this dystopian hell hole as described, no, they absolutely have not. Life is honestly nearly back to normal. I’m going out to dinner with a friend in Berkeley tonight. The streets will not be empty or filled with drug addicts.
c'mon, I also live in the Bay and I think reality is somewhere in the middle between the original doom and gloom message and your rose colored glasses view. We have HUGE homelessness and untreated mental illness issues around here, and most urban centers are absolutely filthy cause of those. This is a place that has big issues, no matter how much you manage to ignore them on your way to the nice restaurant for dinner…
All I was trying to do was push back on the bleak vision of boarded up commerce-less, restaurant-less, people-less streets being roamed by criminals, addicts, and the mentally ill. Yes, we have all sorts of issues, but the scene outside is much more like pre-pandemic life than the Walking Dead.
Wouldn't this increase property values and rent too? What was the angle for NIMBY objection ? It seems like this will only increase demand but not the supply - an ideal NIMBY outcome.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, they're addressing a private lawsuit that was only permitted to proceed because of the court's erroneous (but reasonable) interpretation of the prior law. So the legislature changed the law to make it explicitly clear that these types of lawsuits were never intended by the law.
But the new law explicitly contemplates these types of lawsuits. It doesn't say you can't sue this way. It says colleges and universities who are sued this way can't be compelled to do anything for 18 months. (Which invalidates the court judgment ordering UC Berkeley to stop enrolling students.) It is logically necessary, for this law to exist at all, that the original lawsuit was valid, and that the "remedy" was als…
From TTOTFL itself: "This bill would delete the provision requiring the environmental effects relating to changes in enrollment levels be considered in the EIR prepared for the long-range development plan. The bill would provide that enrollment or changes in enrollment, by themselves, do not constitute a project for purposes of CEQA."
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...