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Posted on 06/26/2002 3:04:37 PM PDT by ElkGroveDan
Harold Johnson, a member of California Political Review’s editorial board, is an attorney with Pacific Legal Foundation (www.pacificlegal.org).
There were those who professed to be shocked when it was revealed that Gov. Gray Davis got a fat campaign check from Oracle Corp. only days after the company won a questionable no-bid state contract early this year.
But folks in at least one city could be forgiven for responding with a ho-hum.
Folks in Elk Grove, a fast-growing suburb hugging the farmland south of Sacramento, didn’t have to be told about the governor’s alleged penchant for doing right by big donors. Their schooling in cynicism began last year when the administration started bullying its way into their land-use planning process, accosting property rights and local prerogatives.
Some background: Last June, Elk Grove approved development of the sprawling Lent Ranch Marketplace, a $500 million regional shopping center. It would serve communities where new homes have gone up by the thousands but retail infrastructure has lagged.
In order to shop at a Macy’s or other major department stores, Elk Grove residents now have to get on crowded Highway 99 and drive 15 miles north to one of Sacramento’s malls. No wonder the promise of Lent Ranch was welcomed not just by potential patrons but by traffic planners who bemoan the area’s growing gridlock.
But hopes gave way to head-scratching when the Davis administration suddenly unleashed a lawsuit to deep-six Lent Ranch. No one could remember the state’s Conservation Department trying to upend a local land-use decision supposedly because of state environmental concerns.
The agency claims it’s worried about shrinking agricultural acreage. If so, why has it kept mum when other commercial projects around the state have been built on former farmland? Many Elk Grove farmers can’t turn a profit raising crops. The lawsuit’s most direct effect would be to ditch their desire to sell their land or have it put to other uses.
Elk Grove followed all the rules. Wide-ranging studies and 32 hours of public hearings went into the Lent Ranch decision. Not a murmur of objection was heard from the state — until after the project was okayed.
As it happens, last week Superior Court Judge Lloyd Connelly, a former Democrat legislator, ruled for the plaintiffs, claiming the mall plan doesn’t meet the fuzzy standards of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), a law notorious for lending itself to subjective application.
One issue, for instance, was the presence of large propane-storage tanks a half mile away. A consultant found the probability of a life-threatening accident is less than one in 1 million per year; for Connelly, this was enough to throw up a CEQA roadblock.
So the case heads to appeal. But still the question lingers: What is behind a Davis administration lawsuit that seems to be without precedent and defies the tradition that land use decisions should largely be left to locals?
Maybe reports from a newspaper Down Under could offer insight.
Australia is home base for the Westfield group, a shopping center concern that happens to own Sacramento’s Downtown Plaza — one of the malls patronized by Elk Grove residents because they have no retail center of their own. Westfield “pours big money into [U.S] politics,” reports the Sydney Daily Telegraph — hundreds of thousands of dollars to both parties.
The name of Westfield’s U.S. president even appeared on the invitation to a Gray Davis fundraiser in Bel-Air last year, although a company spokesman called this a “printing error.”
Westfield is certainly no friend of Lent Ranch. In fact, the Australian firm reportedly is bankrolling an environmentalist lawsuit against the project. Elk Grove Mayor Michael Leary minced no words in suggesting to the Daily Telegraph why Westfield would spend $100,000 to get involved: “These people are very afraid of [Lent Ranch]: Downtown Plaza is too far to drive, parking is tough and the service is questionable. Elk Grove will offer a new mall with plenty of parking and friendly service.”
Between misuse of environmental laws to stave off competition and the state’s attempt, for whatever reason, to block a city from charting its own destiny, property rights and principles of local control are being mauled.
You don’t have to be a commute-weary Elk Grove resident to lament this sideswiping of the public interest.
at 6:00 p.m. pdt, the Freeper FRiva Feva contest will begin
join the contest to win your registration fees to the FRiva Las Vegas Conference
it's easy, just follow the directions - shouldn't take more than 10 - 15 minutes per night
This is pure Davis.
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