In an April 9 piece on the well-read FoxandHoundsDaily.com (article text in full at this link -- Vice Mayor Mirisch writes in pertinent part:

[Scroll down for further.]

Communities throughout California are under siege from Sacramento.

On a continual and ongoing basis, cities and counties are constantly playing defense, trying to battle a barrage of bad bills that Sacramento politicians would impose upon us, as if they know best how all of us throughout the state should live our lives...

...Developers hate having to comply with local zoning ordinances, they hate CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act, and they hate having to negotiate with cities, all of which can limit their profits. They make well-placed campaign donations to the right politicians and -- voila! -- we have Sacramento legislation which would use the housing crisis as an excuse to take away local zoning authority from cities. Not surprisingly, its impact would not be to solve the housing crisis, but to destroy communities, while in the process creating the single largest wealth transfer in California history, from the public to private developers. But, then again, that was the true intent of this bill, SB827, all along (as well as its goal of eliminating single-family housing, which its supporters claim is inherently "racist")...

...[C]ommunities are constantly playing "Whack-A-Mole" trying to defeat bad bills, often crafted by corporate lobbyists and lawyers...The corporations and oligarchs have all the time, leverage and money to look to the long game. Communities and ordinary Californians, trying to live their daily lives and make their neighborhoods more livable, don't really have a chance...

We need to cure California's broken system of government, which all too often seems to be a government of special interests, by special interests and for special interests...Our prescription is to amend the California state constitution to protect communities and to safeguard local rights against overreaching Sacramento politicians and the special interests who control them...

To this end, Redondo Beach Mayor Bill Brand and I have started work on drafting the Protecting Communities and Local Rights Amendment to the California state constitution. The amendment, much like the home rule provisions of the constitutions of other states, would formally recognize the centrality of the individual and diverse communities within our state, would encourage regional co-operation and would protect communities against the constant attacks from Sacramento politicians...

The measure's text apparently isn't available yet...but it's presumably coming.

Sponsor

Sponsor

Sacramento actions affecting local decisionmaking became a hot button in Long Beach during public discussion of the Land Use Element (LUE) after LBREPORT.com reported that the City of LB had remained "neutral" and failed to oppose SB 35 (erased certain public CEQA appeal rights, "streamlined" certain developer approvals) and the Council's "State Legislation Committee" (Austin, Mungo, Gonzalez) failed to meet from Jan. 10, 2017 through November 21, 2017 as SB 35 and similarly preemptive bills advanced to passage.

Sponsor

In early January 2018, after LBREPORT.com reported that SB 35's author, state Senator Scott Wiener (D, SF), had introduced SB 827 (mandating density bonuses/overriding local zoning to enable multi-story buildings preempting local zoning near public transit), the LB City Council voted to oppose SB 827.

Developing.

Sponsor

Sponsor