The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down California’s unique rule — embedded in the Mitigation Fee Act — that exactions and impact fees don’t have to be “roughly proportional” to the impact of the new development project under consideration if they are imposed as part of a general plan policy or other program-level effort.

But now the question becomes whether the way California jurisdictions actually calculate those program-level fees is specific enough to meet the “rough proportionality” rule – and that question will be determined by California courts. Some have said this will inevitably lead to lower impact fees. Given the history of impact and mitigation in California, however, it seems more likely that it will simply lead to the use of a more sophisticated methodology in nexus studies that justify the fees. Cities and counties in California aren’t likely to give up impact fee revenue that easily.

This article provides a detailed explanation of how El Dorado County came up with the impact fee challenged in the case and discusses options for how cities and counties around the country may have to calculate similar fees in the future.

In an article for Governing, Carl Smith calls attention to the high levels of methane gas produced by organic waste in landfills. “In 38 states, landfills are the largest source of methane emissions. Reducing atmospheric concentrations of this powerful greenhouse gas is a top priority for climate action.”

According to Smith, the lack of accurate data makes it difficult to assess the scale of the problem. “Estimates for emissions from landfills have been largely based on extrapolation from what is known about organic waste decay and tonnage sent to landfills. Some data comes from methane detectors that workers carry across the surface of landfills, a hit-or-miss approach limited further by the fact that some areas are unsafe to walk over.” New data reveals that prior emissions estimates could be much lower than the real numbers.

Smith describes California’s ambitious organic waste diversion goals, which the state is not on track to meet. “A tracker from ReFED, a nonprofit that aggregates food waste data from public and proprietary data sets, shows that over 300,000 more tons of food waste went to California landfills in 2022 than in the year SB 1383 was enacted.” However, the state is making progress on launching composting programs and distributing organic waste bins. “It is an open question of how quickly governments and their partners can help them connect this threat to what goes in their trash bins, and convince them to change their habits.”

The New York state attorney general’s office has intervened in an ongoing land use controversy in Forestburgh, New York (pop. 793). According to the Times Union, “The state attorney general’s office is warning the leaders of a Sullivan County town that zoning regulations they adopted last year for ‘places of worship’ may be discriminatory because they appear to have been designed to block a large development project proposed by Hasidic Orthodox Jews.”

The issue began four years ago when the developers, who have Hasidic Orthodox Jewish principles, purchased property and development rights for $13 million from another developer who had received approvals from the town for a planned development district with 2,000 residences. But a lawsuit filed earlier this year, the second associated with this issue, alleges the town enacted burdensome zoning regulations — including requiring a minimum of five acres for places of worship and lot-line setbacks that are larger than those required for similar building uses — because the developers intend Jewish people to live there. “They said the town also raised their property assessment and increased development fees to dissuade them from developing the site,” reports Brendan J. Jones for the Times Union.

Town officials dispute the accusations, saying the regulations do not specifically call out any race or religion. But the state’s attorney general office’s letter to Forestburgh’s town supervisor states that the zoning regulations in question contain no written justification for the onerous restrictions on religious uses and therefore appear to violate state and federal religious discrimination laws. The regulations were also developed in closed-door executive sessions with no public minutes, so “it is impossible to know what the deciding factors were in imposing the prohibitive size requirements on religious uses.”

The Times Union also reports that this issue is not a unique one in the state. Three years ago, New York attorney general’s office reached agreements with a few other towns to end what state officials say were discriminatory housing practices also designed to prevent Hasidic Orthodox Jewish residents from moving there.

A new study reveals that increased speed limits on interstate freeways have a rippling effect, raising the number of speeding-related crashes in adjacent neighborhoods.

As Kea Wilson explains in Streetsblog USA, “In an analysis of three U.S. highway segments whose maximum speeds were increased at some point in the last decade — I-85 in Georgia, I-84 in Oregon and I-75 and I-69 in Michigan — researchers found that all reported significant new "clusters" of speeding-related crashes within a one-mile radius of the interstate.”

The findings belie the popular belief that interstate speeds don’t affect people traveling on other roads — including pedestrians and cyclists who never enter freeways. According to Dr. C.Y. David Yang, president and executive director of the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, “similarly to the ‘distraction hangover’ that drivers experience even after they stop using a cell phone behind the wheel, motorists don't immediately register just how quickly they need to slow down after they exit the interstate — especially when local roads themselves are designed like highways where it's perfectly fine to go fast.”

Wilson points out that interstate routes and speed limits are controlled at the state level, giving local communities little say in the process. “While Yang stops short of saying that speed limits should never be raised on the highway, he says it's critical that stakeholders like state, county, and city departments of transportation communicate in advance of those increases, so the locals can take action to slow drivers down, like modifying road designs.”

Safety improvements are coming to a major street in Oakland, California, reports Kristin J. Bender in The Mercury News, after 18 or more pedestrians were killed on International Boulevard in the last two years. “Improvements are being funded by a $400,000 grant from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and $1.8 million from the city of Oakland, officials said.”

The project joins other efforts to make Bay Area streets safer and more connected for pedestrians, transit users, and cyclists. In San Mateo County, the local transportation authority plans to improve sidewalk crossings and bike and pedestrian routes that connect to Caltrain, BART, and other public transit. “That could include building pathways over or under the elevated Caltrain tracks and adjacent Highway 101 corridor to better connect the downtown area to the city’s job center and biotech hub in its former industrial core to the east.”  

Bender notes that “last week, the Regional Network Management Council, a coalition of Bay Area transit agencies, earmarked more than $18 million for eight projects under the Bus Accelerated Infrastructure Delivery program, commonly known as ‘BusAID.’” The program is designed to improve bus speed and reliability and make key transit corridors safer for all users.

In a pilot program set to begin by the end of the year, Los Angeles Metro will install AI-powered cameras on transit buses to help identify and ticket cars illegally parked in bus lanes.

The program will launch with a 60-day ‘warning period,’ reports Colleen Shalby in the Los Angeles Times. “The program, designed by technology company Hayden AI, is meant to improve bus times, increase ridership and address mobility concerns.”

Metro says the cameras only record when a potential violation is observed. “Once a recording is made, it will be submitted to L.A. Department of Transportation where a human will assess whether a ticket should be issued.”

According to Shalby, “The use of video imaging to enforce parking violations was legalized in 2021. Video that does not include a parking violation must be destroyed within 15 days, the law states.”