Putting the Brakes on Growth

At some point, the Legislature must come to grips with the problem of unmanaged growth in California. Assembly Bill 2460 sponsored by Assembly Majority Leader Thomas M. Hannigan (D-Fairfield) is a good place to start. A good place because it is a small, innocuous piece of legislation that, among other things, does not pose the threat of state-imposed planning.

The guts of the Hannigan bill declares that no public agency in California shall approve a new development project “unless a demonstrable method exists for financing the necessary roads, schools, water and sewer facilities, and other public facilities directly related to the development project.” There it is: short, simple and seemingly inoffensive to anyone.

Notice that the bill does not specify the extent of the facilities. It does not say who has to finance them. It does not stipulate the method of financing. The bill merely says that cities and counties cannot willy-nilly approve new housing projects or malls or the like and ignore the impact of such expansion. Many farsighted cities and counties already spell out the financing of such facilities in great detail. Often, the developer must agree to carry the brunt of the cost before the project can be approved.

Nonetheless, the building industry is opposing the Hannigan legislation. But the bill is the absolute bare minimum of direction that is needed from the state. It passed the Assembly with just one vote to spare over the 41-vote majority required. The measure now awaits a hearing before the Senate Local Government Committee chaired by Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach), who is sponsoring a series of bills that attempt to deal with growth on a regional basis, although they generally are limited--too limited--to actions within each county.

The Hannigan bill is all that is left from Hannigan’s failed efforts the past several years to revise state law dealing with local agency formation commissions. Present law sets basic policy for commissions to follow in considering proposals to incorporate new cities. Hannigan’s bill would have converted such unenforceable policy into specific requirements in an effort to discourage urban sprawl. Growth and slow-growth forces battled each other over various provisions of the earlier Hannigan legislation. About the only section everyone seemed to support was the one that is now incorporated into AB 2460. Many were surprised it was not already state law.

Unplanned, unmanaged growth is a statewide issue in California. Even if local and regional entities wanted to establish a framework for bringing order out of helter-skelter growth--and competition for the tax dollars it generates--they could not do it without the necessary legislation from Sacramento. But the concept of statewide planning still carries, unfairly, the stigma of something that only socialist countries do. Failure to provide some direction at the state level is a far greater shame, however, because it dooms California to directionless development that has expanded beyond government’s ability to provide the needed public facilities. The result is a deteriorating environment both for present Californians and would-be newcomers.

The Hannigan bill is one small symbolic step toward a more sensible California future.