When a Lot Is Not

Real estate hustlers have seized on an archaic feature of state law to subvert good planning and common sense. Using what are often the flimsiest of old property records, they get certification for new subdivisions to jack up the land’s value, threaten to build and then sell to public agencies or private foundations at greatly inflated prices. As reported by The Times’ Kenneth R. Weiss and John Johnson, it’s a classic land scam and it’s legal. The rube who pays is the taxpayer or the well-meaning philanthropist who donates money to land trusts, which buy up special parcels to keep them from becoming housing tracts, or worse.

This sleazy practice would be stopped by the passage of SB 497, authored by Sen. Byron Sher (D-Stanford). The Assembly Local Government Committee approved the measure Wednesday and sent it to the full Assembly for a possible vote on Friday. Lawmakers should approve this bill without hesitation and hand it to Gov. Gray Davis for his signature.

The catalyst for the legislation was an effort by the Hearst Corp. to make a tract along the ocean near Hearst Castle eligible for development under the state’s Subdivision Map Act. Here’s the tactic: The landowner unearths a long-forgotten record suggesting that his parcel may once have been sliced up differently. The county has no choice but to issue a “certificate of compliance” for new lots. The landowner then uses “lot line adjustments” to move, say, isolated inland cow pastures that have development rights all the way to the edge of the Pacific. The new parcels are not subject to normal environmental review. Meanwhile, the threat of development is enough to drive up the price--to as much as $300 million in the case of the Hearst lands.

The Sher bill would limit lot line adjustments to four parcels that must be touching, not just near each other. These and other minimal changes that would subject some of the newly created lots to environmental review process would not affect any legitimate building projects. But they should put a quick stop to these outrageous coastal shakedowns.