Steinberg's Blueprint for Growth

Better regional planning will help make the state's metro areas more attractive and livable, and that will allow them to grow and attract jobs in a cleaner, healthier setting.-- Sacremento Bee editorial, June 4, 2007

Endorsing a bill authored by state Sen. Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, the Sacramento Bee editorialized today that the Sacramento Area Council of Government's (SACOG) "blueprint" should be made statewide policy for urban areas.

(That's too much Sacramento for one sentence. Might as well throw in the Sacramento Kings, the Sacramento River, Old Sacramento, and West and South Sacramento, too. Nevertheless, the bill proposed is pure Sacramento.)

We were unable to think of one bit of open space SACOG has ever saved from Elk Grove to Auburn and plenty of ground its transportation policies have made more attractive for development. What little open space that has been saved in the SACOG region has been saved by lawsuits mainly under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). One exception might be the Sunset Industrial Zone between Roseville and Lincoln, designed to provide space for industrial development and job creation. Roseville is very proud of its superior jobs/housing ratio. We would guess the current largest employer in the zone is an Indian casino across the road from a regional land fill. The zone is under constant developer pressure from both Roseville and Lincoln, particularly along transportation corridors.

To get local government buy-in, Steinberg is offering cities and counties certain exemptions from CEQA, while promoting his bill as part of an anti-global warming package in the state Senate.

The devil is in the details, particularly on CEQA exemptions, and this bill is a Steinberg work-in-progress special, but right now it looks like another Developer Trojan Horse.

Counterpunch editor and publisher, Alexander Cockburn, has written a series of recent articles challenging the scientific connection between human activity and global warming. Cockburn has taken a lot of "heat" from environmentalists for his position, but his eye for damaging policies world-wide that result from the global warming panic is dead on.

Trust the term-limited Legislature of California, a wholly owned subsidiary of lobbyists for finance, insurance and real estate (FIRE), to use global warming as an excuse for weakening the best state law in the country for protecting land that is not smog producing.

The hypothesis that carbon emissions are causing global warming is a useful one. Another useful one is that smog has stupefied Sacramento.

Badlands editorial board
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6-5-07
Fuelish sprawl...Editorial
http://www.sacbee.com/110/story/204393.html

Sacramento area's award-winning "Blueprint" plan has hammered home two key points. First, endless sprawl is not inevitable in our region; second, through incentives, local governments can work to contain leapfrog development and promote transit and alternatives to the automobile. The Blueprint doesn't have the sweep of regulatory measures -- such as Oregon's urban growth boundaries -- but it has changed the dynamic of local planning decisions. Every time a major project is proposed, people now ask this question: Does it comply with the Blueprint? That raises another question: Why don't we have Blueprints in every major metropolitan area of California?... state Sen. Darrell Steinberg of Sacramento is working on a measure that could imprint the Blueprint statewide. Senate Bill 375 would require the California Transportation Commission and regional agencies (those with populations larger than 800,000) to conduct the kind of modeling and planning that SACOG has done in this region. If local governments comply with the growth scenarios envisioned by a region, they would be exempted from certain requirements of the California Environmental Quality Act. That's a significant incentive. Steinberg is promoting SB 375 as part of a Senate package to fight global warming. Blueprint planning, the thought goes, would limit the growth of greenhouse emissions from vehicles and trucks. That's a timely and reasonable argument, but the real reason to support this bill is much closer to home. Better regional planning will help make the state's metro areas more attractive and livable, and that will allow them to grow and attract jobs in a cleaner, healthier setting.