A Republican lawmaker who tried earlier this year to end the standoff between counties and prospective cities by creating a state subsidy for incorporations has abandoned that plan and instead will try next year for an outright repeal of a 1992 state law that has effectively kept new cities off the map. Following a legislative hearing in October on his plan to require state government to reimburse new cities for the costs of traffic enforcement and wildlands fire protection now borne by stat...

Ending a two-year political stalemate, the Legislature has placed a $9.2 billion education bond on the November ballot with conditions that would fundamentally change the way school construction is financed in California. Under the proposed reforms, local school districts would have to cover half the cost of new schools, and the state would suspend the ability of cities and counties to levy school fees in excess of state-mandated limits - a power granted by a series of appellate court decisions c...

Reports on the need for farmlands preservation in the urbanizing Central Valley have become nearly as commonplace as tract homes in Fresno. But when a high-powered group of valley farmers released their own report last month, the reactions indicated that this one might carry more weight than the rest. The California Building Industry Association, sensing the potential loss of a sometime ally in the valley's land-use wars, condemned the report as "alarmist rhetoric". And the head of a environmenta...