As Halloween approaches, there is a “mixed bag” of CEQA developments to briefly note:
- Just a week after extending its time to act on the City of Hayward’s petition for review of the First Appellate District’s (Div. 3) decision in City of Hayward v. Trustees of the California State University, (Case No. S203939) (“City of Hayward”) the California Supreme Court, on October 17, 2012, granted the petition and held the case (Case No. S203939), deferring further action pending its consideration and disposition of a related issue in City of San Diego v. Board of Trustees of the California State University, Case No. S199557. The City of Hayward case, which is now unciteable as precedent due to the grant of review, was summarized in my blog post of July 12, 2012 (“First District Reaffirms CEQA Is Concerned With Physical Impacts on the Environment, Not Economic Ones on Government Services”). The Supreme Court’s docket identified the relevant issue under consideration in City of San Diego as: “Does a state agency that may have an obligation to make “fair-share” payments for the mitigation of off-site impacts of a proposed project satisfy its duty to mitigate under [CEQA] by stating that it has sought funding from the legislature to pay for such mitigation and that, if the requested funds are not appropriated, it may proceed with the project on the ground that mitigation is infeasible?”