Our View: Want to live in condo by train tracks?

Anyone who watches the state Capitol knows that most of the bills that make it into law have only a minimal effect on the average Californian. It's hard to legislate anything more than an incremental change these days, which is generally a good thing given that state legislators have little appreciation for the concept of limited government. Yet once in a while something big gets passed.

With few people paying attention, both houses of the Legislature earlier this month passed a far-reaching and terribly disturbing bill that will reshape land-use patterns in this state. If signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Senate Bill 375 will basically mandate that all new development in California fit what activists call "Smart Growth."

Smart Growth is a highly controversial and authoritarian concept. Its goal is to use the government to battle what environmentalists call suburban sprawl. Most Californians live in single-family homes with yards in suburban neighborhoods. Smart Growthers argue that this development pattern is destructive to the planet and creates too big of a carbon footprint. Their goal is to force new development into "infill" locations, and SB375 is their latest and most potent vehicle to accomplish this social-engineering goal.

Their model is Portland, Ore., where officials imposed a "green line" around the city, restricting most development to the urban core. Such policies, by the way, are hostile to property rights. In cities that have adopted this strategy, the government — not the individual — makes most of the development and design decisions. And instead of building new roads and freeways to meet population growth, supporters of Smart Growth want to invest mostly in mass transit even though most of us rely on our cars and freeways to get around.

This trendy concept has been the rage for a while, and local cities have been embracing it on a small-scale level. Brea bulldozed its old downtown and built a new one, and its officials have been subsidizing denser housing, live/work lofts and other urban-style projects. Santa Ana is still pushing its Renaissance Plan, which seeks to replace older neighborhoods with high-rises and condos.

SB375, however, would create statewide impetus for these ideas. Tom Adams, president of the left-wing California League of Conservation Voters, told one L.A. Times columnist that this is "the most important land-use bill in California since enactment of the Coastal Act." He is wrong to support it, but his observation is right.

The Coastal Act created the California Coastal Commission, which transferred development decisions near the coast from property owners and local cities to an agency known for its hostility to growth. SB375 will transfer decisions about local developments from property owners and local cities to state environmental officials, who will use a variety of regulations and incentives to force developers to only build the kind of developments the bureaucrats prefer.

As the Capitol Weekly explained, "[D]evelopers would be able to expedite their projects and get exemptions from the California Environmental Quality Act .... . In return, environmentalists would have a greater say in how and where projects are located to best reduce greenhouse gas emissions."

Instead of being driven by market demands, housing decisions will be driven mostly by political considerations. It's already quite difficult and costly to build anything in this state, thanks to the miasma of regulation, but this new law will ratchet this up to a higher level. The result will be that our kids and grandkids will be less able to afford decent family housing in California and the congestion situation will get even worse, as transportation resources are diverted to rail lines rather than freeways.

At the very least, this massive change in California lifestyles deserves a broader debate before it becomes law.