SB 375 is a Sierra Club endorsed brainchild of Darrell Steinberg. Like most issues, Charlie Brown has yet to take a stand – but Charlie’s Friends Jennifer Montgomery and the Sierra Club love this Bill.

SB 375 would centralize planning, basically screwing over Suburbs in an effort to force development back to city centers. What is sinister is that SB 375 could allow School Bond money to be taken away from districts as well. That’s correct, even if Measure Q passes – SB 375 could allow the State to raid the bond money because of how it is written.

While Brown chides McClintock for not doing his job – McClintock did his job, setting Steinberg and others who are promoting this partial birth abortion of land-use on fire. Not bad for a SoCal politician that doesn’t know where Placer County is… huh?

SB 375 – Steinberg
Urban Cores

Mr. President:

The Orange County Register summed up this bill very accurately when it asked, “Want to live in a condo by the train tracks?”

Some people do, and they’re welcome to. But most people – particularly those with families – want a yard for their kids to play in; they want a lawn and a garden; they want a little distance between themselves and their neighbor.

And in a free society, people have that choice. Those who want to live in a condo by the train tracks can do so and those who want to live in a quiet, tree-shaded neighborhood can do so.

And government once respected these individual choices and provided the infrastructure to accommodate them.

What rankles the left is that most people prefer the quiet, tree-shaded neighborhood. That’s why they move to the suburbs – so that they can enjoy what the left now scoffs at – what we used to call “the American dream.”

Under this legislation, the “American Dream” of raising your kids with a back-yard and swing-set and a barbecue and a little elbow-room is to be replaced with something the liberals are calling the “Preferred Growth Scenario.”

And let’s be clear on what they mean by “Preferred Growth Scenario.” It isn’t about your preferences for your own life. They’re talking about their preferences for your own life. And for your family’s life.

They prefer that you move into dense urban cores – and they are prepared to manipulate public policy and misuse government authority to force you to do so.

What is this brave new world? It is very precisely defined by this politburo edict as a density of 20 families per acre living a half-mile from a busy transit corridor. (That’s roughly three and a half times the population density of San Francisco).

If you comply, you’ll be rewarded with streamlined regulations that are otherwise stifling development and a cornucopia of tax revenues taken from those who don’t choose this Brave New Preferred Growth Scenario.

This says to the millions of Californians who have rejected this lifestyle: “Tough. We know what’s better for you and your family than you do.”

This says to the millions of voters who have supported one bond measure after another: “Tough. You are not going to receive the proceeds of your taxes unless you conform to this Brave New Preferred Growth Scenario. The money that you thought you had voted for highway construction under this bill will instead be used for so-called transit villages, or more accurately, dense condominiums next to a train track.”

I’m curious to find out how many of the elitists who vote for this measure have actually made that choice for their own families. I suspect very few.

This bill is the ultimate victory of bureaucratic central planning over individual freedom of choice. Apparently, the sponsors believe that it worked so well in the old Soviet Union that we ought to give it a try here.

Mark me down as skeptical.