Time marches on: Parking meters in political dispute

By John Howard - Capitol Weekly | 08/21/13 12:00 AM PST
(Editor's Note: The following story appeared originally in California City News.)

Most people know little about parking meters except that they always run fast.

But those meters have figured in a political dispute this year pitting motorists against the cities, the cities against the state and the drivers against just about everybody. Gov. Brown, meanwhile, has weighed in on the side of the drivers.

At issue is what happens when a driver parks at a broken meter? How is the charge set? Does the motorist get a ticket, even though the elapsed time is unknown? Some drivers say they get gouged and they have no recourse. Some cities say the meters are deliberately broken so drivers will escape paying.

For the cities, the answer is simple: It’s up to them to decide...

...The governor disagreed.

He signed legislation, AB 61 by Assemblyman Mike Gatto, D-Los Angeles, requiring the cities to have a uniform policy statewide. The new law takes effect Jan. 1 and will remain in effect for three years unless otherwise renewed by lawmakers. It allows a motorist to park in a space with a broken meter for up to the maximum amount of time set by parking enforcement officials, without getting a ticket.

Gatto said his bill was prompted in part by an NBC report in L.A. that showed the city had issued 17,000 parking tickets in a single year for meters that were reported as malfunctioning.

“’Local control’ does not provide a right to fleece taxpayers,” he said in a written statement following the governor’s Aug. 12 action. “The question of parking at a broken meter should not be up for review or reconsideration every six months, nor should motorists be subject to confusing ordinances as they drive from city to city.”

Traditionally, the cities operate the meters, enforce the parking ordinances, set the rates and decide how to handle the money they collect. It’s been like that since the 1930s, when traffic-clogged, revenue-starved cities saw the potential in parking meters. In a city like Los Angeles, with some 38,000 parking meters and some $150 million annually from parking tickets, this means big money and major government activity that interacts in a direct way with the citizenry. At any one time, perhaps 10 percent of the meters are broken, although the breakage rate for the new electronic meters is far less -- of the thousands of new meters only a handful have broken, the city says.

In crowded, space-limited San Francisco, parking enforcement is aggressive, partly because it is seen as an anti-congestion tool. In San Francisco, they take parking violations seriously, with fines ranging from $46 for a simple transgression, $74 for an expired meter in the downtown core and $880 for misusing a handicapped placard.

The cities see parking enforcement as part of local jurisdiction. When meters are broken, a motorist can leave a note on the car explaining the situation, and that typically avoids a potential ticket – if the motorist doesn’t stay in the space longer than the legal limit that would have applied with the meter in place.

A flickr user, Atwater Village Newbie, posted this photo of a
broken parking meter, along with the question,
"Why are so many parking meters along Glendale Boulevard in
Atwater Village so often out of order?"
(Photo from www.flickr.com/)

The problem is, the meters get broken and aren’t speedily fixed.

“We have a severe problem with the meters always being broken,” said Luis Lopez, a board director of the Chamber of Commerce in Atwater Village, a community of about 16,000 in northeast Los Angeles. “The city of Los Angeles is not very quick to fix those meters. There could be a $250 fine for parking at a broken meter and the city wouldn’t fix them.” The high fine and the broken meters discourage people from parking and patronizing businesses, which is at the heart of Lopez’s concern.

“Parking is a big issue in our community. As far as business owners go, we rely on good parking,” he added.

Last year, a bill similar to Gatto’s AB 61 was approved, SB 1388 by Sen. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, which allowed cities to participate in to a statewide parking meter enforcement regulation. But Gatto said loopholes in the law enabled cities to restrict parking, prompting the latest bill.

The cities had signed off on the earlier legislation, because the locals could decide whether to opt in – or not.

“Triple A came to us because their members were expressing frustration because they didn’t know what the statewide policy was,” said Jennifer Whiting of the League of California Cities. “In some cities you could park, in some cities you couldn’t park. In particular, Mr. Gattos’ bill was promoted in the L.A. area, and L.A. had taken a second look at the ordinance.”

After receiving complaints from motorists, the L.A. City Council repealed the ordinance allowing ticketing at broken meters, but left open the possibility of revisiting the issue after six months. Gatto’s bill bars L.A. from looking at the issue gain in six months...

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Mike Gatto chairs the Appropriations Committee in the California Assembly. He represents Burbank, Glendale, La Cañada Flintridge, La Crescenta, Montrose, and the Los Angeles neighborhoods of Atwater Village, East Hollywood, Franklin Hills, Hollywood Hills, Los Feliz, and Silver Lake.

CAPITOL WEEKLY: CEQA a tool to protect Native American heritage

Town Creek Indian Mound State Historic Site

By Samantha Gallegos | 06/27/13 2:00 PM PST

When California’s Environmental Quality Act captures public attention, it’s usually because of a struggle between developers and business interests on one side and environmentalists on the other.

But for the Native American community, CEQA has a deeper significance: It is viewed as a tool in maintaining the tribes’ cultural heritage when their land has been targeted for development, or disturbed otherwise, and the inevitable legal battle ensues.

A number of lawmakers and tribes are attempting to expand the 45-year-old CEQA statute specifically to include protections for Native Americans’ cultural heritage. On Thursday, legislation to do just that was approved by the Assembly 56-0 and sent to the Senate.

“My tribe was forced to pay over $20 million to preserve our one and only creation area, because of a broken CEQA,” attorney Laura Miranda  of the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians testified during a hearing of the Assembly Committee on Natural Resources.

Assemblyman Mike Gatto

Miranda was speaking about the importance of AB 52 by Assemblyman Mike Gatto, D-Los Angeles, which would extend CEQA’s environmental  protections to tribal resources. It would require agencies to consult with Native American tribes before officially declaring that a project passed environmental muster.

The inclusion to protect these resources in CEQA was originally addressed back in 2004, with a Senate bill that incorporated the input of Native American tribes into various layers of the local land-use planning process.

But clashes between tribes and developers and local agencies in recent years have proven the ineffectiveness of the earlier law, observers say.

According to Heather Baugh, assistant general counsel in the Resources Agency who specializes in CEQA, the lead agency involved in a project should consult with the tribes in instances when they may be intruding on a valued site. The lead agency could consider hiring an archeologist, or maybe tribal members, to survey the site to ensure said area is sacred.

“Tribes don’t have a role in the CEQA process,” said Miranda. “Right now CEQA has a section on archaeological resources, but those are all analyzed from a specifically archaeological perspective.” This scientific view doesn’t take into consideration other meaningful qualities of an area, such as the spiritual history.

Under CEQA, projects should say whether going forward would cause substantial adverse changes to the significance of a historical resource, an archaeological resource, or disturb any human remains like in the case of native burial grounds.

But this checklist doesn’t address to all areas of concern for California’s Native American tribes.

What is currently purported to protect Native American cultural resources does not explicitly require the involvement of tribes in the consultation process regarding projects affecting their cultural resources and sacred sites.

In some cases, this has led to areas of importance for tribes to fall between the cracks of development.

Pechanga Tribal Chairman Mark Macarro shows sacred site
where quarry was proposed. Riverside Press Enterprise, 11.19.2012

Sovereignty of the Luiseño people was threatened in recent years by plans to excavate a mining pit near an area spiritually equivalent for this culture to Eden or Bethlehem, because of failed protection by CEQA.

In 2011, Granite Construction Inc. was planning to effectively blow up an area considered by the Pechanga and Luiseño People to be the place where the “Earth and Sky came together and formed the World,” according to the tribes documentation opposing the project.

“Because CEQA didn’t work for bigger site protection, we ended up having to buy our creation area from a mining company for $20 million,” said Miranda. “Everything was there, on record… it was already on the national historic register. All of the evidence was there, but it was still going to be allowed.”

“AB 52 clarifies the role of the Native Americans within the CEQA process and it requires a more involved consultation with tribes for projects which affect tribal cultural resources and sacred sites,” Gatto said.

An area in the Volcanic Tableland in eastern California where thieves
attempted to carve out a petroglyph. They ultimately extracted six slabs
with the ancient images, and damaged many of the others.
Greg Haverstock/Bureau of Land Management

This was the legislation’s second committee hearing. Proponents have spent the year collaborating with most members of the opposition, making appropriate amendments to address certain concerns and ultimately find a balance that still preserves the bill’s sanctity.

But development and business interests are suspicious of Gatto’s bill.

Representatives for both California’s Chamber of Commerce and the state’s Building Industries Association appeared before committee hearings oppose the bill, saying they concerned the measure would give the tribes veto authority over projects within the state.

Lead agencies would, however, have the opportunity to impose a statement of overriding considerations., which basically allows the project to continue based on public interests, despite an adverse environmental impact.

This additional layer to an already extensive CEQA process may stress individuals and groups that desire to begin local land use projects, but this is arguably meager in comparison to the concerns of the tribes.

“Under current law, if a tribe wants to have input on a sacred site…. something that could be of profound religious significance for that tribe, that tribe is forced to go into negotiations as a member of the public,” said Assemblyman Gatto. Meaning tribes have no greater legal standing in these issues than someone completely unaffiliated with the culture.

You can read this article and more at the Capitol Weekly HERE

Mike Gatto is the Chairman of the Appropriations Committee of the California State Assembly.  He represents the cities of Burbank, Glendale, La Cañada Flintridge, the Los Angeles neighborhoods of Los Feliz, Silver Lake, Atwater Village, and portions of the Hollywood Hills and East Hollywood.  www.asm.ca.gov/gatto