State Index

New information added on November 15, 2007

“Impact Fees Are Becoming a Popular Tool of Tax-strapped Municipalities” - News Brief, PRFA, Nov. 2007 “Mexican Drug Cartels Are Growing Marijuana in U.S. National Parks and Forests,” News Brief, PRFA, August 2007 “Governor Schwarzenegger’s Swearing-In Remarks” - Reprinted from the American Outlook, Anza, California, November 28, 2003 (Printed in full) “When I became a citizen 20 years ago, I had to take a citizenship test. I had to learn history and principles of our republic. What I’ve learned - and what I’ve never forgotten is - that in a republic, sovereignty rests with the people - not the government.” January 8, 2003 Richard Pombo Named Chairman of the House Resources Committee — Nationwide Victory for the Private Property Rights and Wise use Movement On January 8, 2003, the star Congressman for private property rights, Richard Pombo, a rancher from California, was named Chairman of the all-important House Resources Committee, which has been key to issues such as heritage areas, UNESCO Biosphere Reserves, endangered species, and land grabs and lockups involving the National Park Service and its parent agency, the Department of Interior. The selection of Mr. Pombo is a great victory because he has stalwartly defended private property in arenas ranging from unjust wetlands regulation to proposed designations of Heritage areas. See full press release from the American Land Rights Foundation. See Also   Private Conservation Additional Helpful Organizations Pacific Legal Foundation address Donald L. Fife, Chairman National Association of Mining Districts address E-mail: donfife@earthlink.net San Joaquin County Citizens Land Alliance A California nonprofit corporation Publishes bi-monthly newsletter “Alert.” address Citizens for Private Property Rights (Covers San Diego, Ramona, Crest, Poway, Escondido, Rancho Santa Fe) Publishes monthly newsletter address Family Water Alliance address Additional Resources “Biosphere Reserves in Action: Case Studies of the American Experience: Published by the United States Man and the Biosphere Program (U.S. MAB, June 1995.” Includes studies of 12 major UNESCO Biosphere Reserves in the U.S. The Biosphere Reserves in California: 1. Central California Coast Biosphere Reserve map 6. International Sonoran Desert Alliance map link to main page See our Biosphere Reserves Index Page for links to all 12 studies Websites California State Senate link California State Assembly link

State News “Twenty-first Century Carpetbaggers and Privateers: The Booty is Your Property” - By Marshall Sayegh, President, Property Rights Foundation of Mendocino County, Gualala, California, Eleventh Annual National Conference on Private Property Rights (PRFA, Albany, N.Y., October 13, 2007) Today, privateering is a way of mobilizing groups of people and resources to take private property rights. When faced with an illogical utility route that threatened their businesses, the Gualala Commercial Property Owners defended their private property rights by organizing and speaking out, again and again. More on this topic: Eminent Domain — National “New Wave of UNESCO World Heritage Sites Proposed” - By Carol W. LaGrasse (PRFA Position Brief, June 2007) This spring, the National Park Service announced that 36 locations in the United States have been proposed for UNESCO World Heritage Sites, adding to the twenty that already are designated in this country. Such international recognition potentially threatens private property rights because preservationists could exploit the designation to stop the use of land in the region just beyond a site’s borders. More on this topic: Biosphere Reserves & World Heritage Sites “A History of Government Theft” - By Sarah Foster, April 2006, Reprinted from Whistleblower by permission of WorldNetDaily.com, publisher. The U. S. Supreme Court’s Kelo v. New London ruling was not the beginning of the abuse of eminent domain to destroy communities for private development. It began in Washington, D.C., during the 1950s, where slum clearance was the excuse for cruelly displacing 20,000 residents, mainly families from good homes, others people in scattered poor conditions, who suffered especially, and even died, from the evictions. More on this topic: Eminent Domain — National “The Environmental Trust Bankruptcy” - by Darrel Beck (Reprinted by permission from newsletter of Citizens for Private Property Rights, Santa Ysabel, California, Sept. 2005) The San Diego-based land trust called The Environmental Trust filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy last spring, leaving behind debt exceeding #13 million, many unrecorded conservation easements, incompletely deposited endowment funds, and inadequate financial ability to protect “critical habitat” on lands it was obligated to manage. More on this topic: Land Trusts More on this topic: Conservation Easements “City of Goleta Mobile Home Rent Control Law Struck Down” - By Carol W. LaGrasse (PRFA, November 21, 2004) The U.S. District Court of the Central District of California struck down the rent control ordinance of the City of Goleta in California on October 29, 2004 as an unconstitutional taking because it failed to substantially further its stated goal of creating affordable housing. The law kept rents down but raised sale prices, without allowing the mobile home owner to collect a fair portion of the sales premium. More on this topic: Rent Control — National “Abundance Ecology—The Liberty Garden” - By Michael Shaw, Freedom 21 Radio Talk Show host, Proprietor of Liberty Garden, Aptos, California; Speech to the Eighth Annual Conference on Private Property Rights (PRFA, Albany, N. Y. October 23, 2004) By using intensive management, native plants whose seed bank was long dormant returned in great variety to Liberty Garden in Santa Cruz County on coastal California. Abundance ecology, based on private property rights, is the opposite of shortage ecology, based on the Endangered Species Act. More on this topic: Endangered Species—National “Open Range Warfare — The 2003 Version” - By Ron Zumbrun (Reprinted by permission, from The Daily Recorder, City of Sacramento, October 13, 2003) Plumus County, California adopted an open range ordinance, forcing property owners to allow cattle grazing. Jack and Millie Herzberg are suing for trespass and illegal rent control. They want full compensation and liability insurance. More on this topic: Rangeland and Grazing “An Innovative Approach to Natural Area Restoration” — by Nate Dickinson, Wildlife Biologist (PRFA, July 22, 2002) Nate Dickinson’s insights about Michael Shaw’s restoration of native species on his coastal California property. Instead of relying on herbicides, burning, or grazing to eliminate exotic plants, Mr. Shaw used scientifically directed human energy to release the native seedbank, working past successive invasions of other unwanted plants toward bountiful results. More on this topic: Conservation Easements More by this author: Nate Dickinson’s Page “Supreme Court Rejects ‘Categorical’ Compensation for Temporary Taking” — By Carol W. LaGrasse (PRFA, April 27, 2002) Justice Stevens writes that the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency took only a “temporal slice” of the property interest by imposing lengthy building moratoria. No compensation to landowners is required. The troublesome ruling broadly affirmed the justice of central planning, but left open room for “ad hoc” appeals for compensation for temporary takings. More on this topic: Zoning & Building Codes — National More on this topic: Government Land Ownership & Control — National “Locoweed Closes 48,000 Acres of Alogones Dunes Off-Highway Vehicle Park”-By Don Fife (Feb. 2002) The Bureau of Land Management is acquiescing to an environmental lawsuit to use a noxious weed, “Pierson’s milkvetch” or Astralagus magdalenae variety perirsonii, to close 48,000 acres of America’s premier off-highway vehicle park at Glamis Sand Dunes, Imperial County, California. Commonly known as Pierson’s locoweed, a poisonous noxious weed, it is normally against state and county laws to propagate on one’s property. More by this author: Don Fife’s Page “Greens Force Strategic Mine Out of Business-Communist China now controls supply of rare minerals”-By Don Fife (National Association of Mining Districts, Feb. 2, 2002) The world’s largest lanthanide mine in the Mojave Desert between Barstow, California, and Las Vegas, Nevada, was regulated out of business by twenty-nine local, state and federal agencies. More by this author: Don Fife’s Page “Endangered Species Act is racketeering” — Don Fife (Guest Commentary, The Leader, Lucerne Valley, California, February 6, 2002) The Bureau of Land Management is trying to shut down Dave Fisher’s family ranch, saying that the cattle compete with the desert tortoise for food, but the truth is that “the greatest threat to the tortoise is the incompetence of the BLM biologists.” More on this topic: Endangered Species — National More by this author: Don Fife’s Page “New Math for the USFS and the NPS: Visitor Days”-By Don Fife (January 2002) This little essay tells how the U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service inflate the visitor counts at certain National Forests and National Parks. More on this topic: National Park Service — National More by this author: Don Fife’s Page “Environmental Hysteria Can Kill”-By Don Fife (National Association of Mining Districts, January 2002) California’s State Element is gold and the State Rock is serpentine, the major source of asbestos. Asbestos hysteria has cost the taxpayers billions of dollars for unnecessary school asbestos removal and caused the loss of the Challenger astronauts. More by this author: Don Fife’s Page “Regarding Canadian Lynx and ESA” — U.S. Representative Richard W. Pombo (Congressional Record, January 24, 2002, page E-27) Congressman Pombo points out that endangered plants were secretly placed on Donald Fife’s property in “an attempt to close about 30,000 acres of the highest mineral valued land in southern California.” More on this topic: Endangered Species — National “Conservation Easements-One Rancher to Another”-By Joe Mehrten, Mehrten’s Ranch, Clements, California. An exchange of letters bringing out the many interrelated issues, especially conservation easements, infringing on the future of the rural West. (Click to select from three full letters.) Letter by Joe Mehrten (Jan. 6, 2002) points out, “Conservation easements with private land trusts are so intertwined with government regulations and controls as to be little different from easements sold to public agencies.” Response from Bev Sparrowk, Sparrowk Livestock (Jan. 8, 2002) states, “Jack and I have discovered in our exposure to and dealings with government agencies conversation and a spirit of cooperation usually reaps the results we had hoped for.” Joe Mehrten’s reply (Jan. 29, 2002), after he learned that a government grant, rather than conservation easements, is involved: “[T]he grant application makes it abundantly clear that this project invites destruction of our property rights.” More on this topic: Conservation Easements “Klamath Basin farmers fall victim to Endangered Species Act”- Reprinted by permission from Wyoming Agriculture (Wyoming Farm Bureau Federation, June 2001) More on this topic: Endangered Species — National “BLM’s way of Protecting the Tortoise”-By Don Fife (2001) The BLM is trying to shut down Dave Fisher’s ranch under the guise that the cattle compete with the tortoise for food, but the greatest threat to the tortoise is the incompetence of the BLM wildlife biologists. More by this author: Don Fife’s Page February 2001: “Unions Use Environmental Lawsuits to Extort Labor Agreements—Power Plants in California Delayed” February 2001 More on this topic: Environmental Groups—National “Santa Cruz Island—Just Compensation from the National Park Service” - Speech by Roger M. Sullivan, Senior Partner, Sullivan, Workman & Dee, Los Angeles, reprinted from Proceedings of the Fourth Annual N.Y. Conf. on Private Property Rights (PRFA, 1999) More on this topic: Eminent Domain — National More on this topic: National Park Service — National “Existing and Tentative U. N. World Heritage Sites in the United States”-reprinted from Positions on Property, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Nov. 1998) (Jump to California information) More on this topic: Biosphere Reserves & World Heritage Sites “Democracy, Property, and Land-Use Regulation” - James S. Burling, Senior Counsel, Pacific Legal Foundation, Sacramento, California, from Proceedings of the Third Annual N.Y. Conf. on Private Property Rights (1998) More on this topic: Zoning and Building Codes — National More informative speeches: PRFA Conferences “Hydroelectric Dams Subject to FERC Relicensing—1998-2010” - from Positions on Property, Vol. 4, No. 1 (PRFA, Nov. 1998) (Jump to California information) More on this topic: National Dam Relicensing under the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) “Proposed National Heritage Areas — 104th Congress — 1996” - Reprinted from “American Heritage Areas,” Positions on Property, (PRFA Jan.-Apr. 1996) California: Proposed Study - Puente-Chino Hills Heritage Corridor More on this topic: Heritage Rivers & Areas

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