This week, the Los Angeles Court of Appeal decided an important case upholding the requirement that a plaintiff who wishes to challenge an assessment under Proposition 218 must exhaust administrative remedies before suit. In Hill RHF Housing Partners, L.P. v. City of Los Angeles, et al., the Court held that to challenge adoption
The San Francisco Court of Appeal issued the third landmark local government finance decision in two days today in City and County of San Francisco v. All Persons Interested in the Matter of Proposition C. [A blog post on one appears here and we’ll have one up on the other shortly.] The case
The San Francisco Court of Appeal upheld a victory for the Bay Area Toll Authority (the Metropolitan Transportation Commission “wearing another hat”) today in Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association v. Bay Area Toll Authority (HJTA v. BATA). The case is a challenge to 2018’s Regional Measure 3, authorizing a $3 hike in tolls on
Last week, The Los Angeles City Council unanimously approved moving forward with study of a “vacancy tax” it might add to the November 2020 ballot. The Los Angeles vacancy tax would likely be modeled after Oakland’s Measure W — which voters approved in 2018 by a 70%–30% margin, meeting Proposition 218’s two-thirds threshold for special
The “validation statutes,” Code of Civil Procedure sections 860 to 870.5, are a powerful tool public agencies (and the plaintiffs that sue them) might overlook when defending challenges to legislative acts. They provide a short statute of limitations — 60 days — and allow agencies to sue for a court ruling validating an action,
