By @Aaron Avery
On March 22, CSDA submitted a detailed comment letter to the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) regarding its revised Draft Updated Guidelines for implementation of the Surplus Land Act (SLA). CSDA led a broad coalition of local government associations and agencies. The comment letter can be viewed here.
In addition to the local government coalition letter led by CSDA, more than four-dozen special districts responded to CSDA’s Call to Action and submitted their own comment letters.
Although the comment period on the Draft Updated Guidelines has now closed, special districts are encouraged to review the Draft Updated Guidelines and CSDA’s Take Action Page.
As discussed in more detail on the CSDA Take Action Page, HCD’s draft guidelines include several issues of concern that ignore, unlawfully expand upon, or misstate current law as it pertains to special districts and the SLA, including:
- The Draft Updated Guidelines misapply the SLA to Agency’s Use land and improperly purport to apply the SLA to exempt surplus land.
- The Draft Updated Guidelines misapply SLA penalty provisions while making changes in conflict with statute.
- The Draft Updated Guidelines purport to allow third parties to issue notices of alleged violations of the SLA directly to public agencies with no basis in statute, exposing local agencies to unaccountable interference with operations.
- The Draft Updated Guidelines subject local agencies to a subjective open-ended definition of “Good Faith Negotiations.”
Additional information from HCD about the Draft Updated Guidelines and the SLA can be viewed here.
CSDA will inform its membership when the final SLA Updated Guidelines are released by HCD. It is anticipated that, as part of the release of its final guidelines, HCD will summarize how it addressed comments received during the comment period.
If you have any questions, please contact aarona@csda.net.
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