By BILL HATCH

Recently accused by a local planning commissioner of being a dishonest
journalist, I reviewed my notebooks for moral reassurance. I found
notes from an interview I once did with a city planning-department
staffer in charge of maps. This Galilean fundamentalist believed that
satellite enhanced geography was the queen of the sciences and would
set us free. I honestly reported this lunacy for the local newspaper.

Our little region of the globe contains three north San Joaquin Valley
CA counties in the largest parts of two congressional districts
formerly known as Pombozastan in honor of representatives Pombo and
Cardoza, of anti-Endangered Species Act fame. The three county seats
are tops in the nation for mortgage foreclosures. Three other Central
California cities, Sacramento, Fresno and Bakersfield, also score high
for mortgage foreclosure rates. These land-use jurisdictions, whose
elected officials approved the massive construction boom driven by
speculation, are awash in debt and planning maps: county limits, city
limits, specific urban development plans, spheres of influence,
blueprints, greenprints and regional partnerships.

Years ago, state Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, irritated with local
governments in Northern California, advanced an idea to consolidate
its 50 counties into conveniently large land-use jurisdictions like
the eight counties south of the Tehachapis, which contain the largest
population in the state. I don't remember the speaker's exact
political purpose for this suggestion, but it threatened the
livelihoods and power of thousands of county officials, presumably to
some positive outcome for the speaker's agenda at the time. To my
knowledge, Brown's proposal has not returned in his forthright terms,
but it has gained momentum by other means.

As anyone knows, whose life has detoured for some reason into the
intellectual sump called "land-use planning" in California, the topic
is rich in absurdity and cannot be faced, let alone comprehended
without deep study of the comic novel and neglected masterpieces of
18th-century Neapolitan social theory. Although the environment
constantly deteriorates under the impact of "inevitable growth,"
although the resource-carrying capacity of the state is breaking down
all around us, although new slogans along the lines of the familiar
chestnut "smart growth" are endlessly confected by land-use
propagandists - we know we cannot take this sugar-coated bullshit
seriously. Down that path lies idiocy, and there are examples all
around us of those who have ventured there and not returned.

The area including 15 Central California counties is missing the two
maps essential to understanding the true land-use jurisdictions.

Each of the 15 counties has land-use authority over the unincorporated
areas within its borders. The cities within them have land-use
authority over the areas within their corporate city limits and
consultative jurisdiction over areas beyond their limits depending on
spheres of influence, specific urban development plans, and other
arrangements with their counties. (As a canny realtor/city councilman
once put it: "Counties don't grow; cities do.")

As official land-use jurisdictions, these counties and their cities
are subject to state and federal environmental laws and regulations,
particularly the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), which
defines the state's unique procedures and requirements for
environmental review. Federal laws and regulations define other duties
and responsibilities of local land-use jurisdictions. The main federal
laws are the Endangered Species Act (ESA), Clean Water Act and Clean
Air Act. If the local jurisdictions corrupt these laws too blatantly,
their decisions are open to legal challenge.

Local land-use officials do not don sackcloth and sit in ashes when
they are defeated in court. Their response to a negative ruling is to
ramp up the propaganda attack against successful petitioners, courts,
judges and environmental law, approve more projects and sacrifice to
golden cows, praying for the extirpation of their enemies - from the
San Joaquin Kit Fox to environmental organizations. After a few years
of these rustic rites, a stranger arriving in their midst and
observing their public behavior must theorize that they were born that
way or that the idiocy is environmentally caused.

The executive director of the San Joaquin Valley air board, controlled
by pro-growth county supervisors, continues his campaign to convince
the public that one of the two worst air quality basins in the nation,
facing epidemic growing rates of childhood and elder asthma, has
better air quality than it was 25 years ago. The only way to
comprehend this is to realize that the San Joaquin Valley Regional Air
Quality Board, like city councils and boards of supervisors in its
region, has been wholly digested and evacuated by its "regulated
community."

Environmental laws and regulations governing the legal actions of
local land-use jurisdictions theoretically obstruct developers in
collusion with local officials from doing exactly what they want to do
- create a continuous slurb from Chico to Bakersfield on the richest,
most productive farm and ranch land in the nation and one of the
greatest agricultural treasures in the world, also home to abundant
wildlife. They seek to create residential subdivisions to profit while
making the region's air unbreathable, its water unpotable and its
wildlife extinct.

There are numerous county and municipal general plans being updated at
the moment. The state has mandated general plans since 1927 and has
required frequent updates in recent years. The whole Valley is
updating general plans that are out of compliance with unenforced
state law. General plans are supposed to be made to guide development
as if the existing population mattered. They are the main venue in
which citizens have any say about what developers and their government
enablers have planned for them. "Planning" is an activity conducted in
an arcane jargon designed to impress and intimidate the populace. But,
at least the jurisdictions covered by the general plans are relatively
well marked on maps. Fresno and Merced are currently involved in
probably the last county-boundary dispute in the state.

Meanwhile, various forms of regional planning are going on. The seven
counties around Sacramento have a regional transportation-planning
agency called Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG) that
ceaselessly generating frosted cow pies for public consumption.
Lately, the eight San Joaquin Valley counties have gotten into the
business with a state-funded San Joaquin Valley Blueprint Planning
Process, led by the Merced County Associations of Governments (MCAG).
In addition to our blueprint, we have a special commission, the San
Joaquin Valley Partnership, chaired by Stockton's largest developer.

These parallel planning processes are coordinated in various backrooms
and sprung upon the public as a series of "done deals" in which every
agenda but protection of the environment is fulfilled. The
transportation planning, for example, has one aim: persuading the
state Department of Transportation that it should put SACOG or MCAG's
special streets and roads projects at the top of the pile in the
annual hogfest of requests to the Federal Highway Administration.

The regional transportation planning process pays as little attention
as possible to state and federal environmental law. While the local
general plans must at least pretend an interest in the environment,
regional transportation planning is motivated by its higher calling -
federal highway funds. Thanks to the durable public-private/"win-win"
partnership between developers and land-use authorities, housing is
built without enough roads to handle the increased traffic (known in
planning jargon as "inadequate transportation infrastructure").
Delegations speaking with "One Voice" are regularly dispatched to
Congress demanding that the empty barrel of speculation-driven
construction be filled with pork.

The CAGs and COGs generate an abundance of beautiful, colored maps.
However, the two most important maps are controlled by jurisdictions
that do not share.

The official boundaries of the region Formerly-Known-As- Pombozastan
are clearly marked. Gerrymandered as they are according to vanities of
the two-party system, the 11th and 18th congressional districts will
remain the same until after the next US Census in 2010. But
Pombozastan was never the most important political jurisdiction in its
region.

Extremely conservatively, I date the period of radical growth of the
unmapped jurisdiction to the spring of 2005, when Stockton's largest
developer held a fundraiser for representatives RichPAC Pombo and
Dennis "Fairy Shrimp Slayer" Cardoza, after which the two congressmen
split a reported $50,000. In attendance at the event were no doubt
representatives of a Sacramento-based, unmapped political jurisdiction
recently stung by defeat at the hands of the Army Corps of Engineers
in the US Supreme Court, when the justice from Sacramento recused
himself. In the fall of 2005, about the time Pombo and Cardoza
introduced their latest bill to gut the ESA, the same Stockton
developer was appointed by the Hun, our governor, to co-chair the San
Joaquin Valley Partnership. The term "co-chair" is overly modest.

The first great, undrawn map is now being layered over the San Joaquin
Valley, for years known as the Territory of the Warring Irrigation
Districts. This map is composed of two parts (befitting a
partnership), representing a dual monarchy along Austro-Hungarian
lines that must appeal to the Hun. In the north, we have a highly
organized administrative unit built for growth called GrupeSpanopolis.
The southern part of the Partnership, while not quite as well
organized (though better monitored by the FBI) is called the Fresno
Catastrophe, which contains a vast prison/mega-dairy complex in its
southern provinces.

In the Sacramento area, even the 7-county SACOG transportation
planning region does not contain Tsakopolis, a perpetually expanding,
dynastic development octopus reaching at certain points into the
neighboring Partnership. Tsakopolis is also managed along Balkan
lines, although it probably owes more to the Ottoman than to the
Austro-Hungarian model. The state Capitol is simply one among many
gated communities in Tsakopolis.

This is the first layer of undrawn maps. One might say, (following
Vico's New Science) that these are kingdoms of giants, representing,
along with many other signals we are receiving, our entrance into a
new age of barbarism.

This map is unlikely to be drawn by local land-use jurisdictions
because they must deny that the giants have any influence over land-
use decisions governed by environmental law and regulation, some of
the most popular laws in the state and nation. If even the existence
of the kingdoms of the giants were admitted publicly and mapped, it
could lead to investigations that might result in criminal
prosecutions for mis, mal and non-feasance. This sort of reform could
be like something out of the "Progressive Era," conjured up by the Hun
from the dustheap of Republican Party history during the recall
election. The Hun conquered a state capitol inside which no trooper
can direct a tourist to the portrait of Gov. Hiram Johnson.

A giant, perpetual propaganda campaign sells the idea that our
developers are enlightened, benevolent and humble citizens fulfilling
the deepest community needs. This campaign is as true as the
inevitability of growth, the absolute necessity for the peripheral
canal, Sykes and Temperance Flats reservoirs, that Westlands Water
District must own San Luis Reservoir, that the quality of Valley air
and water is better than it was 25 years ago, that several species of
Delta fish are not going extinct, that thousands of acres of habitat
for endangered species can be destroyed with impunity and that
developers can build mile-long sewer lines through farmland without
any legal permits at all. This campaign, fomented by the global
information-management firm, Fee, Fai, Foe & Fumm LLP, runs larger
campaigns denying global warming, peak oil, the loss of habeas corpus,
extinction of the Polar Bear, defeat in Iraq and the global credit
crunch.

Like the prehistoric giants they resemble (said to have learned piety
from fear of thunder and lightning), someday our giants might come to
Jesus via flood, drought or both. But do not tempt your Lord about it.
They would earn fabulous profits from reconstruction projects. Every
child knows that giants prize gold above all.

But, there is another undrawn map, the only map at the moment of any
use to hundreds of thousands of our Valley residents now inhabiting
the housing products the giants built. The Great Speculative Housing
Boom has Busted and people don't know who holds their mortgages
anymore than the mortgage holders know the people who aren't paying
subprime resets. It would be dishonest journalism to say that I know
of a map showing how mortgages in Tsakopolis, GrupeSpanopolis and the
Fresno Catastrophe have been bundled and distributed among the hedge
funds and banks that do not qualify for discount rates from the
Federal Reserve.

Bill Hatch can be reached at: wmmha...@sbcglobal.net