In Building Industry Ass'n of Central California v. County of Stanislaus, No. F058826 (Nov. 29, 2010), the California Court of Appeal (Fifth District) concluded that the County's Farmland Mitigation Program -- which requires property owners to dedicate or acquire perpetual agricultural conservation easements in a 1-to1 ratio as a condition of obtaining development approvals or permits -- was not facially invalid.
The trial court had invalidated the FMP on its face because the County "failed to provide sufficient evidence to demonstrate a reasonable relationship between the exactions requires under the FMP and any adverse public impacts resulting form the new applications to change ... to 'residential' uses," but the Court of Appeal concluded that the burden was not on the County to show the FMP bears a rational relationship to farmland loss, but on the plaintiff BIA to show the FMP bears no reasonable relationship. Slip op. at 9.
The court also held that the FMP "mandates bear a reasonable relationship to the loss of farmland to residential development," and that "the requirement of rough proportionality between the mitigation measure and the impact of the development project is met" because the 1-to-1 ratio is proportional since "[f]or every acre of farmland permanently lost to residential development another acre of farmland is permanently protected from residential development." Slip op. at 11.
The court did not apply the more stringent Nollan/Dolan standards for judicial review of exactions since the FMP was a "generally applicable requirement" imposed as a condition on all development, and not "a land use condition in [an] individual case." Slip op. at 8.
More about the case here (from Meyers Nave's Public Law Blog), and here (from the Modesto Bee).
