Best Best & Krieger News Feed

Environmental Consultant

28 Sep 2016 00:00:00 -0800

Best Best & Krieger has an immediate need for an in-house Environment and Natural Resources Consultant to provide technical assistance in the review and preparation of environmental documents related to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The ideal candidate should have significant technical experience in the following areas:

• Project design, scoping and procedural compliance
• Air quality, traffic, noise, and water quality analysis
• Biological and cultural resource assessments
• Preparation of documents related to CEQA, NEPA and ESA compliance, including joint documents with federal agencies
• Community outreach and comment analysis
• Other technical environmental planning services, as appropriate

In addition to technical expertise in the areas identified above, necessary skills include strong technical writing skills, attention to detail, ability to work in a fast-paced, deadline-driven environment, ability and desire to work as part of a team, and strong client communication skills.

Qualified applicants are invited to apply online by clicking the link below. Applicants must attach a resume and cover letter to be considered for employment. This self-apply feature is compatible with Internet Explorer 6, 7, 8 & 9, Mozilla Firefox for Windows, or Safari for Macintosh. PLEASE NOTE, IF USING AN APPLE PRODUCT, YOU MUST TURN OFF POP UP BLOCKER.

lawcruit.micronapps.com/sup/lc_supp_jobpost.aspx

Please address cover letters to:

Debbie A. Prior
Director of Human Resources
Best Best & Krieger LLP

No phone calls please

Best Best & Krieger LLP is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

AB 1825 Sexual Harassment Avoidance Training (April 28)

28 Apr 2014 00:00:00 -0800

California's Fair Employment and Housing Act, pursuant to AB 1825, requires that employers with fifty or more employees in California provide at least two hours of Sexual Harassment Avoidance Training every two years to any employee that has a supervisory role in operations. This presentation is designed to satisfy those requirements.

Joseph Ortiz presented the training from the Riverside office. All other BB&K offices participated in the training via state-of-the-art video conferencing. The video conference is interactive, allowing attendees to ask questions and participate in other ways.

What was covered:

What constitutes sexual harassment or discrimination in the workplace
How to recognize and avoid it
What procedures to follow if you witness harassment or are harassed yourself
The potential consequences - including personal liability - of sexual harassment

Audience:

Supervisors
Human Resources Professionals
Public Officials
Managers & Private Business Professionals with 50 or More Employees

When:

Monday, April 28
9:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.

Registration:

The training was also held via video conference at the following BB&K offices throughout California.

Indian wells
Irvine
Los Angeles
Ontario
Riverside – Joseph Ortiz presented from the Riverside office
Sacramento
San Diego
Walnut Creek

BB&K Presenter:

Joseph Ortiz, Partner, Labor & Employment Practice Group in Riverside office

QUESTIONS:

Contact Katey Lamke if you have any questions about this event and/or about BB&K upcoming seminars/events.

If you are not currently receiving our Legal Alerts and would like to be added to our email distribution list, please visit our subscription page.

AB 1825 Sexual Harassment Avoidance Training (January 13)

13 Jan 2014 00:00:00 -0800

Joseph Ortiz presented the training from the Riverside office. All other BB&K offices participated in the training via state-of-the-art video conferencing. The video conference was interactive, allowing attendees to ask questions and participate in other ways.

What was covered:

What constitutes sexual harassment or discrimination in the workplace
How to recognize and avoid it
What procedures to follow if you witness harassment or are harassed yourself
The potential consequences - including personal liability - of sexual harassment

Audience:

Supervisors
Human Resources Professionals
Public Officials
Managers & Private Business Professionals with 50 or More Employees

The training was also held via video conference at the following BB&K offices throughout California:

Indian wells
Irvine
Los Angeles
Ontario
Riverside – Joseph Ortiz presented from the Riverside office
Sacramento
San Diego
Walnut Creek

BB&K Seminar: Statements of Economic Interests - Legal Requirements of Filing Officers & Officials

13 Nov 2013 00:00:00 -0800

This program addressed the statutory duties of public agency filing officers and officials regarding Form 700 Statements of Economic Interests (SEIs).

What was covered:

Legislative & Regulatory Changes
General Rules – What’s Your Role?
- Types of Public Officials – PRA vs. CIC
- Disclosure Requirements – Full vs. Limited
Guidelines – Notices, Fines & Waivers
SEI Reviews – Facial vs. Full
- What to Look For – Common Errors
SEI Records & Retention
Public Access – Two Days
Enforcement – Reporting Apparent Violations
What February 1 Deadline?

Audience:
City Clerks and Deputy City Clerks, Filing Officers and Filing Officials designated in agency conflict of interest codes; and assistant or backup personnel

Cost Per Person:
$75 for clients who participate in the Public Policy & Ethics program
$125 for non-participants in the Public Policy & Ethics program

BB&K Presenter:
Dianna Valdez, Senior Paralegal, Conflicts of Interest & Ethics Coordinator, Public Policy & Ethics Group

QUESTIONS:
Contact Katey Lamke if you have any questions about this event and/or about BB&K upcoming seminars/events.

If you are not currently receiving our Legal Alerts and would like to be added to our email distribution list, please visit our subscription page.

Four BB&K Attorneys Named by the Daily Journal Among Top 20 Municipal Lawyers In California

06 Nov 2013 00:00:00 -0800

For Immediate Release: Nov. 6, 2013
Media Contact: Jennifer Bowles • 951.826.8480 • jennifer.bowles@BBKlaw.com

LOS ANGELES _ The Daily Journal today named four attorneys at Best Best & Krieger LLP among California’s Top 20 municipal lawyers in 2013 for cases involving medical marijuana, water rights, redevelopment and corruption.

The state’s top legal newspaper recognized Jeffrey Dunn in Irvine for, among other things, successfully arguing before the California Supreme Court in a case involving Riverside that state law does not prevent cities and counties from regulating medical marijuana dispensaries; Eric Garner, BB&K managing partner based in Los Angeles and Riverside, for an appellate court victory involving Santa Maria and a large portion of California’s Central Coast that strengthened the right of cities and public agencies to use groundwater for people; T. Brent Hawkins in Sacramento for handling lawsuits for cities and counties challenging the state’s handling of post-redevelopment issues, including a case that resulted in a judge agreeing that Riverside should get nearly $19 million in loans originally taken out by the city’s redevelopment agency, and Kendall MacVey in Riverside for his role in a case that saved the San Bernardino Associated Governments from having to reimburse San Bernardino County for a $102 million settlement that is the target of a corruption probe.

Lawyers at BB&K, with nine offices in California and Washington, D.C., serve as city attorney to more than 30 cities across California and provide special counsel work to dozens more.

“The recognition by The Daily Journal of four BB&K attorneys is incredibly gratifying and an enormous honor for them and the firm. We are very proud of these attorneys for doing such great work for our clients,” said Jeff Ballinger, an Ontario-based attorney who leads the firm’s municipal law practice group.

The Daily Journal Corp., publisher of the Los Angeles and San Francisco Daily Journals, issued its annual list of the state’s Top 20 municipal lawyers in a special supplement to today’s editions. According to The State Bar of California, there are more than 244,000 attorneys statewide.

BB&K Boosts Eminent Domain Practice with Three New Attorneys

17 Oct 2013 00:00:00 -0800

For Immediate Release: Oct. 17, 2013
Media Contact: Jennifer Bowles • 951.826.8480 • jennifer.bowles@BBKlaw.com

RIVERSIDE, Calif._ Best Best & Krieger LLP recently hired three attorneys to join the eminent domain practice in offices across Southern California.

The eminent domain practice group focuses on helping cities, counties, special districts and school districts acquire property so they can build roads, water supply pipelines and other needed infrastructure.

“We are thrilled to be welcoming three new attorneys who bring a wealth of diverse experience into our practice,” said Mark Easter, who heads the practice from the Riverside office.

The new attorneys are:

_ Artin N. Shaverdian, who is based in the Los Angeles office. An of counsel attorney at BB&K, Shaverdian comes to the firm with nearly a decade of experience in eminent domain law. He has represented key public agencies in Southern California, including the Los Angeles Unified School District, various cities, redevelopment agencies and special districts in eminent domain/inverse condemnation cases.

Primarily a litigator, he represents public agencies, individuals and business owners. Shaverdian has been lead counsel on the acquisition of hundreds of parcels of real property for various projects, including mixed-use commercial and residential redevelopment projects, schools, grade separation and other public infrastructure projects. He has also represented multiple property and business owners in eminent domain and inverse condemnation matters across the California, recovering millions of dollars on their behalf.

Prior to joining BB&K, Shaverdian was a partner at a boutique eminent domain practice in Glendale, Calif. He received his law degree from Southwestern University School of Law in Los Angeles in 2002.

_ Gregory G Snarr, who is an associate in the Riverside office. He represents public agencies and private-sector clients in pre-litigation, real-property acquisitions as well as all stages of complex, commercial litigation in state and federal courts.

Primarily a litigator, Snarr’s eminent domain experience includes acquisitions of rights of way for major public improvement projects as well as valuation issues, water adjudications, and land use and zoning restrictions. Fluent in Spanish, Snarr received his law degree from Brigham Young University in Utah in 2009.

_Holly E. Cheong, an associate who joined the San Diego office and represents public agencies in eminent domain matters. Prior to joining BB&K, Cheong worked for Snell & Wilmer LLP in Las Vegas as a litigator handing commercial, civil and employment cases.

Cheong received her law degree from the William S. Boyd School of Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 2010. After law school, she served as a law clerk to Justice Kristina Pickering of the Nevada Supreme Court. Before turning to a legal career, Cheong received a master’s degree in city planning from San Diego State University in 2003, and worked as an environmental planner for the Southern Nevada Water Authority and as a biologist for the City of San Diego Planning Department.

Cheong volunteers as the social media administrator with the San Diego affiliate of the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network. She began volunteering for the network after a friend died from the disease and she discovered that the survival rates with people suffering from pancreatic cancer are extremely low.

Condemnation of Property in California Can Get Messy

16 Sep 2013 00:00:00 -0800

By James M. Wyman

Condemning property for public projects in California is a hard reality for both government officials and the owners of property that is in the path of a new road, freeway expansion or mass transit project. There is often little that can be done to avoid having to acquire private property for these types of public projects. For major infrastructure projects, it can take years between project inception and property acquisition, leaving some property owners with the sense that they would have been better off had the property been acquired/condemned at an earlier time, especially if their property once had a higher value.

In general, property acquisition flows through a typical process without many problems: The public entity determines what property it needs, appraises it and acquires it. However, the process doesn’t come without peril and is subject to mistakes that can end up costing the public agency dearly. And in a topsy-turvy real estate market, where values may be lower in the future than the past, property owners are looking at new and untraditional ways to collect what are known as precondemnation damages.

Under California law, mistakes that occur in the property acquisition process can lead to a unique type of property-related damages known as precondemnation or Klopping damages. In the seminal case on precondemnation damages, Klopping v. City of Whittier, the California Supreme Court in 1972 set forth the basic parameters under which a property owner would be entitled to recover damages for a public agency’s unreasonable conduct or delay in condemning property.

Traditionally, property owners who seek precondemnation damages claims rely on lost rental profits as a means of measuring precondemnation damage. In a recent case involving a freeway improvement project in northern Monterey County, the property owners tried a different approach for measuring damages in a declining real estate market; they measured damages by calculating the difference in value of the property between the start and the end of the precondemnation period. One shortcoming with this approach was that the property owners were unable to distinguish between the decline caused by the general market and the decline caused by the public agency’s conduct. A state appellate court rejected the measurement of precondemnation damages, holding that the property owner’s method of calculating damages was limited to situations in which the property owner could prove a physical invasion or direct legal restraint on the property.

While avoiding paying precondemnation damages is a goal of the legal process, it is advisable to avoid precondemnation liability on all fronts. On many levels, avoiding precondemnation liability is somewhat straight forward – act reasonably in your dealings with the public and property owners in particular. There are four key points that public entities should consider during project delivery to minimize precondemnation damages claims:

Be Gracious, Respectful and Professional. Condemning property is the most significant civil power that a government entity holds. Be mindful of this during the acquisition and relocation processes. Having a home or business condemned is difficult enough for property owners so treating property owners with respect and being gracious towards them is an easy way to show that the public entity understands and can sympathize with them. Likewise, being professional is a way to demonstrate the seriousness of the situation and showing respect. Following these practices will go a long way to engender goodwill throughout the process.
Be Honest with Project Plans but Do Not Overstate. Government activity, including most aspects of project planning, is best practiced in the open. When discussing projects with property owners in the path of a public project, public entities need to be honest that a project is being planned but they need to be careful and circumspect in making statements about the exact parameters of a project before it is approved and right-of-way requirements are finalized. Avoid public statements that unequivocally state the need for a particular property and recognize that options may be available in the future to avoid certain impacts.
Document Decisions. It is important to document decisions that may affect certain property owners. This is particularly true when a property owner requests a redesign to part of a project to avoid a specific feature of his/her property. As all project engineers know, not every redesign will meet with the approval of the project proponent or be sufficient to meet the property owner’s needs. In deciding to redesign a portion of the project, the public entity needs to ensure that the decision is documented in order to protect against precondemnation claims. One method is to prepare a memo to file explaining that the public entity is undertaking the redesign at the behest of the property owner and that such a course of action may delay the actual date of acquisition.
Do Not Burden Property Owners. Property owners have a right to seek development of their property. Public entities that are not acting in a regulatory capacity should not interfere with property rights, especially for the nefarious purpose of depressing the property value. Direct interference or preventing a property owner from using the property in a manner that is otherwise permissible could be the basis for a lawsuit. While a government agency may envision using certain property in the future, it cannot take actions outside of the law to suppress the value of the property for future acquisition. For instance, one public entity cannot prevent another public entity from subdividing property to ensure that its value does not increase when the time for acquisition has arrived. For road projects, there are mechanisms for right-of-way protection that are legal so be sure to use those.

If a property owner has a valid claim for precondemnation liability, a viable defense may be found in causation. (i.e., did the public agency’s conduct cause the decline in value or is it attributable to another factor?). For instance, when a property owner claims that the property has suffered as a result of the public entity’s precondemnation conduct or delay, the public entity may be able to defend itself by arguing causation. In the Monterey County case, the property owners claimed that the delay associated with the public entity’s conduct entitled them to precondemnation damages. They were, however, unable to link the public entity’s conduct to the decline in property value. The appellate court ruled that there was no evidence that the public entity caused the decline in value and that a public entity is not responsible for a general decline in market value tied to precondemnation liability. Forcing a property owner to prove causation is a necessary defense tactic. Differentiating between market conditions and the public entity’s conduct may be even harder to prove where the market is declining during the precondemnation period.

The type of precondemnation conduct or delay that leads to precondemnation damages is relatively rare. Being in a position to prevent the issue and armed with knowledge about the developing law in this area is a simple way to avoid unnecessary project costs.

* This article was originally published in PublicCEO.com on Sept. 11, 2013. Republished here with permission.

AB 1825 Sexual Harassment Avoidance Training (August 27)

27 Aug 2013 00:00:00 -0800

Joseph Ortiz presented the training from the Riverside office. All other BB&K offices participated in the training via state-of-the-art video conferencing. The video conference was interactive, allowing attendees to ask questions and participate in other ways.

What was covered:

What constitutes sexual harassment or discrimination in the workplace
How to recognize and avoid it
What procedures to follow if you witness harassment or are harassed yourself
The potential consequences - including personal liability - of sexual harassment

Audience:

Supervisors
Human Resources Professionals
Public Officials
Managers & Private Business Professionals with 50 or More Employees

The training was also held via video conference at the following BB&K offices throughout California:

Indian Wells
Irvine
Los Angeles
Ontario
Riverside – Joseph Ortiz presented from the Riverside office
Sacramento
San Diego
Walnut Creek

Best Best & Krieger Adds Attorney to Environmental Law Practice

23 Jul 2013 00:00:00 -0800

For Immediate Release: July 23, 2013
Media Contact: Jennifer Bowles • 951.826.8480 • jennifer.bowles@BBKlaw.com

RIVERSIDE, Calif. _ Best Best & Krieger LLP recently hired a former Caltrans lawyer who worked on a major road project near the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco to join its environmental law practice.

James “Jamey” M. Wyman became an associate attorney in the firm’s Los Angeles and Riverside offices where his practice focuses on the California Environmental Quality Act, the California Coastal Act and historic resources.

“Jamey’s extensive experience in environmental compliance and impressive work on major infrastructure projects fits in nicely with the services we offer our clients,” said Jeff Ferre, head of BB&K’s environmental law and natural resources practice group.

For nearly five years, Wyman served as a deputy attorney for the California Department of Transportation in San Francisco where he provided general counsel advice and litigation services to the state agency. He worked on a $1 billion project known as the Presidio Parkway, a series of roadways and tunnels now under construction to replace older roadways that lead to the Golden Gate Bridge.

Among other things, Wyman negotiated and drafted contracts for a $1 million public storage unit relocation, a user agreement with the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy for the use of Crissy Field Center as a Caltrans engineering headquarters during construction and an agreement with several state and federal agencies stemming from Caltrans’ commitment to remove a previously believed extinct plant, the Franciscan manzanita, from the project area so it could be moved to a protected area.

In addition, Wyman litigated eminent domain, inverse condemnation, unlawful detainers and general civil litigation matters for Caltrans.

Wyman received his law degree in 2007 from Tulane University Law School in New Orleans where he had to study for a semester at UCLA School of Law while repairs were made to Tulane University in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

California's State Water Project Needs to be More Efficient

10 Jul 2013 00:00:00 -0800

By Joseph P. Byrne

Water in California sparks news headlines on nearly a daily basis. Much of the attention is focused on the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, a sprawling river delta and estuary wedged between Sacramento and Stockton that acts as a funnel for water traveling from water-rich Northern California to heavily populated but water-poor Southern California. The news articles tend to focus on the Bay-Delta Conservation Plan’s proposal to build conveyance tunnels to protect endangered species living in the Delta, or the lack of snowmelt that has made 2013 one of the driest year on record in California, leaving the State Water Project to deliver only an estimated 35 percent of requested water to millions of Californians. And then there are the articles about the increased anxiety over climate change and its effects on the reliability of long-term supplies.

While all of these are very important concerns, there is a critical piece to California’s water supply that is lurking in the background without the needed attention. The State Water Project is arguably the most critical infrastructure system to the California economy and the quality of life of many of its residents, but it is getting old and is not being operated as efficiently as it has been and needs to be.

The State Water Project, commonly known as SWP, delivers water to agencies that serve more than 25 million Californians and 750,000 acres of farmland. As the nation’s largest state-built water and power development system, its infrastructure includes 17 water pumping plants, 8 hydro-electric power plants, 32 lakes that store SWP water, and more than 693 miles of canals and pipelines. Operating 24 hours a day and seven days a week, it is also the state’s single largest user of electricity. The SWP generates about 60 percent of the electricity the system requires to operate but that leaves significant amounts of electricity that the SWP must purchase, making it a major player in the state’s energy market. In short, it is a massive and complicated utility that needs to move quickly and efficiently to operate as reliably as possible, especially since the future is likely to bring greater uncertainty in water supplies.

Unfortunately, the SWP’s current governance structure does not allow it to be as efficient as it needs to be and, not surprisingly, its operational reliability has declined. The California Department of Water Resources, or DWR as it is known, has operated the project since its inception in the 1960s and does an excellent job under the circumstances. But a half century later, the circumstances have changed. Even though the project was built and its current capital and operational costs are covered by the 29 SWP contractors, with no impact on the state’s general fund, DWR is subject to many of the burdensome protocols and administrative requirements that apply to other state agencies. In particular, the state’s procurement, contracting and hiring rules, which often involve meeting requirements imposed by the state’s finance and general services departments along with the State Personnel Board, have made it very difficult for DWR to efficiently make decisions about the SWP, and to execute them.

For example, the project has a long-standing workforce recruitment and retention crisis because of significant salary gaps between many SWP job classifications and their counterparts in other public and private utilities. In some cases, salaries for SWP workers can be 65 percent less. Not surprisingly, DWR has significant turnover and high vacancies. DWR spends hundreds of thousands of dollars to train people for highly specialized positions, only to watch them leave for higher-paying jobs and, in some cases, shortly after they finish their apprenticeship program. That leaves DWR with limited staff resources to perform maintenance and optimize operations, which directly reduces the SWP’s ability to operate efficiently. DWR itself estimates that this lack of flexibility contributed to it incurring an additional $70 million in energy costs between 2011 and 2012 through missed opportunities to pump water during less expensive, non-peak hours. In addition, as employees of a state agency, SWP workers were forced to take off work days just like other state employees when furloughs were mandated. Furloughing workers who operate the state’s critical infrastructure, even though they are paid from the SWP contractors contributions and have no impact on the state’s general fund, makes no sense.

This issue has not gone unnoticed. Gov. Brown and his administration, recognizing the severity of the recruitment and retention problem, recently made significant progress towards improving it. Just last week, the governor secured a 17 percent to 37 percent pay raise for the majority of SWP workers. While this pay raise will help stabilize the problem, the structural inefficiencies that required the governor to have to move mountains to secure the pay raise in the first place still persist.

Beyond the recruitment and retention problems, the state’s procurement and contracting rules, which in many cases require approvals by other state agencies, cause significant delays in purchasing spare parts and contracting for needed services to maintain the system. This slows down DWR and causes significant operational inefficiencies. In addition, SWP infrastructure is, in most cases, more than 50 years old and will need maintenance and upgrades in the near future.

Given all of these problems and the importance of the SWP, it is critical that we have a more meaningful discussion about how to improve the system and make it a high priority. The discussion should evaluate all options for organizational changes and improvements to the project’s operational practices. There are some existing examples and studies that can provide ideas and possible guidance.

For starters, DWR already contracts with two of its contractors to help operate and maintain small portions of the overall system. The Central Coast Water Authority designed and constructed a portion of the SWP’s Coastal Aqueduct, and operates and maintains much of it. In addition, the San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District operates and performs some of the maintenance for the East Branch Extension of the SWP.

Similarly, the federal Central Valley Project, which brings water from Shasta Lake to the southern San Joaquin Valley and consists of 20 dams and reservoirs, 11 power plants, and more than 500 miles of canals and pipelines, contracts much of its operations and maintenance work for its system to its contractors, either individually or through a joint powers authority, which has led to increased efficiency. At the same time, both the SWP and Central Valley Project have maintained operational control and decision-making authority.

Furthermore, the Little Hoover Commission in 2010 and the Public Policy Institute of California in 2011 both recommended a new governance model for the SWP focused on separating the SWP from DWR and creating an independent, wholesale water utility to run the system. The utility would be modeled after the California Independent System Operator, which operates much of the state’s electricity grid.

To its credit, DWR has acknowledged the problems with SWP’s current operation and is studying options for how to improve the system’s structure and efficiency. DWR officials plan to present an update on their study to the California Water Commission before the end of this year.

Whether the solution to helping the SWP involves creating a new independent entity, DWR entering into an agreement with some or all of its contractors, or another option to more efficiently operate and maintain the system’s infrastructure is not clear at this point. What is clear is that this issue is critically important and if not addressed soon, threatens the health and safety of the state’s economy and millions of its residents.

About The Author
Joseph P Byrne is an of counsel attorney in the Los Angeles office of Best Best & Krieger LLP where he works with private-sector and public agency clients. He is chair of the California Water Commission, having been appointed to the commission in 2010. Byrne can be reached at joseph.byrne@bbklaw.com.

* This article was originally published in PublicCEO.com, on July 9, 2013. Republished with permission.