San Francisco Puts Retail Vacancy Tax on Ballot
San Francisco will ask voters to approve an innovative approach to a rash of empty storefronts in the city’s shopping districts: Tax the landlords.
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US Public Land Workers Getting Assaulted, Threatened on Job
Federal employees overseeing U.S. public lands were assaulted or threatened at least 360 times over a five-year period marked by heightened tensions with anti-government groups, a congressional watchdog agency said Monday.
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New York Sues International Commission Over Lake Ontario Flooding
Poor management by the international group that oversees the waters of the Great Lakes led to hundreds of millions of dollars in property damage due to flooding two out of the last three years, New York officials claim in a lawsuit.
Read moreRepublicans Skip Vote to Block Tax Hike in Houston
Two Texas Republicans prevented their Democratic colleagues from voting to raise property taxes in the Houston area on Tuesday by not showing up for a meeting of the county’s executive board.
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The Seventh Circuit upheld the constitutionality of a Hammond, Indiana, ordinance that requires residential property owners to hire a licensed contractor repair the home, or do the repairs themselves, if they derive income from it. Homeowners who occupy their own property get an exemption.
Read moreFracking Quakes
More than 100 people sued Sundance Energy Oklahoma and 20 other companies in Oklahoma County Court, claiming their wastewater injection and fracking caused earthquakes that damaged their property.
Read moreProtest Sign
A homeowner and an artist brought a federal complaint over a law in Fraser, Colo., that blocks people from erecting signs in their yards “to protest President Donald Trump and call for action on global warming.”
Read moreThird Circuit Raps Pipeline on Fair-Market Failures
(CN) — Natural gas companies can no longer rely on federal law to pay less than fair-market value for land
Read moreGermany: Kaiser’s Descendant Loses Bid for Return of Castle
A descendant of the last German kaiser on Tuesday lost a court bid for the return of a castle overlooking the Rhine valley, part of which has been turned into a hotel.
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Oregon Pipeline Route a Shock to Landowners
Oregon property owners complained to federal regulators Monday that they were kept in the dark about a proposal to build a natural-gas pipeline on their land.
Read moreLouisiana Trespass Law Targeting Pipeline Protests Spurs Lawsuit
Protesters and Louisiana residents whose land is crisscrossed by oil and gas pipelines filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday challenging a state law that makes it a felony to be on a pipeline, even an unmarked, buried one.
Read moreCalifornia Fines Unpermitted Luxury Hotel $15.6 Million
Sending a message about the value of maintaining affordable visitor accommodations along California’s coast, the state’s Coastal Commission on Wednesday issued its largest fine ever — $15.58 million — to a luxury hotel owner that demolished two affordable motels in Santa Monica to build a high-priced property near the world-famous pier.
Read moreRails to Trails
The Court of Federal Claims refused to dismiss a challenge by landowners to a rail-to-trail conversion.
Read moreTexas Bill Would Swap Sales for Property Taxes
The author of a Texas bill proposing to raise the state sales tax rate by 1% made his case before a committee Wednesday, forecasting that within 10 years it would raise $10 billion annually to lower property taxes and help schools.
Read moreChristian College Wins Possession of Disputed Camp
When John Scopes taught the theory of evolution in a Tennessee school in 1925, he committed a misdemeanor punishable only by a fine. But yet the Scopes “monkey trial,” with Clarence Darrow as star defense attorney and celebrity prosecutor Williams Jennings Bryan, has gone down as one of the most significant trials of the 20th Century.
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The Court of Federal Claims dismissed a complaint by cattle ranch owners about military flyovers, as flyovers are not a taking for which the ranchers can be compensated.
Read more‘Rev up Hovercraft,’ High Court Tells Moose Hunter in National Preserve
An Alaskan moose hunter who challenged a regulation that bans him from using a hovercraft while on federal land won a reversal Tuesday from the U.S. Supreme Court.
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