GovLove - A Podcast About Local Government · Engaging Local Government Leaders (ELGL)

Land Use Cases of the Year with the Planning and Law Division of the American Planning Association

·1 hr 13 min·1 clip

A 1970 legislative acorn has grown into a judicial oak that has hindered infrastructure development.

Chicago sets the table. Dan Bolin opens the episode as a GovLove partnership with the American Planning Association's Planning and Law Division. He has some fun with it too, calling the PLD's Case Law Digest the peak of award season and joking about guests showing up in tuxedos. Then the panel gets to work. Reed Asselby, Craig Notte, and Scott Hazelton join to walk through planning law decisions, with the webinar audience invited to send questions in the chat. The legal talk gets practical fast. One dispute looks at how Kingston collected vacancy data for buildings where landlords did not answer survey questions. The city did not need perfect data. The guest explains that Kingston's methods were reliable enough, and the assumption did a lot of work. When landlords refused to respond, the city counted those buildings as having no vacancies. The court accepted that as fair and logical. Dan asks about the standard, and the answer comes back to New York's arbitrary and capricious review. It is a deferential test for agency determinations, which means courts give agencies room unless a decision looks badly off base. Kingston clears that bar. The takeaway is practical: local governments have a real shot when they build a reasonable record, even if challengers can point to gaps. Dan closes by thanking Reed, Craig, Scott, and APA PLD, then rolls into the usual ELGL and GovLove credits.

As heard by us

A practical, case-by-case tour of planning law with real municipal stakes.

GovLove spends this episode on planning law and the federal and state court decisions that shaped the year, with Reed Asselby, Craig Notte, and Scott Hazelton walking through the Planning and Law Division's Case Law Digest alongside Dan Bolin.

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Why you'd press play

Press play for a clear tour of the year's planning-law cases, without the courtroom haze.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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