In November, I sat in a room and listened to representatives from the California Judicial Council explain their plans for an eight-story regional courthouse at McBean Parkway and Valencia Boulevard right across from the mall. The proposal would consolidate juvenile criminal cases from the entire San Fernando Valley into our city, along with felony arraignments and trials from areas well outside Santa Clarita. I asked questions about site selection and alternative locations that were and were not considered. What was abundantly clear from the residents like me who showed up at the meeting was nobody asked us if we wanted this courthouse. The state just showed up with renderings.
I walked out of that presentation more convinced than ever that the greatest threat to Santa Clarita’s quality of life isn’t crime, traffic or cost of living, though all of those matter deeply. The greatest threat is the slow, steady erosion of our right to decide what kind of city we want to be. Local control isn’t a partisan issue. It’s a Santa Clarita issue. Whether you’re a Democrat, a Republican, or somewhere in between, most people who live here moved here for a reason. Safe streets. Good schools. Neighborhoods where you know your neighbors. Soccer moms and dads filling parks on weekends. And, a city government that, whatever its flaws, at least answers to the people who live here. That is what Sacramento is systematically dismantling — one bill at a time.
Consider the wave of housing legislation that has rolled through the Capitol over the past several years. Senate Bill 9, signed into law in 2021, effectively ended single-family zoning across California — stripping cities of one of their most fundamental planning tools without a single local vote being cast.
SB423 extends the state’s power to override local zoning and fast-track high-density developments in cities that haven’t met Sacramento’s housing quotas — a threat that hangs over every city in California, including ours. Assembly Bill 2011 and SB6 shift more land-use authority from local governments to the state for qualifying housing projects on commercial land. And the so-called “Builder’s Remedy” mandates that cities without a compliant Housing Element face substantial limits on their authority to deny qualifying residential projects, particularly after AB1886 clarified and strengthened vesting protections.
More recently, SB79 — the sweeping transit-oriented housing bill from 2025 — mandates that mid-rise apartment buildings be permitted near major transit stops, again overriding what communities have decided about the character of their own neighborhoods. And AB130 creates broad new California Environmental Quality Act exemptions for infill housing, removing yet another layer of local review. I want to be clear: I understand the housing crisis is real. I understand that California needs homes. But stripping cities of their planning authority and handing it to Sacramento bureaucrats and private developers doesn’t solve the housing crisis — it just punishes communities that dared to maintain standards.
What these mandates share is a common assumption: that Sacramento knows better than Santa Clarita and its residents. That the people elected to represent Santa Clarita by the community members who actually live and work here, somehow, can’t be trusted to manage their own city’s growth. That when there is a conflict between what residents and vested stakeholders want and what state officials want, we the residents lose.
The courthouse proposal is the same story in a different building. Sacramento’s Judicial Council decided our intersection, one of the most congested in the city and closest to our only hospital, would make a fine location for a regional civil/criminal courthouse drawing cases from across the San Fernando Valley. Not because it’s good for Santa Clarita. Because it’s convenient for Sacramento.
I opposed that courthouse publicly and loudly, and I will continue to oppose it. But writing op-eds isn’t enough.
Other cities have found a powerful legal tool that Santa Clarita currently doesn’t have: the city charter. California has 121 so-called “charter cities” that have adopted their own local constitution, approved by their voters. Under the California Constitution, charter cities have supreme authority over “municipal affairs,” meaning local law takes precedence over state law on those matters. This distinction recently proved decisive. In 2024, five Southern California charter cities — Redondo Beach, Carson, Torrance, Whittier and Del Mar — won a significant court ruling striking down SB9 as unconstitutional as applied to their charter city status ( See City of Redondo Beach, et al. v. Rob Bonta, Case No. 22STCP01143, L.A. County Superior Court). The court found the law was “neither reasonably related to ensuring access to affordable housing, nor narrowly tailored to avoid unnecessary interference in local governance.” Attorney General Rob Bonta appealed, and the case is pending before the California Court of Appeal. This tells you everything you need to know about how hard Sacramento fights to maintain its vise grip of power over local communities. If the ruling is upheld, it would potentially shield all 121 charter cities in California from one of Sacramento’s most aggressive zoning overrides.
Santa Clarita, as a general law city, has no seat at that table.
The good news: Any city can become a charter city. The process is straightforward. The City Council drafts or commissions a charter and puts it to the voters. A simple majority approves it. The power to decide stays exactly where it belongs: with the people of Santa Clarita. I’m not suggesting this is a simple or immediate solution, and a charter is not a magic shield against every mandate. But it is worth serious conversation. While Redondo Beach fights Sacramento in the courts to protect the integrity and history of its neighborhoods, Santa Clarita doesn’t have the legal standing to join that fight. Shouldn’t we ask whether our city deserves and can utilize the same tool? What are the pros? What are the cons? What are the costs? These are earnest questions, not a condemnation. Thinking of creative solutions is everyone’s job. Some may argue a conversion to a charter city may not help because Sacramento will just re-legislate SB9 to make it applicable to charter cities if Redondo is successful, so why go through the hoops. Others may argue that a charter city would put too much power in the hands of the City Council and that, too, is a valid worth discussing at length.
At the end of the day, most of us aren’t asking for anything extreme. We want a city that is able to grow thoughtfully with local input, that protects what makes it special, and where the people making the decisions are the people who have to live with the decisions day in and day out. That’s not a Republican idea or a Democratic idea. That’s just common sense.
Denise Lite is a Santa Clarita resident. “Right Here, Right Now” appears Saturdays and rotates among local Republicans.
