4 replies to this topic

[KevinKorell]

Fresno, CA Bee, 6/5/14:

The Kings County Board of Supervisors, the Farm Bureau and a group of county residents filed suit Thursday in Sacramento County Superior Court challenging the approval of a high-speed rail route through the county between Fresno and Bakersfield.

Here is that story.

[CNJRoss]

The Fresno (CA) Bee, 8/3:

 

Trial date set in Prop. 1A lawsuit over high-speed train plans

 

A trial date has finally been set in Kings County’s long-running lawsuit challenging whether California’s high-speed train project complies with the 2008 bond act for the system.

 

Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Michael Kenny will hear arguments Feb. 11 in the case filed in late 2011 by John Tos, Aaron Fukuda and the Kings County Board of Supervisors against the California High-Speed Rail Authority and a raft of state government officials, including rail authority CEO Jeff Morales, Gov. Jerry Brown, and the state’s treasurer, finance director, controller and transportation secretary.

 

Tos owns Tos Farms Inc. which has farmland along the rail route through Kings County, while Fukuda until last year owned a home in a rural neighborhood just east of Hanford that will be displaced by the train tracks. Fukuda is also one of the founders of a local rail-opposition organization, Citizens for California High-Speed Rail Accountability. Tos and Fukuda were joined by Kings County in filing a two-pronged lawsuit against the state over the rail system.

Continue here.

 

[CNJRoss]

The Sentinel, Hanford,, CA 1/10/17:

Kings renews HSR legal fight

Effort rejuvinated by new lawsuit

 

 

HANFORD – Remember the legal battle that put Kings County on the map as a hotbed of anti-California High-Speed Rail Authority sentiment?

 

The effort faded off the public’s radar screen after Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Michael Kenny ruled in March 2016 that the project hadn’t yet violated requirements in Proposition 1A, the ballot measure California voters approved in 2008 that authorized $10 billion in bond money to help fund the project.

 

Kenny ruled that, because the Authority had yet to access the bulk of the bond money, the original lawsuit, filed in 2011 in Kings County Superior Court with Kings County as a plaintiff, was premature.

 

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[CNJRoss]

Los Angeles Times, 6/1/19:

On California’s high-speed rail project, combatant Kings County is ready to settle

 

 

One of the San Joaquin Valley’s most tenacious opponents of the California bullet train has decided to settle its lawsuit against the project, convinced that the state will operate slower-speed Amtrak trains on its future network in the Central Valley — not the long-promised 220-mph electrically powered ones.

 

Kings County has long rallied resistance to the project, but local officials say they finally want out of the litigation. They have been discussing a settlement with the California High-Speed Rail Authority since last summer. Now they say they have a verbal agreement on settling an environmental suit and dropping its participation in a suit challenging the project’s use of bond funds.

 

Under the informal deal, the county will remove itself as a plaintiff in the bond lawsuit and drop its environmental suit in exchange for $11 million, said Doug Verboon, a Kings County supervisor who has recently led negotiations.

 

Continue here.

 

[CNJRoss]

The Fresno (CA) Bee, 8/15/19
 

Kings County getting $10 million to settle 2014 lawsuit over high-speed rail route

 

 

The last lawsuit challenging the selection of a high-speed rail route between Fresno and Bakersfield has been settled between Kings County and the California High-Speed Rail Authority.

 

But it’s not the last legal challenge facing the controversial bullet-train effort.

 

In a joint statement Thursday, Kings County announced it will drop a lawsuit it filed in mid-2014 under the California Environmental Quality Act over the rail agency’s certification of an environmental impact report for its Fresno-Bakersfield segment and subsequent approval of a route alignment through southern Fresno County, Kings and Tulare counties, and into Kern County.

 

The settlement is one of three agreements reached between the two sides.  .  .  .

 

Continue here w/B-Roll video of various construction sites.