ITEM: THE City of Carmel-by-the-Sea violated the California Environmental Quality Act by deciding to sell Flanders Mansion without proving, in an environmental impact report, that other options for the mansion, such as leasing, weren’t economically feasible. According to a February 2007 ruling by Monterey County Superior Court Judge Robert O’Farrell, selling the mansion would not only trigger state environmental quality laws, the consequences to the environment of converting the mansion from public to private ownership could be so severe as to require strict adherence to these laws, as well as judicial oversight to make sure the city was following them.

ITEM: Turning Carmel Valley into an incorporated city isn’t subject to state environmental quality laws at all, because creating the city doesn’t qualify as a “project.” Furthermore, according to a ruling this week by a different Monterey County judge, Lydia Villarreal, creating a town would not have any harmful effects on the environment, so even if incorporation were a “project” under state law, there would be no need for an EIR where incorporation is concerned.

Can these judges’ brains exist in the same universe?

On the one hand, Carmel taxpayers are told they must spend hundreds of thousands of dollars proving that merely selling a building — which has always been a single-family home, even while in public ownership — would not hurt the environment.

Yet, the people behind the incorporation movement are told they don’t have to spend a dime examining the environmental impacts of creating a new city.

We know the legal system isn’t perfect, but does it have to be this idiotic?

Judge Villarreal’s ruling makes the most sense. We have long argued that if the people of Carmel Valley want to incorporate, no serious hurdles should be put in their way. And we have argued even longer that CEQA is applied far too broadly, costing innocent property owners millions as it is used as a legal bludgeon by activists who can’t get their way through the democratic process.

But where should citizens turn when the laws under which they live produce such nonsensically contradictory rulings? How are they to know what to do when deciding how to spend their tax dollars, what their local officials should do, etc., etc.?

As with our local water shortage — which produces equally ridiculous and contradictory demands on the local citizenry — the answer is for the state Legislature to sort out the mess it created.

Unfortunately, it seems to be too busy creating even worse problems.