*Gail Goldberg to step down

Head of the L.A.'s Planning Department is leaving after four-and-a-half years. She sent out an email to staffers. From Curbed LA:

"Staff, Today, I advised the Mayor of my intention to retire from City service at the end of August. I have been thinking about retirement for some time and am ready to set out on new adventures. We have just completed a difficult budget process and established more financial stability than we have had in the past. While there is never an ideal time, the start of a new fiscal year may be the most appropriate time to turn over the reins."

Here's her letter to Villaraigosa.

*The mayor just issued a statement wishing her well and noting that her tenure "was defined by the integrity that has become the hallmark of her career in planning." Of course, not everybody saw it that way - Goldberg had become a lightening rod in battles among developers, homeowners and advocates of affordable housing. Jane Usher, who quit as president of the City Planning Commission, was certainly not a fan. Here's what she told the L.A. Weekly last year:

Gail Goldberg, rather than acting as a reformer, is flaunting rules and allowing exceptions that have put developers, not residents or voters, even more firmly in control of land use in L.A. Usher points to a citywide "Categorical Exemption" that in January 2008 Goldberg quietly inserted into the density-bonus law, which has so bothered Judge McKnew. Goldberg's loophole undermined the California Environmental Quality Act, which restricts development or requires mitigation of a project's negative impacts like excess traffic or noise. Under the Goldberg exemption, Planning department workers and the Planning Commission could reinterpret that state environmental law and decide, on their own, whether a proposed project, even if far bigger than allowed by zoning, had negative neighborhood consequences.

The department also got hit hard earlier this year by an audit from the City Controller. The audit cited inefficiencies in the way that planners were assigned projects, as well as the lengthy processing times for zoning and land-use permits.