It’s a big state, California is.

Which means that when you’re in an editorial board meeting with a honcho from Sacramento, as I was yesterday with Attorney General Rob Bonta, most of the topics you’re discussing are rather abstract and statewide, rather than fascinatingly, locally, specific.

Things that hit you where you live, rather than where you don’t.

That’s why my face no doubt lit up with a local smile Tuesday morning in the middle of what had been a generic discussion of SB 9, the new state law that would — “by right,” as they say in developmentese — allow all California homeowners to build up to four units on what is currently a single-family parcel.

It’s a controversial move forward in the effort to allow for the creation of more housing for more people, and people of goodwill are on opposite sides of the question.

It’s sparked the rallying cry of “Bring back local control!” among Californians who are either NIMBYs or merely protective of neighborhoods, depending on your point of view.

I happen to be pro-SB 9, but that’s neither here nor there for the purposes of what follows.

AG Bonta was discussing some of the ridiculous end-runs some municipalities in the state have done in order to get around the new law.

Most laughably, the extremely tony enclave of Woodside, in the lovely, verdant, pricey hills above Palo Alto, declared itself a mountain lion sanctuary in attempts to disallow granny flats and four-plexes in the city.

Hey, the cougars are everywhere, babe. Woodside’s ploy didn’t work.

So when my turn came to question the AG, I brought up what I said was clearly a non-ridiculous effort by a city to maintain some local control over residential development: Pasadena’s exemption for historic residential neighborhoods, which Mayor Victor Gordo has touted in these pages — and in this column, when I interviewed him — as a victory for the city and for preservation.

So I was very surprised when the attorney general said that in fact it was he who had won that round, not Gordo or Pasadena.

Come again?

“Mayor Gordo lost that one,” Bonta said. “The course of our action ... speaks for itself.” What Pasadena claimed “was nearly as outrageous as the Woodside mountain lion sanctuary” dodge, he said. “They were wrong on how they define a historic district” eligible for exemption from SB 9. “The changes they made” in response to the state’s wishes “are consistent with what we asked for” from Sacramento, Bonta said.

OK, then. That’s the opposite of Pasadena City Hall and Mayor Gordo’s claims of victory over the state edict in order to maintain the character of historic neighborhoods.

So I texted the mayor to ask for his response, and he called me up.

And he came out swinging.

“Let me correct the record,” the mayor said, seriously but at the same time with a light touch.

“He is deluded in his thinking.”

So here’s what happened, Gordo said:

The City Council “took an action in December 2021 that would allow us to comply with SB 9. We adopted an ordinance to comply with SB 9 with exclusion for landmark districts and historic districts. But the AG said ‘landmark’ districts are not exempt from SB 9; only ‘historic’ districts comply. He was just plain wrong, and we proved that.”

Gordo said that in California, a landmark district is one with local, regional or statewide significance; an historic district has national significance.

Pasadena, the mayor said, is one of about 10% of California cities that can identify landmark and historic districts on its own because “One, we apply Secretary of the Interior standards using a public process and, two, we have our own Historic Preservation Commision that reviews the applications and makes a recommendation to the City Council.” It takes staff and money to do this, but Pasadena has done it since the 1980s. “This is key to what” Bonta “didn’t understand,” Gordo said. “It makes me laugh. It’s comical. I find it unbelievable that to this day he doesn’t understand this.” In a meeting with the AG’s top deputies, Gordo asked state Sen. Anthony Portantino along. “He inserted the language into SB 9 exempting landmark districts. That’s what he told them.”

Gordo says he just can’t figure out why Bonta still claims victory in this spat.

Write the public editor at lwilson@scng.com.