A study tells CA legislators to cut off bureaucracy, but are it?

Building San Francisco-Oukland Bay Bridge and his more famous cousin, Golden Gate BridgeIt began in 1933. Both were carrying traffic until 1937.

Thehe 1989 Earthquake in Loma Prita Severe damage to the Bay Bridge, which leads to a decision to replace its Eastern section, not simply to repair or rethink it.

However, state and local politicians spores more than a decade Above the design of the new section and how to pay for it. Finally, construction began in 2002 and was completed 11 years later -almost four times longer than the entire bridge -at a price of $ 6.5 billion, the most expensive public work project in California’s history.

The Bay Bridge saga sets an example of how California, who once taught the world to build things, lost her mojo, raising so many political, legal and financial obstacles to do things.

Sixty years ago, the state waters of the state offered a channel around the Delta of Sacramento-San Joaquin to complete the state project that carries water from the northern part of the state in the southern part.

As the years progress, the project disappeared. In the end was reworked to double tunnels and Just recently in a tunnelBut construction, if ever happened, is still many years old.

The smaller projects suffer from the same political and procedural sclerosis. It can take years or even decades, for large -scale housing projects, electrical production facilities and desalination installations to pass thickets of federal, state and local agencies permits. Even small residential projects are the subject of long brawls in bureaucracy as the costs are escalating.

A New report The special legislative committee declares that to cope with housing accommodation, homelessness, water supply and climate change problems, California “will need to facilitate new construction on an unprecedented scale.

“This includes millions of residential units, thousands of pure energy production, storage and transmission, a million chargers for electric vehicles and thousands of miles of transit and thousands of climate resistance projects to deal with land, floods and increase in sea levels and changing habitats.”

However, it continues: “Each of these projects will require a permit issued by the government before some can be built and some will require dozens! Therefore, only if governments consistently issue permits in a manner that is timely, transparent, consistent and results -oriented will we be able to deal with our residential and climate crises. Unfortunately, for most projects, the opposite is true. They face permits that take a long time, opaque, confusing and prefer the process of results. “

The legislative body itself has erected many of these procedural barriers-most of all, by adopting the Law on Environmental Quality in California more than half a century ago, the legislative power is controlled by the regulation of Democrats, so that such a report will be issued.

The California Assembly Choice Committee spent months spent months with those who have been affected by the California satisfied permits system, as well as experts on specific types of projects before it comes to a conclusion as if it comes from conservative republicans.

“It’s too hard to build something in California,” Assembly Buffy WicksDemocrat from Auckland, chairing the committee, said in a statement. “Our broken permit system increases the cost of housing, energy costs and even the cost of inaction on climate change.

“If we are serious about California more accessible, sustainable and sustainable, we need to facilitate the construction of housing, clean energy, public transport and climate adaptation projects. This report becomes clear: the system does not work and is to repair it. “

Yes, it is – and we will see if the report has legs or winds in the discard bin, like so many other management reform suggestions.