Ballot voting could advance environmental law reform in CA

from Dan WaltersCalMatters

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Former Governor Jerry Brown once mentioned an overhaul of the California Environmental Quality Act as “God’s work” because, he said, it makes the building of many necessary things—housing, transportation improvements, water storage, etc. – too difficult and too expensive.

In 2018, nearing the end of his second term as governor, Brown vetoed a bill that would have prevented developers from circumventing CEQA’s labor-intensive provisions by persuading local voters to directly approve projects.

It was one of hundreds of pieces of legislation proposed by CEQA’s advocates — primarily environmental groups — and its critics in the nearly half century since the administration took over. Ronald Reagan signed CEQA in 1970.

“Rather than the piecemeal approach taken in this bill, I favor a more holistic review of CEQA that takes into account both the urgent need for more housing and a thoughtful environmental analysis,” Brown said in vetoing the bill.

But in his 16 years as governor, Brown has done little to make the fundamental changes he believes are necessary. CEQA reform has been at a political impasse, and without this “comprehensive review,” governors and lawmakers have dealt with the law’s impact on a case-by-case basis.

Projects that have had a lot of support — specifically professional sports venues — and the Legislature’s own Capitol building project could get relief from CEQA requirements.

In recent years, under Gavin Newsom’s governorship, the state’s housing shortage has become a front-line political issue. CEQA has become a controversial aspect of it as Newsom and lawmakers passed multiple bills removing or reducing procedural barriers to construction.

Pro-housing groups saw CEQA as a tool that development opponents used to delay or halt projects and that construction unions abused to force developers to hire their members.

Newsom, whose 2018 campaign promises to boost housing construction it had not borne much fruittook up the cause to reform CEQA. A few months ago, in a bill attached to the state budget, he and lawmakers passed a basic overview of housing law enforcementespecially high-density multifamily projects.

“Saying ‘no’ to housing in my community will no longer be sanctioned by the state,” said Assemblywoman Buffy Weeks, an Oakland Democrat who is one of the state’s most pro-housing lawmakers. “It won’t solve all of our housing problems in the state, but it will remove the biggest barrier to green housing.”

The law’s passage raises another question: Will it be a one-off or the start of a broader change to CEQA that will make other, non-residential projects easier to build?

The California Chamber of Commerce hopes it will be the last and recently introduced a ballot measure for the 2026 election that would make that happen. Overall, the measure, if approved by voters, would tighten and streamline environmental review processes for “major projects.”

“We have fallen far behind in building the infrastructure that our communities desperately need,” the business organization’s president, Jennifer Barrera, it said in a statement. “And the projects that go through the broken permitting process become so expensive that they raise costs for all of us.”

Barrera cited a list of public and private projects that have been adversely affected by CEQA’s requirements in the statute and created by court decisions.

“The initiative will create predictability for improvements the state desperately needs — including building first responders, wildfire resilience projects and broadband in underserved communities,” Barrera said. “Californians deserve a law that recognizes that prosperity is not the enemy of conservation.”

Given the stakes for the project’s supporters and opponents, and the near-mythical status of CEQA, the campaign for and against the measure could be one of the most contested ballot battles in state history.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.