After greater than a 12 months of examine, California’s Little Hoover Fee has confirmed what many have lengthy identified: the California Environmental High quality Act wants reform.
The fee, which stands as an impartial company which investigates state coverage points and provides suggestions for reform, started holding hearings on CEQA in March 2023.
The fee credit the environmental safety legislation, which was signed in 1970 by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan, for providing essential protections to the Golden State’s surroundings.
Nevertheless, the fee concluded, “it is usually true that CEQA, like all legislation, can have damaging, typically unintended, penalties. It’s an costly and prolonged course of that may add years to undertaking timeframes. It may be used for functions which have little relationship to environmental safety. Its robust bias towards the established order implies that it may be used to dam initiatives that may assist enhance the surroundings.”
A whole bunch of CEQA lawsuits are filed yearly. Whereas some would possibly elevate professional points, many typically don’t and are meant to throw a wrench into deliberate developments.
A 2015 report by Jennifer Hernandez and David Friedman discovered that, “Sixty-four % of these submitting CEQA lawsuits are people or native ‘associations,’ the overwhelming majority of which don’t have any prior monitor file of environmental advocacy — and CEQA litigation abuse is primarily the area of Not In My Yard (NIMBY) opponents and particular pursuits resembling rivals and labor unions looking for non-environmental outcomes.”
As regularly famous in these pages, there’s a motive why Gov. Jerry Brown referred to CEQA reform as “the Lord’s work.” Brown acknowledged that reforming the legislation to stop abuses of it was crucial, but in addition acknowledged that getting reforms by was a tall activity. And so, up to now, the Legislature has principally caught to incremental tweaks or simply outright exempting particular initiatives or sorts of initiatives from the legislation.
The Little Hoover Fee additionally requires focused reforms to the legislation. This consists of following Washington state’s lead in exempting new housing inside city development boundaries from environmental evaluation. This may free a lot growth from delays or authorized threats.
“California won’t ever obtain its housing targets so long as CEQA has the potential to show housing growth into one thing akin to city warfare—contested block by block, constructing by constructing,” the fee notes.
Different suggestions embody strengthening standing necessities for many who want to use the legislation to sue underneath CEQA, “set up clear parameters for significance thresholds and for evaluation and mitigation of impacts,” and bettering processes to stop “knowledge dumps” and “late hits” in opposition to initiatives.
These are all worthy of consideration.
Certainly, it’s time for the Legislature to not simply discuss speaking about CEQA. It’s time for the Legislature to take critically the necessity to reform the California Environmental High quality Act in a means that’s truthful and accountable. We will and may defend the surroundings with out all of the abuses of the legislation.
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