Gov. Gavin Newsom is not afraid to step into the political fray with regards to standing as much as President Donald Trump over nationwide points that influence California. He isn’t all the time incorrect when he sues the administration or speaks out towards, say, ICE raids in Los Angeles. However most of these high-profile actions appear designed to burnish his nationwide repute. To your personal security, please do not stand between him and a tv digital camera.
Newsom would have a greater national-leadership case, nonetheless, had he strategically arm-twisted the state’s Democratic-controlled Legislature to move controversial measures that tackle California’s long-simmering issues of homelessness, visitors congestion, the excessive price of residing, crime, and sky-high housing prices. The easiest way to show the knowledge of the California Means is to, you understand, truly run the state in a stellar method. However perhaps he’s studying.
As numerous information sources reported final week, the governor had tied his signing of a finances deal by requiring the Legislature to move reforms to the state’s “landmark” California Environmental High quality Act (CEQA)—the 1970 regulation that has mired development tasks in regulation, environmental influence experiences and litigation (or threats of it). The small print of the measure had been in flux late final week, but it surely was pitched as being way more aggressive than previous housing reforms.
Positive sufficient, Newsom succeeded. Simply in time for the July 1 budget-signing deadline, the legislature overwhelmingly handed the measure, which ended up as two payments. They exempt “9 kinds of tasks from environmental critiques: youngster care facilities, well being clinics, meals banks, farmworker housing, broadband, wildfire prevention, water infrastructure, public parks or trails and, notably, superior manufacturing,” per a CalMatters report. One of many payments additionally “restricts authorized challenges below CEQA by narrowing which paperwork courts can contemplate.”
The measures had been based mostly on a number of current proposals, together with Senate Invoice 607, which affirms the Legislature’s intent “to make adjustments to the California Environmental High quality Act (CEQA) to make sure the state meets its infrastructure wants and is extra reasonably priced for all Californians, as specified, with out compromising environmental protections,” in line with the legislative evaluation. Lawmakers in Could stripped away particular exemptions, turning it right into a non-substantive invoice within the face of opposition from the same old suspects.
With out Newsom’s efforts, main CEQA reform would have died on the vine. One other late-breaking housing invoice was into consideration as a part of the finances, however not topic to Newsom’s ultimatum—however the Legislature caved in to union calls for. The Sacramento Bee experiences this invoice was roughly based mostly on one other measure that “permits builders to bypass CEQA assessment if they comply with pay a sure minimal wage to development employees.”
Mandating wage boosts drives up the price of housing development and weakens the usefulness of those deregulations, but it surely was an try to reduce the diploma to which unions use CEQA to gradual development tasks to extract concessions. Newsom’s failure to beat union opposition here’s a disappointment, however would not tarnish an in any other case noteworthy effort. The Bee interviewed Capitol insiders who can’t recall a finances ever earlier than being held as much as safe passage of a single non-budget-related invoice. Extra of this, please.
Even sweeter: The governor and lawmakers dismissed the overheated objections of the environmental neighborhood. As an alternative of folding, Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, rebuked the “excessive, unfounded, melodramatic statements” from environmental teams, as CalMatters famous.
Lawmakers routinely gripe about CEQA, however they by no means do something to repair it past including a restricted streamlining or exemption provision (particularly with regards to sports activities arenas). The professional-housing YIMBY Legislation (Sure In My Again Yard) produced a report displaying the myriad legal guidelines which have decreased CEQA impediments for housing have produced few real-world outcomes. That is no shock on condition that they do not go far sufficient, hardly ever apply to market-rate housing and all the time embody union giveaways.
Legislators are lastly pushing more durable for broader exemptions. I hardly ever agree with them on non-housing points, however Wiener and Meeting member Buffy Wicks (D–Oakland) deserve reward for doggedly pursuing the difficulty. And with Newsom utilizing this nuclear choice to convey this invoice throughout the end line, we’re lastly seeing progress. I feared the ultimate model is perhaps toothless, but it surely seems substantive. Is not it time, nonetheless, to reform CEQA for each kind of mission?
It might sound odd that progressives have embraced the pro-housing faith, however contemplate a examine from the Holland & Knight regulation agency. It discovered 49 % of CEQA lawsuits goal governmental tasks, with infill tasks additionally a specific goal. “CEQA litigation abuse is primarily the area of Not In My Yard (NIMBY) opponents and particular pursuits comparable to opponents and labor unions in search of non-environmental outcomes,” the examine added.
Principally, progressives are discovering their very own goals threatened by CEQA abuse. Gov. Newsom is studying that if he needs to look powerful—and assist tackle a critical state drawback—there no draw back for him to make use of his political capital in such a means.
This column was first revealed in The Orange County Register.
