The effort of two California legislators to exempt most urban housing developments from the first state environmental regulations – an idea that attracted some of the state’s most powerful interest groups in a fierce legislative debate – has received precious approval from Governor Gavin Newsom.
While announcing his updated budgetary proposal for the next financial year, the governor urged the legislator on Thursday to adopt two accommodation bills and thanked his democratic authors, the Oakland Assemblymber Buffy Wicks and the San Francisco Scott Wiener senator.
“It is time to become serious about this problem, final point, complete stop,” said Newsom this morning. “If you care about your children, you care to do so. It is the greatest opportunity to do something great and daring and the only obstacle is us. ”
Bill 609 of the Wicks Assembly would exempt most of the “filled” housing developments, integrated projects or alongside existing developments, from the California Environmental Quality Act exam. This 55 -year status obliges governments to study the environmental impact of all the decisions they make, including the approval of new housing. Anyone or organization – Construction workers’ unions, environmental defenders or neighborhood groups, to name only a few – can question the validity of these studies, delaying approval.
Critics of the law argue that it is regularly mistreated for non -environmental reasons to delay urban housing projects which are intrinsically better for the environment than the development of sprawl. The law defenders claim that these proceedings are relatively rare.
Bill 607 of the Wiener Senate is a highly technical seizure bag. Among other things, this would allow governments of states and premises to more easily approve projects – housing and other – without performing a complete and long examination and exempting certain zoning changes for CEQA filling projects entirely.
Newsom has declared that it would include a language that reflects these political objectives in the next budget invoices.
“These bills are essential to allow reform proposals, and I applaud Governor Newsom for having included them in his proposed budget,” said Wiener in a statement. “By eliminating obsolete procedural obstacles, we can approach the cost of scandalous living of California, cultivate the economy of California and help the government to solve the most urgent problems of our state.”
The governor has also published a proposed legislative language which would channel certain environmental impact costs collected in development projects towards the construction of affordable new housing located near public transportation. This reflects another bill written by Wicks.
This proposed legislation would also give California Coastal Commission, a frequent target of pro-development legislation, a deadline to respond to project proposals.
Asha Sharma, with non -profit lawyer, for justice and responsibility, said that he was “definitively worrying” that the governor has promised to push such significant policy changes through the budgetary process, protecting the legislative and public control paid to most laws.
The group, which organizes residents of the San Joaquin and Coachella valleys, opposes the two bills Newsom has approved. Sharma argued that certain parts of the Wiener bill would allow significant infrastructure and industrial projects, and not only to new apartments, to escape a rigorous environmental journal, a point that Wiener disputed. His opposition to the Wicks bill is largely based on the fact that it would provide an exemption from CEQA to all filling projects, not only those with units reserved for low -income residents.
“There must be a certain type of protection of affordability in this bill,” she said.
This is not the first time that the governor has weighed on the Historical Environment Act. Twice in as many years, the administration has exhorted the legislator to tinker with the law to facilitate the construction of infrastructure projects and to extend the capacity of renewable state energies.
The legislator has not always listened to and the prospect of a complete “reform of the CEQA”, a objective regularly praised by the governors of California and withstood environmental groups and many unions, remains elusive.
These previous legislative efforts were “a weak sauce” and “piddlywinks”, these bills represent much more substantial changes to housing and environmental policy, said Chris Elmendorf, professor of law of the Davis and frequent public criticism of the CEQA.
“The fact that the governor does not speak only in generalities, not only Ezra Klein on his podcast, but to approve specific invoices and even go beyond approving them by binding them to his budget and putting pressure on the legislature, which, I think, is a very great development that we have not seen before from this governor,” he said.
His nod to these two bills occurs at a politically important moment. The Wicks bill has gone through the assembly so far with the explicit support of President Robert Rivas. Wiener’s bill has come through two committees, but barely escaped the objections of its president.
The two legislative leaders have promised to prioritize the legislation which promotes “affordability”. Rivas, closely combined with the movement “Yes in my backyard”, has publicly approved a series of invoices aimed at reducing regulations and accelerating approvals for new housing. McGuire, responsible for competing for a democratic caucus of the Senate with public fractures on the housing policy, was more reluctant to articulate the details of its housing program.
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