CEQA needs broad reform, not carve-outs

The California Environmental Quality Act, the landmark environmental law signed by Gov. Ronald Reagan in 1970, is an oddity.

Lawmakers from both parties agree that it needs reform because opponents of every type of imaginable project use it to stop, delay and drive up the cost of construction.

Gov. Jerry Brown called CEQA reform “the Lord’s work.” Yet — and here’s the maddening thing — the Legislature rarely entertains broad reforms.

Instead, lawmakers complain when CEQ A gets in the way of projects they like, but then only passes ad hoc exemptions for those particular projects.

If CEQ A derails their favored projects, then it surely derails other people’s favored projects.

You may recall the time the Legislature carved out an exemption for the Sacramento Kings arena because the Senate President Pro Tempore Darrell Steinberg (now that city’s mayor) desperately wanted to keep the NBA franchise from moving.

Something similarly cynical took place this session.

Earlier this month, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 1344, which exempts local needle exchange programs from CEQA.

Opponents of those programs “have deployed a novel strategy to shut them down: using environmental regulations to sue over needle waste,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “They argue that contaminated needles pollute parks and waterways.”

We have no real problem with these Department of Public Health-approved free-needle programs, which try with some success to keep drug addicts from shooting up on the streets.

But whatever one’s views of those programs, such lawsuits go far beyond the spirit of CEQA.

It was designed to force developers to disclose the environmental impacts of proposed projects, not to be used by neighborhood activists to stop public-health services or, say, by unions to exact wage concessions from developers.

The law was likewise not meant to be used to derail housing developments.

Four years ago, law firm Holland & Knight evaluated the role of CEQ A lawsuits from 2013 to 2015 in Southern California, finding that “14,000 housing units were challenged, 98% of the challenged units were located in existing community infill locations, 70% were located within one-half mile of transit services, and 78% were located in whiter, wealthier and healthier areas of the region.”

The Legislature this year included a CEQ A exemption in Senate Bill 9, which promotes the construction of duplexes and other small-scale housing projects.

CEQA appears to have become a tool of central planning for the state government, with exemptions doled out depending on whether a project or types of developments are favored by Sacramento.

Enough with this hypocrisy. The Legislature needs to fix the law for everyone.