Fighting for CEQA Reform

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CEQA Reform has been a key initiative of North Bay Leadership Council. This year, in an effort to achieve meaningful CEQA reform, NBLC has joined a Coalition of like-minded business groups from across the state that are working to do just that. Business surveys have put CEQA reform in the top issues needed to improve the business climate in California. The legislative session closes at the end of August with legislators moving legislation in a mad rush to beat the deadline.  During this mad rush, we remain hopeful about the legislature achieving genuine CEQA reform, focused on fixing the legal abuses of CEQA, including transparency and standing issues, as well as better integrating CEQA with existing environmental and planning laws.   
 
This Coalition has been pushing hard on achieving a solution, and the letter below was sent to every member of the California Assembly and Senate. As this situation progresses, we will keep you abreast of important news around this effort and ask for your help.
 

August 20, 2012

To: Governor Jerry Brown
Senate President Darrell Steinberg
Assembly Speaker John Perez
Senate Republican Leader Bob Huff
Assembly Republican Leader Connie Conway

Re: CEQA Modernization

We have been encouraged by recent comments from the Governor and Legislative leaders expressing your support for some form of CEQA reform. As a coalition of labor, schools, hospitals, clean technology companies, local government and business, we support efforts to modernize CEQA and commend you for taking on this vitally important issue.

We believe it is possible to accomplish responsible, thoughtful CEQA reforms that preserve the original intent of the law – environmental protection – while stamping out certain abuses of the law brought for non-environmental reasons.

We reject the notion promoted by some that any and all CEQA modernization attempts are automatically an attack on the environment. This all-or-nothing posturing is what is preventing California from moving forward with environmental protection policies that foster – instead of inhibit – responsible job creation, economic growth and community renewal that are critical to achieving the dual goals of responsible growth and economic prosperity.

As you evaluate CEQA reforms, we urge you to consider the following principles:

1. Modernize CEQA to Integrate Updated Environmental and Planning Laws

  • When the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) was enacted 40 years ago, the wide array of local, state and federal environmental and land use regulations that are now on the books didn’t exist. CEQA was essentially it.
  • In the 40 years since, Congress and the Legislature have adopted more than 120 laws to protect environmental quality in many of the same topical areas required to be independently mitigated under CEQA, including laws like the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, GHG emissions reduction standards, SB 375 and more.
  • Despite these stringent environmental laws and local planning requirements, public and private projects throughout the state are commonly challenged under CEQA even when a project meets all other environmental standards of existing laws.
  • Many lawsuits are brought or threatened for non-environmental reasons and often times these lawsuits seek to halt environmentally desirable projects like clean power, infill and transit. CEQA is even working at odds with – instead of in concert with – important environmental laws like SB 375 and AB 32.
  • CEQA should continue to serve as the state environmental law for environmental impacts not regulated by standards set forth in other environmental and planning laws adopted since 1970.
  • However, where a federal, state or local environmental or land use law has been enacted to achieve environmental protection objectives (e.g., air and wetlands protections, etc.), CEQA review documents like EIRs should focus on fostering informed debate (including public notice and comment) by the public and decision makers about how applicable environmental standards reduce project impacts.
  • State agencies, local governments and other lead agencies should continue to retain full authority to reject projects, or to condition project approvals and impose additional mitigation measures, consistent with their full authority under law other than CEQA.

2. Eliminate CEQA Duplication

  • As originally enacted, CEQA did not require further analysis of projects that already complied with CEQA-certified plans such as General Plans. But a 1987 court decision dramatically changed CEQA’s application.
  • We should return CEQA to its original intent and not require duplicative CEQA review for projects that comply with approved plans for which an environmental impact report (EIR) has already been completed – particularly since existing laws also require both plans and projects to comply with our stringent environmental standards.
  • Local governments and other lead agencies should continue to retain full authority to reject projects or to condition project approvals and impose additional mitigation measures, consistent with their full authority under law other than CEQA.

3. Focus CEQA Litigation on Compliance with Environmental and Planning Laws

  • CEQA lawsuits should focus on compliance with CEQA’s procedural and substantive requirements, including adequate notice, adequate disclosure, adequate mitigation of environmental effects not regulated by other environmental or planning law, adequate consideration of alternatives to avoid unmitigated significant adverse impacts.
  • CEQA lawsuits should not be used to challenge adopted environmental standards, or to endlessly re-challenge approved plans by challenging projects that comply with plans.
  • Environmental and other public advocacy efforts to enact environmental protection laws should not be affected by any CEQA reform, and refocusing CEQA on how compliance with standards and plans will reduce impacts can also inform advocacy efforts to revisit standards or plans.
  • Finally, “real” environmental lawsuits – seeking to enforce true environmental objectives – can still be pursued against agencies that fail to make regulatory or permitting decisions in compliance with standards and plans. However, the current system of broad brush CEQA lawsuits that can be filed by any party for any purpose to challenge any or all environmental attributes of projects that comply with standards and plans are an outdated artifact of the “anything goes” environment of 1970, which now hinders both environmental improvement and economic recovery.

California is and can remain a leader in environmental stewardship, while at the same time promoting responsible investments in schools, clean technology, roads, mass transit, hospitals, infill development, housing, businesses and new jobs.

We look forward to working with you on this effort.

North Bay Leadership Council
California Alliance for Jobs
Silicon Valley Leadership Group
Bay Area Council
California’s Coalition for Adequate School Housing
California Hospital Association
Transportation California
Southern California Association of Governments
AGC California
Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation
SPUR
CalChamber
Los Angeles County Business Federation
Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce
Valley Industry & Commerce Association
Orange County Business Council
San Gabriel Valley Economic Partnership
Central California Council
California Building Industry Association
San Francisco Chamber of Commerce
California Business Properties Association
Long Beach Area Chamber of Commerce
California Retailers Association
California Business Roundtable

NBLC’s push to pass SB 1456 – the Student Success Act of 2012 has borne fruit

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NBLC’s push to pass SB 1456 – the Student Success Act of 2012 (Lowenthal) has borne fruit.  The bill passed the State Assembly Appropriations Committee today.  The bill now goes to the full Assembly for a vote.  If it passes, it is on to the Governor’s desk in September. 

Community colleges are the economic engine of the California economy as they educate and train the bulk of our state’s workforce.  Our Community Colleges have over 2.6 million students currently enrolled in the 112 colleges across our state.  They play a critical role in meeting the need for post-secondary education leading to certificates, and two and four year degrees.  California’s future is dependent upon its colleges producing enough college graduates with the skills required to fill the jobs generated in our state. 

But, by any measure, community college completion rates are unacceptable. A study by the Institute for Higher Education Leadership & Policy found that only 3 in 10 students earned a certificate, degree, or transferred to a four year college after six years. These rates were even lower for Black and Latino students.

SB 1456 has the potential to greatly improve community college completion, taking critical student support strategies that have long been proven to work in helping students reach their college goals—most of which can be implemented through the use and reprioritization of existing resources—and adopting them system wide.  In a resource-starved environment, SB 1456 is exactly the type of innovative reform that can help promote successful student outcomes.
Specifically, SB 1456 will:

  • Ensure that all community college students receive orientation, assessment, and education planning services at the beginning of their educational journey.
  • Target campus resources to support innovative models for delivering critical student support services such as expanding peer counseling and utilizing paraprofessional academic advisors.
  • Incentivize student progress by more closely aligning Board of Governors’ Fee Waiver requirements with federal aid standards.
  • Increase transparency and help close the achievement gap by requiring campuses receiving student success funds to post a scorecard measuring their progress by ethnicity, age, gender, socio-economic status, and disability.

Another Bright Spot! Middle Class Wealth: It’s Not as Bad as It Looks

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In the Brookings post, “Middle Class Wealth: It’s Not as Bad as It Looks,” Opinion, July 5, 2102, it debunks the gloomy view that the middle class are in the worst shape in decades.  It says, “The Census Bureau released its latest data on wealth, updating earlier figures from 2005 to 2010. The numbers confirm findings from a Federal Reserve Board survey showing unprecedented declines in the net worth of the typical American household. Viewed in context, however, the wealth levels of middle-class Americans are in better shape than these dramatic figures would suggest, though they have not improved markedly over several decades.”

Explaining what is really happening, the post states, “In some sense the recent drop in wealth is a mirage, because it reflects the reversal of wealth increases that themselves were illusory. For the vast majority of families, “wealth” essentially means, “home equity”. And the relatively high wealth levels of the mid-2000s reflected the inflation of the housing bubble. The bursting of the bubble exposed the wealth gains as having been unreal and produced the sizable declines in net worth revealed in the government data. How illusory were the earlier wealth gains? In 1998, home prices were right in line with the cost of rental housing by historical standards. By early 2006, they had increased 70 to 90 percent more than rents had. Correspondingly, median non-financial assets increased 41 percent from 1998 to 2007, while median financial assets rose just 1 percent. Only now are home prices approaching the historical norm again relative to rents.”

An interesting point is the measurement of wealth levels does not include “public and private commitments that most Americans can count on to meet their needs in old age.” If  “the present value of Social Security benefits were included in the definition of wealth, median net worth for adults under age 65 in 2010 would be at least four times higher than indicated by the standard definitions of net worth used by the Census Bureau and the Fed. And this adjustment would still exclude the value that future Medicare benefits will have for most retirees, as well as the value of traditional pensions and retiree health benefits provided by employers.”

A final point made is that as people age, their wealth tends to increase.  And while we have not seen “sizable improvements in the wealth levels of the middle class…over the long run, things are not getting worse.”  And sometimes, things not getting worse is very good news.