Revamp should create level playing field

Pasadena Star News  

By: Cynthia Kurtz                   

Posted 9/18/2013 

Let me start with apologies to my readers who are getting tired of so many columns about CEQA reform. However, for people who are interested in how policy is made, this issue is the gift that keeps on giving.

This was to be the year for CEQA “modernization.” The Governor said it would get done. SB 371 was introduced by Senator Steinberg and touted as the CEQA reform bill for California. Interested parties were engaged and business advocates asked for changes to give more certainty to timelines and reduce excessive litigation. 

However, Senator Steinberg said that what business wanted went “too far” and so didn’t include the business-backed changes in his bill.

Last week SB 743 popped up - a “gut and amend” bill also authored by Senator Steinberg. Gut and amend means that at the end of the session a bill that is clearly not going to pass gets rewritten with a new topic and purpose which has nothing to do with the original topic and purpose. When the changes are made at the end of the session, the bill can avoid all the pesky public hearings that are part of the normal legislative process

Last year when a CEQA reform bill that was backed by business was proposed by Senator Rubio at the end of the session there was a hue and cry that CEQA was too important to be changed through gut and amend legislation. Didn’t hear any objections to the process for SB 743. But I digress.

SB 743 expedites the CEQA process for the proposed new downtown Sacramento NBA basketball arena by allowing the project to go straight to court in the event there is CEQA litigation thereby giving more certainty to the timeline. It provides for mediation of disagreements over environmental issues as a shortcut to avoid litigation and requires the courts to issue a ruling within 175 days.

As reported in the Sacramento Bee, the bill was introduced to cut through what “Steinberg and others have called a burdensome environment impact study process under the California Environmental Quality Act.”

In case you aren’t following other northern California news, Senator Steinberg is a candidate for mayor of Sacramento.

I am not suggesting that SB 743 was a bad bill. The arena is not getting an environmental exemption. It will have to meet ALL environment standards. It will have to complete all the studies and reviews required under CEQA. It will have to mitigate its impacts. It will have all the public review required by the California law. 

What I am asserting is there should be a level playing field. If Senator Steinberg and the Legislature believe this process is good for the arena why shouldn’t it apply to other projects? SB 743 was pushed as a job-creation bill. In case there is any misunderstanding, developing housing, expanding manufacturing facilities, and building public infrastructure also creates jobs.

SB 743 passed. SB 731 did not.

Even after this state legislators will continue to scratch their heads and wonder why, year after year, California keeps ending at the bottom of the list of “business friendly” states.