California's landmark environmental law has helped thwart state lawmakers' many, many plans for society. They're now thwarting lawmakers' plans for themselves too.
Last week, a California appeals court brought legislators' plans for a new office annex on the state Capitol grounds to a screeching halt when it ruled the $1.3 billion project had been greenlit without the requisite analysis of its environmental effects.
That ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by Save Our Capitol!—a motley coalition of small business groups, taxpayer advocates, preservationists, and environmentalists—arguing that the public had not been given adequate opportunity to comment on the final design of the office complex and that the state hadn't put enough thought into less environmentally impactful designs.
Giving the unincorporated group the right to sue is the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).
...But the "citizen-enforced" law gives anyone the ability to file administrative appeals and lawsuits arguing that any of a long list of a project's impacts on natural, physical, cultural, and/or historic resources had not been adequately studied.
...There's a certain irony to a law that legislators have repeatedly shied away from fixing frustrating a project in their own backyard.
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