California's Landmark Environmental Law Finally Comes for the Legislature Itself

 

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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Over the decades, court decisions also extended the scope of CEQA to cover even privately sponsored projects (like a new single-family home or apartment building) that government bureaucrats had a minimal level of discretion over.

By delaying new homes for years (or some cases, decades), CEQA has become a major contributor to the state's housing crisis.

Sound familiar? Yes sir, NEPA - California style

And check this out:

CEQA made national headlines earlier this year when Berkeley activists successfully used it to freeze student enrollment at U.C. Berkeley on the grounds that the university hadn't adequately studied the environmental impact of its growing student body.