California Kills Environmental Reg Strangling Home Construction

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a pair of bills Monday night rolling back parts of a landmark environmental law to remove barriers to tackling the state’s housing shortage.

The California legislature with bipartisan support voted last week to exempt certain projects, such as some high-density housing plans, from onerous California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) reviews and approvals. Newsom pushed the legislation forward, threatening to hold up the state’s budget unless the CEQA rollbacks hit his desk, as well.

“Today’s bill is a game changer, which will be felt for generations to come,” Newsom said in a statement referring to the CEQA overhaul.

Newsom held a press conference Monday evening touting the bills as necessary to rescue the reputation of California’s government and prove that the state is capable of solving pressing problems.

“If we can’t address this issue, we’re going to lose trust, and that’s just the truth,” said Newsom, according to The New York Times. “And so this is so much bigger in many ways than the issue itself. It is about the reputation of not just Sacramento and the legislative leadership and executive leadership, but the reputation of the state of California.”

Newsom has promised to address California’s burgeoning housing shortage since his first campaign for governor in 2018. Now well into his second term and close to being term-limited out of office, Newsom pushed the CEQA reforms forward as he is widely seen as a potential Democratic contender for president in 2028.

CEQA was originally signed into law in 1970 by then-Governor Ronald Reagan. The law at the time it was enacted was thought to only apply to government projects, but a court decision two years later broadened the law’s application to a host of development projects.

Since then, critics have said that the law’s strict review and approval process, believed to be the toughest in the United States, has been abused by environmental activists, labor unions, California residents, and others to extract concessions in exchange for politically sensitive projects or to override construction proposals unpopular with a small group.

Environmental groups rallied against the CEQA reforms. Dozens of groups partnered together to urge lawmakers to reject the bills.

“This bill is the worst anti-environmental bill in California in recent memory,” the groups wrote in a joint letter. “It represents an unprecedented rollback to California’s fundamental environmental and community protections at a time in which the people of California grapple with unprecedented federal attacks to their lives and livelihoods.”