De-weaponizing CEQA

Two weeks ago, Assemblymember Buffy Wicks of Oakland introduced legislation intended to overhaul the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), via reforms to the law that the San Francisco Chronicle says “could blow a crater through it.”

Wicks’s bill, AB 609, would exempt most infill housing projects—that is, the vast majority of housing developments in California’s cities—from the stringent environmental reviews required under CEQA.

“We are responsible for the fact [that] people can’t afford to live in California,” she told the Chron’s Joe Garofoli. “That is on us,” she said of her colleagues in California’s overwhelmingly Democratic legislature, “and we need to have a serious moment of self-reflection.”

The move is significant because Wicks holds substantial power—the former California field director for Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns, who grew up in a trailer in the Sierra foothills, now chairs the Assembly’s powerful Appropriations Committee.

The move to gut the state’s bedrock environmental law is being praised by some environmentalists and good-goverment organizations. The non-partisan Little Hoover Commission, in a 2024 report gave CEQA high praise, pointing out that it “played a role in countless environmental victories, including the protection of old-growth Redwoods, lands near Lake Tahoe, and the San Francisco Bay.” But that same study concluded that CEQA’s “strong bias toward the status quo means that it can be used to block projects that would help improve the environment.”

This has been known for some time.  Jon Vankin reported in these pages on a study done a decade ago showing that “only 13 percent of lawsuits under CEQA were brought by groups or individuals who had any previous record of environmental advocacy.”

Following the ‘Abundance’ Agenda

It may be no coincidence that Wicks introduced her legislation during a week when Ezra Klein was in San Francisco on a tour promoting Abundance, a book he co-authored with Derek Thompson. (Klein has significant pull among Democrats, having helped lead the crusade that convinced Joe Biden to end his campaign.)

Abundance, as the title suggests, calls for a politics that creates more of the things Americans need to live a good life, and to speed up the process that allows stuff to get done. This means building more green-energy projects, more efficient transportation systems, more and better technologies—and especially more housing.

The book takes aim directly at CEQA, pointing out that this law has been "weaponized" by lawyers to make the development of good projects painfully difficult. For example, he quotes a study showing that “between 1972 and 1975, 29,000 proposed homes in the Bay Area—roughly one fifth of the region’s total housing production at the time, were subject to environmental litigation.”

Klein was born in California and lived most of his life here, including during the writing of Abundance (he recently moved to New York City), and the book contains extensive critiques of the state’s policies, and it's Democratic leaders. (Klein identifies as a liberal Democrat and a lover of California—so much so that he has a Redwood tattooed on his shoulder.)

From the introduction: "California’s most popular cities are run by Democrats. Every statewide elected official in California is a Democrat. Both chambers of the legislature are run by Democrats. And California is a land of wonders. … Liberals should be able to say: 'Vote for us, and we will govern the country the way we govern in California!' Instead, conservatives are able to say: 'Vote for them, and they will govern the country the way they govern California!'"

"California has spent decades trying and failing to build high speed rail. It has the worst homeless problem in the country. It has the worst housing affordability problem in the country. It trails only Hawaii and Massachusetts in cost of living. As a result, it is losing hundreds of thousands of people every year to Texas in Arizona. What has gone wrong?

The Good News

While he was visiting his home state for his book tour, Klein stopped by to talk with Gavin Newsom on the governor's new (somewhat controversial) podcast. Newsom told Klein that he loves the book and has gifted copies to the leaders of both houses in the legislature. In fact, long before Klein took up the subject, Newsom was at work attacking legalistic barriers to smart growth—Garofoli reports that he has signed 42 separate bills altering CEQA. Newsom was able to tell Klein about some things that have transpired since he left California.

First, the governor agreed that the way the state has handled High Speed Rail is “an indictment of our ability to deliver.” He then pointed out that following decades of delays and blown-through budgets, HSR is finally being built. Long-negotiated partnerships are in place and electrification of existing rail is under way. The barriers imposed by CEQA and a dozen similar laws have been overcome. “We got all the environmental work done,” Newsom said, “and we are laying track.”

He pointed to two more big projects that are accelerating thanks to a streamlined judicial review process. One is Sites Reservoir, the first large water-storage facility built in the state in a half-century. The other, announced just a week before Klein and Newsom spoke, is a big solar and battery storage project—the press release from the governor’s office might have been written by someone who read Klein’s book: 

“The Governor certified the Cornucopia Hybrid Project in Fresno County utilizing a law to build more, faster, that was extended in the historic infrastructure package passed in 2023 with the support of the Legislature. The certification means a streamlined process for legal challenges that can otherwise cause long delays.”

I don’t know whether Newsom or Klein saw Buffy Wicks’s move coming. But there seemed last week to be an alignment of forces that could, to paraphrase a headline about the bill from California YIMBY, “Put the ‘E’ back in CEQA.”