By Jennifer L. Hernandez, Marne S. Sussmab, Norman Carlin, Brian C. Buinger : hklaw – excerpt

State Legislature Weakens Many of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Original Proposals

• Holland & Knight recently wrote a practical guide describing the proposed reforms to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and other content in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s “May Revise” budget trailer bills.
• Gov. Newsom’s Proposed package included 11 bills. As finally enacted, the content was consolidated into five bills: Senate Bill (SB) 145, SB 146, SB 147, SB 149 and SB 150, including some provisions that have been watered down from the original versions.
• This Holland & Knight alert summarizes practical changes to CEQA and infrastructure permitting in the final content of the bills as enacted.

As stated in Holland & Knight’s recent alert detailing Gov. Gavin Newsom’s package of 11 bills to amend the venerable California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), meaningful reforms to CEQA have eluded all past governors in the state. (See “A Practical Guide to Gov. Newsom’s May 2023 Budget-Revised CEQA Trailer Bills,” May 23, 2023.)

For the past five decades, CEQA has been finely tuned to protect the status quo even in the face of California’s urgent housing and infrastructure needs. CEQA lawsuits (and lawsuit threats) are the go-to tool for “NIMBYs” (not in my backyard organizations) and anyone with the resources to file a lawsuit who wants to leverage a project approved by elected and appointed officials to further their own special interests. For example, as reported in Part 3 of the “In the Name of the Environment” series authored by Holland & Knight attorneys, examining all CEQA lawsuits filed from 2019 to 2021,1 local and regional land use plans to allow more than 1 million new homes were targeted by CEQA lawsuits…(more)

RELATED:

Opinion: The California Environmental Quality Act is not the problem it’s made out to be