AB 1068: California Environmental Quality Act: priority projects.

This act shall be known, and may be cited, as the Priority Project Parity Act of 2015.

The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:

(a)The California Environmental Quality Act (Division 13 (commencing with Section 21000) of the Public Resources Code), commonly known as CEQA, was enacted with a near unanimous bipartisan vote of the Legislature in 1970 and signed into law by Governor Reagan.

(b)The purpose of CEQA is to enhance public disclosure of the environmental impacts of a project and to require feasible mitigation measures or alternative project configurations that reduce significant adverse impacts to the physical environment.

(c)Feasible mitigation measures and alternatives are limited to those that allow the project to achieve its objectives, fall within the jurisdiction of the lead agency, and can be readily implemented from a legal, technical, and economic perspective.

(d)If, notwithstanding the feasible mitigation measures or alternative configuration, a project would have a significant unavoidable adverse impact on the physical environment or substantially contribute to an unavoidable significant adverse cumulative impact on the physical environment, an agency may nevertheless approve the project by adopting a statement explaining the overriding employment, environmental, social, economic, or other benefits that have informed the agencys decision to approve the project.

(e)In a notable contrast to the federal court interpretation of the federal National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (42 U.S.C. Secs. 4321 et seq.), which served as a model for CEQA, California courts have decided that lawsuits challenging the adequacy of an agencys compliance with CEQA may be brought by any party for any reason, including, but not limited to, parties seeking competitive advantage, seeking wage or other employment terms and conditions, seeking to protect private property economic values, and seeking to preclude neighborhood-scale projects that are or may increase the quality of life for lower income and racially diverse population groups, by increasing youth utilization of urban parks or by developing transit systems in urbanized areas, without regard to the environmental or other merits of the project.

(f)In advising the state, regional, and local agency on the compliance requirements of CEQA, the Governors Office of Planning and Research has identified more than 100 potential environmental impact topics that must be evaluated for each project, has routinely adopted guidance that increases the cost and complexity of the analysis required, and continues to propose requirements that increase uncertainty and complexity, including, but not limited to, advocating for regulatory reversals of appellate court statutory interpretations, such as the business as usual approach to evaluating the significance of greenhouse gas emissions and the judicial classification of parking as an environmental impact based on air quality and other factors. Collectively, such ambiguous and contradictory advice has continued to increase the cost and litigation uncertainty of compliance obligations under CEQA.

(g)Three private sector law firms, each representing a diverse range of parties affected by CEQA including public agencies, project applicants, and other stakeholders, have completed studies on reported appellate court decisions interpreting CEQA and those studies demonstrate that the courts have determined that the lead agencies failed to comply with some aspect of CEQA in nearly half of all cases, and that even the most elaborate environmental studies, the environmental impact reports, that are entitled to the highest level of judicial deference, failed to pass judicial muster in nearly half of all reported appellate cases over a 15-year period. Projects approved under a less costly and less time-consuming negative declaration process fail to pass judicial muster in far more than half of the cases challenging those approvals.

(h)The overwhelming majority of the adverse court decisions required that project approval be vacated pending completion of further environmental studies under CEQA.

(i)Notwithstanding such conclusive evidence of widespread confusion regarding the compliance requirements of CEQA, along with litigation abuse to promote nonenvironmental interests and abusive litigation tactics, such as document dumping, to delay agency decisions for weeks and sometimes months after the close of the comment periods prescribed by CEQA, the Legislature has declined to enact any systematic reforms that address how this 1970-era law is to be interpreted in conjunction with the hundreds of environmental and planning mandates that have subsequently been enacted as coequal legal mandates in Californias stringent and complex suite of statutes designed to protect and enhance environmental quality, including, but not limited to, statutes requiring integration of environmental protection standards in land use plans and policies.

(j)The existence of an outstanding lawsuit challenging compliance with CEQA, in tandem with the high level of adverse judicial outcomes, creates significant unresolved project contingencies that generally preclude timely receipt of federal and state grant funding as well as other forms of public and private sector financing.

(k)Legislative leadership has routinely sponsored last minute legislation for politically favored projects, including, but not limited to, major league sports facilities and prisons, to either exempt them from CEQA or limit the judicial remedies that are available when an adverse judicial determination has been made. These favored leadership projects have achieved this sheltered status without regard to whether the projects are consistent with an adopted sustainable communities strategy required pursuant to Section 65080 of the Government Code. This highly politicized leadership exemption process has been referred to as the transactional model for implementing CEQA.

(l)This transactional model for implementing CEQA is an effective method of avoiding delays in financing and implementation of priority projects. There is an ample body of otherwise applicable California environmental protection and land use law in place to avoid and minimize potentially significant adverse environmental impacts to the physical environment without regard to the applicability of CEQA. No existing law creates a presumed different suite of legal compliance obligations reserved to legislative leaders and the legislative districts they represent. Legislative leadership positions do not confer upon individuals serving in those positions a monopoly on the use of the transactional model for implementing CEQA. The transactional model of legislative exemptions has a history of extending nearly to the 1970 enactment date of CEQA.

(m)It is now appropriate to enact a new compliance pathway for a project identified as a priority by each Member of the Senate and Assembly.

No reimbursement is required by this act pursuant to Section 6 of Article XIIIB of the California Constitution because the only costs that may be incurred by a local agency or school district will be incurred because this act creates a new crime or infraction, eliminates a crime or infraction, or changes the penalty for a crime or infraction, within the meaning of Section 17556 of the Government Code, or changes the definition of a crime within the meaning of Section 6 of Article XIIIB of the California Constitution.