Budget Deal At Expense of CEQA Near?

by Robert in Monterey [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

FDR at the California Progress Report reports that a budget deal seems near, and it may come at the expense of CEQA - or it may not. Depends on who you talk to, I guess:

[Villines] said that he had worked all weekend and that "all" had agreed that some fix needed to be made with respect to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), the state's basic environmental law, which he called an "AB 32 fix".

And N??ez:

I specifically asked Nunez about changes to AB 32 and CEQA and he said flat out that there would be no AB 32 changes and none were proposed in the outline he had seen. The changes that have been bandied about by the Republicans all along are not squarely within the language of AB 32 but have been to CEQA. The Speaker did indicate that he was about to brief his caucus and that any changes to environmental laws would not be made without checking with the environmental community. He was reluctant to discuss what had been agreed to privately.

I cannot imagine in what world giving in to the GOP demands on CEQA, in any form, would be anything other than a catastrophic disaster, validating the Senate Republicans' unconscionable hostage tactics.

Now, there could be no cause for such concern, and one hopes that our Democratic leadership understands the bad precedent and effect such a compromise would have. If anyone in Sacramento thinks that by giving the GOP any of what they want, they'll ensure anything other than an even worse fight next year, they're nuts.

[UPDATE] The SacBee has details on this "AB 32 fix" which involves protecting transportation bond-funded projects from AB 32/CEQA action. Details over the filp.

To soothe GOP concerns, staff has drafted a compromise proposal that would place a moratorium on greenhouse gas-related actions against transportation bonds, approved by voters under Proposition 1B last fall. It would sunset after the state Air Resources Board adopts new regulations to comply with a state initiative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by 2020.

We still don't know if this is the specific key that will allow a budget deal that Dick Ackerman says now exists.

Personally I'm deeply skeptical of such a deal - how the hell are we going to cut greenhouse gases if we exempt freeway construction from it? Assuming that public transportation, from light rail to high speed rail to clean buses, are still facing a $1.3 billion cut, this is a massive step backward for California.

Yes, it depends on a fight at CARB - but as we've seen, from Arnold's manipulations of that body to the new CARB chair's significant oil company stock holdings, that's not a place where we can be certain of strong action of auto emissions.