CALIFORNIA STATE BUDGET HOLD-UP ENDS: ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT EXAMINED

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Gary A. Patton
Executive Director
Planning and Conservation League

As you probably know, the State Legislature finally passed a budget. Fifty-two days after the start of the fiscal year, two Senate Republicans finally added their "aye" votes to the votes of all the Senate Democrats, thus achieving the two-thirds vote required.
What was the pound of flesh extracted for this vote? Republican leaders in the Senate were asking for two things: (1) $700 million more in cuts, and (2) an amendment of California's premier environmental law – the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) - to eliminate consideration of global warming impacts during the normal environmental review process. The Governor promised to deliver on the first matter weeks ago.

Their second demand not only has nothing to do with the budget process but is also bad policy. However, because the budget requires a two-thirds vote, a compromise had to be reached. Thus, the Legislature passed SB 97, a bill that exempts certain transportation and flood projects from normal CEQA review. SB 97 allows a project to go forward without an analysis of its climate emissions if it is already regulated by the Air Resources Board under AB 32 – The Global Warming Solutions Act. Provisions of the bill sunset on January 1, 2010.

PCL is still analyzing the new language, but it appears that the Democratic leadership was able to minimize the negative effects of SB 97. But let's focus for a moment on the process. Most non-fiscal bills can pass and become law on a majority vote. In the normal situation, in other words, California does have a "majority rule" rule. But the budget doesn't operate according to "majority rule" principles. Since it takes a two-thirds vote to pass the budget, minority legislators (currently that means the Republicans) can in effect turn "majority rule" into "minority rule." That's what happened with the amendment to CEQA.

Global warming is an admitted environmental problem – a huge problem. And CEQA covers it. CEQA requires governmental agencies to reduce or eliminate the global warming impacts of projects if it's economically feasible to do so. That's just common sense! To demand that CEQA be amended to let global warming impacts get a "free ride" is not something that a majority of the Legislature would ever support – because it's such a bad idea. For minority Republicans in this budget session, though, responding to the desires of the development and oil industry, the minority saw a way to leverage such a result. That's why the budget was so late.