For the second time in two years, the California Legislature passed a one-off law to circumvent the California Environmental Quality Act. And this time, the optics aren’t good: In June, the Legislature exempted its own new office building project from CEQA.
The new law passed quickly. Even Sen. John Laird of Santa Cruz, one of the state’s leading environmentalists, expressed concern about the way CEQA was driving delays and therefore the cost of the project, which is more or less the same concern that developers have been expressing forever about CEQA.
The state office building exemption comes on the heels of a similar action last year that kept a UC Berkeley dorm and apartment project alive on the site of People’s Park, despite a court finding that noisy students in the new residences might constitute a significant environmental impact that required CEQA analysis and mitigation.
Everybody loves to hate the California…
