The LA times on June 2 ran an article titled “After half a century, California Legislators on the verge of overhauling a landmark environmental law.” The article chronicles the efforts of the Legislature to reform the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) because it has been abused by unions, environmental organizations, “community organizers,” and, some cases, business competitors who used CEQA to advance their personal purposes, rather than environmental protection. The result? hardly anyone who is not a multimillionaire can afford to buy a house in California. Gasoline is not far behind.
Of course, conservatives have been pushing these changes since the California Supreme Court rewrote the law in the late ’70’s to apply the law, originally meant only to apply to government projects, to private development across the state. Interesting fact: in 1974, seventy per cent of Californians could afford to buy a median priced home in California. The Supreme Court rewrote the law in 1976 and by 1980, only 17% of Californians could afford to buy a median priced home. Since that time, it has only gotten worse. Gas prices were forty cents a gallon in the 1970’s and still only $1.25 a gallon in the 1990’s. They are now out of control because of CEQA and other alleged environmental protection laws.
When I sat on a planning commission, I saw CEQA used by the local Sierra Club to extort “contributions” from several local developers. Give us money, they would say, and we won’t oppose your housing project. A local union attempted to use CEQA to force a nonunion grocery store to sign a union contract for its employees, or they would use their influence over local Democrat local elected officials to kill their plans to build a discount grocery store in the city in which I lived at the time. Rumors abounded throughout the 1980’s and ’90’s that Democrat controlled cities were requiring local developers to use the engineering firm owned by Richard Blum, Diane Feinstein’s husband, to do their environmental studies or their projects would be denied for failure to comply with CEQA’s requirements. CEQA began a tool for funneling money from developers, who mostly supported Republicans at the time, to college professors, engineering firms, unions, environmental groups, and other Democrat supporting organizations. Democrats would come up with some “environmental” damage (in Riverside County at the time, it was a project would kill off donkeys, rats and/or insects), and then require the developer to “mitigate” the impact of their development project on that “protected” environmental concern by hiring college professors to study how to minimize that damage, and poof, the project would get approved. Of course, the college professor would give a portion of the money he or she received as a part of the environmental extortion to the Sierra Club or local political office holders, and reinforce left wing control of the political processes in that area.
It was and is a form of hidden corruption. But worse than that, CEQA became a political tool that actually deprived the people of the State of California of affordable housing, much needed water and transportation infrastructure, and has chased businesses out of state. California has not had a new oil refinery in this state since the mid-1960’s because of this corruption, and now, two refineries are being shut down because of these corrupt practices. When those refineries are decommissioned, gasoline prices could be as much as $10/gallon, because, due to other environmental regulations, only gasoline refined in California can be sold in California. Right now, the four refineries in California are operating at 98% capacity. Lose two of them permanently, the supply of gasoline will fall. When supply disappears, prices go up, that’s simple economics. CEQA and other left wing “environmental” laws are making everything unaffordable.
Now Democrats are saying, why is this happening? If they had listened to conservatives in the 80’s and 90’s, they could have avoided this entire disaster. They are now saying, “we have to reform CEQA.” I had four bills to completely overhaul CEQA for housing projects in the 1990’s and the early 2000’s which would have averted the housing crisis we are seeing today. All were killed by union and environmental opposition.
Democrats are starting to figure out their policies created this problem and voters are starting to blame Democrats for adopting and reinforcing those policies, making housing, water, fuel and other basic commodities unaffordable. All of the sudden, Democrats are starting to say the policies which conservative proposed 30 years ago are not such bad ideas. Given the crises facing California families and businesses created by Democrats in the ’70’s, saying “better late than never” would be way too charitable.