Few believe CEQA will be overhauled. What’s more likely is that lawmakers will poke holes in the law, exempting or setting aside CEQA only in certain situations while leaving more widespread concerns about the law’s effects on development unchallenged.
Yet despite the outrage surrounding the Berkeley incident and regular, high-profile examples of the law blocking environmentally friendly projects, few believe that legislators will use the Berkeley case as an excuse for an overhaul. Too many interests — including environmentalists, labor unions and neighborhood groups — support CEQA, and any attempt to make robust changes threatens blowback and failure.
“Politicians will always fix a problem as narrowly as they possibly can, particularly when fixing a problem broadly is politically difficult,” said Bill Fulton, director of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University and publisher of the California Planning & Development Report. “The idea of limiting the California dream to UC Berkeley students resonated as an issue where somehow limiting the California dream by limiting the amount of housing does not.”Gov.
The legislation that passed this week gave the university an additional 18 months to complete its environmental review. Lawmakers said they needed to act fast to avoid turning would-be students into victims.“Let’s pass this measure today. Let’s get these students an education,” state Sen. Scott Wiener said during debate over the change. “But let’s not think for a minute that this mess was somehow an anomaly. When it comes to CEQA, this UC Berkeley train wreck wasn’t a bug. It’s a feature.
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