Environmental reform stalled

April 8, 2013

earth-handsSacramento politicians have dabbled with reform of California’s far-reaching environmental law during the past few sessions, but now advocates of change fear their chances of success have significantly diminished. (San Jose Mercury News)

The 43-year-old law — the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) has been used maliciously, some business leaders maintain, to unfairly compete with other businesses, to mount neighborhood battles over aesthetics, and to coerce developers into labor consensus.

Gov. Jerry Brown disdained the law’s limitations while mayor of Oakland, and said he intended to “fix” those problems when he became governor.

But when Democrat Michael Rubio left the Legislature recently to join Chevron as a lobbyist, the move toward what reform advocates were calling the “modernization” of CEQA stalled. Rubio’s replacement, Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, is less inclined to make changes in the law.

“Forces have already organized to block (reform),” Brown recently told reporters.

The law was signed in 1970 by Gov. Ronald Reagan and requires environmental studies of significant development projects.


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Mary Nickel and her ilk are killing the working person in this state, it won’t be long before we are back in horse and buggys with this bunch.


Mary Nichols and her CARB Nazis are the true enemy of all Californians. While she and her spook science scammer Hien Tran dream up ridiculous policy, the Chinese are belching a 1000 times the pollution of California. What a bunch of dopes we have in this once Golden state.


And the more serious they make it sound the more secure their ….paycheck. It’s really getting bad in the the ol’ Green industry, Sad as hell.


How could the act of saving the environment be called “malicious”? And how do you “coerce” a developer? They invented modern day coersion.


does smell, doesn’t it?


i wonder how “modernization” will be defined. same with “reform”. more jockeying for position?


tax spend-tax spend, regulate, tax spend etc…. over and over and over again.