Business Retention & Attraction Strategies: CEQA Modernization
Bringing CEQA into the 21st Century
The Issue/Challenge
The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), adopted 40 years ago, provides a formal process for state agencies and local governments to evaluate and mitigate environmental impacts that may occur as a result of the approval of a particular project. Today, however, there is growing concern and evidence that groups and individuals can easily distort the act to suit their own agenda, and, as a result, abusive CEQA lawsuits are being used to advance non-environmental purposes. These abuses unnecessarily delay projects, cause business uncertainty and results in numerous other negative impacts that reduce California’s competitiveness, thus killing jobs and hurting our state’s economy.
The Southern California Leadership Council’s Position
The Southern California Leadership Council supports meaningful California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) modernization efforts. While CEQA’s original intent – environmental protection – must remain intact, now is the time to end reckless abuses of this important law; abuses that are threatening California’s economic vitality, costing jobs, and are wasting valuable taxpayer dollars.
To end these abuses, the Leadership Council supports modernizing CEQA by making smart and meaningful reforms to CEQA standards and practices such as requiring petitioners to disclose their economic interests, adding certainty to the CEQA timeline, avoiding duplicative CEQA reviews, lessening opportunities for litigation and delay, and updating CEQA so that it better integrates and coordinates numerous environmental protection mandates.