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Lauren Rosenhall, Soumya Karlamanga, and Adam Nagourney for the New York Times, "California Rolls Back Its Landmark Environmental Law" (archive) (Part of an ongoing series on housing, mostly in California. Now also at theschism.) Other coverage is available from Eric Levitz at Vox, Henry Grabar at Slate, Ben Christopher at CalMatters, and Taryn Luna and Liam Dillon at the Los Angeles Times. Some of this work draws from Assemblymember Buffy Wicks' Select Committee on Permitting Reform, which issued its final report earlier this year.
In our last episode, there were three major reforms in play for this year's legislative season: zoning reform (SB 79), improving the CEQA exemption for infill housing (AB 609), and broad CEQA reform (SB 607). SB 79 is currently in the Assembly (it passed Assembly Housing 9-2, and now goes to Assembly Local Government, then the floor, then Senate concurrence, then the Governor's desk), but in a surprise move, Newsom, whose inaction I've previously complained about, pulled CEQA reform into this year's budget process, which essentially makes it a must-pass piece of legislation. There's some room for short negotiation, but it's fast-paced, and if the budget isn't passed, the legislators don't get paid until it is. (There is, as I understand it, no back pay, so it's a real penalty.)
CEQA is arguably the most significant non-zoning barrier to housing production (here's a short selection of shenaniganry, and I've covered it here and here); the CA YIMBY legislative director described this as "probably the most important thing California has done on housing in the present YIMBY moment" and explained how we got here.
The main opponents here were the usual Livable California NIMBYs, but also the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California (the "Trades"). On first glance, environmental review doesn't seem connected to labor, but because CEQA provides an all-purpose method of delay (and delay costs money), it's used to extract concessions, like the use of union labor, in exchange for not delaying the project. Note that nearly 90% of the construction workforce is non-union; the Trades are, in effect, taking work away from a lot of construction workers in order to ensure much higher pay for the few union construction workers, who mostly work on government projects or subsidized housing which mandates union labor.
There was, during this process, an intense argument, occurring mostly behind-the-scenes, about what labor standards should look like. The expected proposal was that projects skipping environmental review would have to pay higher, but nowhere near union rate, wages; this would probably not have had a significant effect on the bill's usefulness, since the required wages were close to the median wage for construction workers. This did not mollify the Trades, who claimed that it "will compel our workers to be shackled and start singing chain gang songs"; their official opposition letter described it as "a bill that masquerades as housing reform while launching an all-out assault on the livelihoods, health, and dignity of California construction workers".
But a few days later, the wage stuff was completely removed; the expanded CEQA infill exemption simply exempts most infill projects from environmental review, period. (Projects above eighty-five feet, which do require union labor, generally use more-expensive Type I construction anyway.)
In a bit more detail, one of the components of the originally proposed reform was removing a lowered standard for demanding a full environmental impact statement. Under existing law, if an agency makes a negative declaration (i.e., "there isn't a meaningful environmental impact here"), they can be forced to reconsider that under a "fair argument" standard, which is much lower than a "reasonable person" standard; this incentivizes agencies to do unnecessary EIRs to avoid the chance that some crank will force them to do one anyway. This reform has been removed; the "fair argument" standard remains.
For more deep dives, see Assemblymember Buffy Wicks and Senator Scott Wiener (the original authors of these reforms) being interviewed by David Roberts for Volts, "The fight to build faster in California", which is slightly outdated, as it was recorded before the final bill was passed; see also the same two legislators being interviewed by Derek Thompson for Plain English, "How Abundance Won in California". (For a contrast, see Roberts' 2023 interview with Johanna Bozuwa from the Climate and Community Project, "The progressive take on the permitting debate", which is a defense of complex, discretionary permitting.)
Thompson is, of course, Ezra Klein's coauthor on Abundance, as covered in the last installment, and Newsom, in the press conference announcing the signing, specifically gave a shout-out to the concept and to Klein (though not Thompson). (Note Senator Aisha Wahab, the Housing chair, at left wearing black, pulling some faces at that.) Newsom, understandably, made a meal of this; the full press conference is here.
It’s great to see political realignment in action. A lot of folks here are extremely blackpilled about politics, but this to me seems a perfect example of how democracy is supposed to work.
The Democrats ignored a major issue for a long time, lost popularity massively from it, then pivoted. Love to see it.
I would not bet on that pivot yet. I think Mamdani's success shows that the days of progressive mismanagement have come to a middle at best.
(Although I guess he could still lose.)
The East Coast and West Coast follow different trends.
Seattle, Portland and SF had their progressive experiments together starting the mid-2010s. They're now facing whiplash together as well.
Boston & NYC were run by competent moderates during the 2010s. The most progressive of the East Coast (Michelle Wu) was no where near the crazies seen on the west coast. Zohran is the first east-coast progressive to win. I dislike him (as my numerous posts about him make clear), but his rhetoric is no where near as radical as what was seen on the west coast. Zohran / AOC are no where close to the insanity of Kshama Sawant / Chesa Boudin. (Different roles, I know, but for comparison)
I disagree, there were various leftist justice reform DAs that won big in NYC, Philly etc. De Blasio was on the progressive wing of the party; he wasn't Chesa tier but effectively welcomed that movement into office.
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