California’s entire budget rests on a must-pass housing bill
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ONE BILL TO RULE THEM ALL
via Kate Wolffe...
On Monday, the state Senate and Assembly are set to discuss the one proposal to rule them all: Senate Bill 131.
No one is to be blamed for not knowing anything about this bill — official language for it just came out Friday morning. But it has become a very important bill, because it has a very important ally in Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The bill would principally reform the California Environmental Quality Act, a law that investigates whether or not a proposed project would harm the environment. It’s often considered an enemy of development in the state due to its ability to slow projects to a grinding halt.
A clause in the budget said if SB 131 isn’t signed by the governor on Monday, the entire budget will be void, rendering it useless.
‘We’ve made a lot of progress in terms of housing and zoning reforms over the course of the last many years. It’s not enough,” said Gov. Gavin Newsom during a news conference Friday. “We need to do more. We have to be bold.”
The bill evolved from an earlier bill authored by state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, called SB 607.
With a warning that most of this is very in the weeds, SB 131 would:
▪ Create a series of new exemptions for CEQA, including farmworker housing, daycare centers, food banks and high-speed rail facilities.
▪ Make changes to what documentation is expected in the administrative record of a project.
▪ When a project is close to getting a CEQA exemption but falls short on a piece, it limits a review to the piece that the project fell short on, not the whole project.
“Let’s make sure that CEQA can protect the environment without undermining our ability to provide the housing and services that working families need to succeed,” Wiener said.
The main opponents of the bill will likely be environmental groups, which put up a strong fight against Wiener’s earlier bill.
“One of the ironies of this bill is the way it’s written is so confusing that a lot of it will have to be litigated,” said Frances Tinney, staff attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “It will lead to more litigation and slower processes just because they’re going in there with a hatchet.”
Lawmakers will have to approve the bill Monday if they want the budget to pass. Many were unhappy with the way the process played out.
“I have not seen that kind of bullying in policy making in the entire time I’ve been here,” said state Sen. Roger Niello, R-Fair Oaks.
ENERGY REGULATORS ABANDON GASOLINE PROFIT CAP
via Nicole Nixon...
The state is no longer interested in limiting oil companies’ profit margins, an idea proposed and signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom more than two years ago as the state faced severe price spikes that in some cases drove the cost of gasoline above $7 per gallon.
That autumn, Newsom accused oil companies of price gouging California drivers and called a special legislative session to address the spikes. Lawmakers passed a bill requiring companies to provide state regulators with information about their operating margins and profits. It also gave the California Energy Commission the authority to impose a cap on those profit margins, which it has so far declined to do.
In a Friday letter to Newsom, CEC Vice Chair Siva Gunda said pursuing a profit cap would require “additional analytic work” and recommended pausing the idea to focus on stabilizing the state’s fossil fuels market.
“We believe that if we can constructively and collaboratively work with the industry … we do not think there is a need for utilization of the margin cap,” Gunda said during a call with reporters.
The letter was a response to Newsom, who in April asked the CEC to “redouble” its efforts “ensure that Californians continue to have access to a safe, affordable, and reliable supply of transportation fuels” after two oil refineries announced plans to shutter in the next year.
Ensuring market stability was Gunda’s top recommendation. He wrote the state can achieve that “through imports of refined fuels and maintaining in-state refining capacity.”
More than 75% of California’s oil supply is imported from foreign countries and Alaska.
“Keeping in-state and imported fuel competitive will be an important balancing act moving forward,” Gunda wrote, “because if the cost of refining fuel in state exceeds the cost of importing fuel, it could further accelerate additional petroleum refinery exits.”
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“The Court is now an accomplice to Trump’s effort to end the rule of law.”
— Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, on X about Supreme Court’s birthright citizenship ruling
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