EDITORIAL: Figuring out how to build things
Reality is a difficult foe. This is a concept that some California Democrats have finally started to grasp.
The Golden State’s housing market is a well-documented tire fire. Soaring prices leave middle-class families struggling to find shelter. WalletHub reports that nine of the 10 least affordable cities in America are in California. Homelessness has surged even as the state throws billions of dollars at the problem. If not for illegal immigration, the state would be losing residents, and it will probably lose a handful of congressional seats in the next census.
Driving much of the dysfunction is a progressive regulatory structure that smothers builders under mountains of red tape while allowing environmental and other activists to manipulate the courts into stopping or delaying virtually any commercial or housing project.
Their weapon of choice is the California Environmental Quality Act, a 54-year-old state statute intended to ensure that counties and municipalities consider environment impacts for “public” projects. A 1972 California Supreme Court decision massively expanded the law’s reach by holding that “public” meant any project that required government approval, opening the door for virtually anyone “to block almost any kind of development,” The Wall Street Journal reported.
Democrats have long pretended that the overactive government they so desire comes with few — if any — deleterious consequences. But the economic reality in California tells a different tale. And it’s a tale that even the progressives who run Sacramento could no longer ignore.
At the urging of Gov. Gavin Newsom, who seeks to move to the center as he ponders a run for the presidency in 2028, California lawmakers this week added to a budget bill a pair of reforms designed to limit the scope of the CEQA. The reforms exempt a handful of public projects from environment reviews, restrict some legal challenges and make it more difficult to stop housing projects in urban areas.
“We have fallen prey to a strategy of delay,” Gov. Newsom said. “As a result of that, we have too much demand chasing too little supply. This is not complicated. It’s Econ 101.”
Republicans in the state have been promoting such a reform for decades. Had Democrats acted sooner, perhaps some of California’s pathologies could have been avoided. But better late to the party than to miss it altogether.
Leftist greens reacted predictably. CalMatters reported that a bevy of environmental groups attacked the proposal as “the worst anti-environmental bill in California in recent memory.” The most apt rejoinder came from David Victor, a professor of innovation and public policy at UC-San Diego. “The state needs to figure out how to build things,” he told ABC News, “and Democrats need to learn how to say ‘yes’ to investment.”
That’s the harsh reality many activists ignore.