SF seeks to avoid environmental law to rebuild. So should every downtown in California | Opinion

A liberal San Francisco legislator believes that a key to urban revival in the post-COVID era is to suspend for a decade California’s premiere environmental law, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).

State Sen. Scott Wiener’s bold proposal, however, isn’t for Sacramento, Los Angeles, Fresno or San Jose. Wiener’s Senate Bill 1227 would only remove this environmental regulation for a single downtown, which happens to be his: Downtown San Francisco.

Opinion

“I think a CEQA exemption makes a lot of sense to facilitate and accelerate the reimagining of downtown,” Wiener said. “Downtown San Francisco should have never been overwhelmingly office.”

Wiener isn’t looking to pick a statewide fight with environmental groups and like-minded legislators over the sanctity of a 54-year-old law. He is looking to help his city. But the very rationale behind his bill, that a last-century approach to environmental protection can cause more harm than good in a downtown, should serve as a five-alarm bell for all of California.

The Democrat-controlled California Legislature simply does not have the political capacity nor the will to update CEQA. In the place of real reform, there are increasing instances of surgical strikes to accelerate the act’s lawsuit process or exempt the act altogether. Last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom sought a degree of CEQA relief for a range of infrastructure projects as part of June’s budget package. Now, Wiener is back to make Downtown San Francisco a CEQA-free zone.

CEQA is the reason why major projects must conduct environmental impact reports. The act requires a review of potential alternatives, an identification of impacts and ways to lessen those impacts when feasible.

For a project with any controversy, the environmental review triggers the next process: litigation. That’s what worries Wiener in San Francisco, where any attempt to convert a tired office building into a residential high-rise is likely to trigger yet another city debate.

“Anyone who doesn’t like (a project) and has enough money to hire a lawyer can appeal and sue,” he said. “It could really get gummed up.”

SB 1227 would create a decade-long exemption for many of San Francisco’s famous districts such as Union Square, Civic Center, the Financial District and South of Market Avenue. Projects would still need city/county approval, but once supervisors make a decision, it would be time to build.

Wiener argues that CEQA was intended to protect natural resources that are simply not part of Downtown San Francisco’s urban landscape.

“We are talking about the concrete jungle of downtown San Francisco, a completely dense urbanized area,” he said. “No natural resources.”

But the same could be said for downtown Sacramento. Or San Jose. Or Modesto. The list goes on and on.

Why just San Francisco? “I represent San Francisco,” Wiener said. “There can always be a conversation if other cities are interested in pursuing this.”

The problem is not confined just to San Francisco. Take, as an example, California’s housing crisis, a function of a state that has built too few homes, leading to skyrocketing rents and mortgages and an unprecedented exodus from the state. The respected Holland & Knight law firm, in a statewide analysis of CEQA litigation, found that about half of all housing construction in California in 2020 faced lawsuits via CEQA. Previous work had found that multi-family projects faced the highest rate of legal challenges.

SB 1227 should apply to all California downtowns for a decade. Every legislator representing a downtown could copycat the Wiener bill. Yes, it sounds silly, but so is the Democrat-controlled Legislature’s inability to agree on how to modernize environmental regulations in California.

So far, in Sacramento, there has been an “unwillingness of the Legislature and the governor and the advocacy community to agree on structural reform of CEQA,” Wiener said. “There has been talk of years and years and years of the benefits of reimagining CEQA, to make sure it is truly protecting the environment, that it is advancing climate action and that it is not being used to obstruct environmentally sustainable projects. It hasn’t happened.”

It’s smart politics for Wiener to advance SB 1227 as what is known inside the Capitol as a “district bill,” one that doesn’t have statewide implications that is intended to address a unique local matter. But this is no district issue. CEQA is a statewide problem. Solving it solely for San Francisco would smack of an elitism that the Democrats would be wise to avoid.

In a state that isn’t building enough housing and has urban cores that have yet to fully rebound from the COVID era, the least the government should do is to remove barriers to getting more housing built within existing downtown footprints.

Suspending CEQA for downtowns statewide for a decade makes all the sense in the world. What’s good for Wiener’s San Francisco is good for California.