UNDER CONSTRUCTION – DO NOT SHARE!
Defend California’ right to decide what’s built in our communities!
What’s the Background? For over 50 years,The California Environmental Quality Act – known as CEQA – has required state and local government agencies to inform decision makers and the public about the potential environmental impacts of proposed projects and mitigate them as much as possible. Now billionaires and business interests want to change that. Prop 45 was written by the California Chamber of Commerce and is bankrolled by Building a Better California – the same Silicon Valley billionaires, led by Sergey Brin, who are funding Props 41 and 42 to kill the Billionaire Tax.
What would Proposition 45 do?
- Create more binding time limits to do both CEQA and permitting reviews – including determining if a project application is complete and granting other approvals and permits – without regard to the complexity of the project, the impact of modifications, or the availability of agency personnel to conduct reviews.
- Provide a maximum of 365 business days to complete an EIR and limit the scope of EIRs regardless of complexity.
- Limit public comment periods to a maximum number of days vs. the current minimum.
- Allow an applicant to force a hearing and sue if an agency misses a deadline – thereby pressuring agencies to approve projects quickly rather than carefully.
- Require agencies and applicants to consult about projects only with California native tribes that have been formally recognized by the federal government rather than the wider range of tribes currently recognized in California.
- Give applicants options to extend timelines while prohibiting agencies from extending timelines.
- Change the court’s review process for CEQA lawsuits, increase the legal standard the courts use when reviewing challenges, and limit the documents that can be included in the administrative record.
- Require courts to resolve legal challenges within 270 days while limiting remedies for noncompliance with CEQA.
- Restrict the court’s ability to rescind project approval if it finds that an agency’s approval does not comply with CEQA.
| What They Want You to Believe | What Are the Facts? |
| It’s in our interest to expedite essential projects like housing, water systems, clean energy, medical facilities, schools, public safety infrastructure, broadband, and transportation projects. | Establishing an arbitrary schedule to review applications, conduct environmental reviews, and respond to legal challenges is in their interest, not ours. Reviewing the long-term impacts of complex projects on the environment, citizen safety, and surrounding communities takes time. These arbitrary deadlines can lead to costly errors that affect the quality of life of Californians. |
| Environmental reviews add unnecessary costs to complete projects. | Project costs are affected by multiple variables including inflation and other economic conditions. Compromising the health and safety of California’s citizens should never be considered a reasonable tradeoff to reduce cost. |
| Bureaucratic delays cause long wait times and increased costs to provide clean drinking water, safe and affordable health care, clean energy, housing, roads and bridges, wildfire prevention and resilience, safe public schools, and broadband and telecommunications infrastructure to connect underserved communities. | Prop 45 is a wolf in sheep’s clothing designed to speed up the process without regard to the consequences that affect all of us including our most vulnerable communities already grappling with environmental justice issues. Shortcuts in the process do not increase our chances of having clean air and water. In fact, they do just the opposite while potentially exacerbating the causes of wildfires and other environmental disasters. And taxpayers are left with paying the cost of any negative environmental impacts. |
| Expediting the review process will save money. | It will save them money, but California taxpayers will be left with a bill that could reach tens of millions of dollars – potentially exceeding $100 million annually – according to the state’s Legislative Analyst. |
Opposed by over 200 organizations including: the CA Democratic Party, Center for Biological Diversity, and Sierra Club California