The Governor of the California Democrat Gavin Newsom received a page from the Playbook of Donald Trump at the end of June by approving the precious and unnecessary environmental rules of his state.
The signature of Newsom has updated the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), a law from the 70s that forces developers and homeowners to undergo an absurd expensive and long environmental evaluation before a construction project is started. The update streamlines, among other things, the assessment process and releases huge parts of the State’s infrastructure construction from the old regulatory statutes.
Critics and the housing industry have long given the faulty policy to the long -term housing shortage of California, towering real estate prices and even the notorious homelessness problem of the state. As an economist in the Free Market, I welcome Newsom to suffocate some of the most difficult measures of his state but he must go much further to help a) to help his voters and strengthen his national moderate bonafids, because he probably walks for the president in 2028.
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For example, his signature left the “CEQA Abuse” noise untouched. This is a regulation with which trade unions and nimby (not in my back garden) activists can submit frivolous environmental procedures that delay projects and produce development costs. Environmental activists often pretend that these suits are about protecting animals and trees, but they are primarily a means to harm companies that do not like these radicals.
Gavin Newsom government made a good start to the housing rules, but environmental procedures are still a major problem. File: Newsom speaks at a press conference in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)
And the radicals do not just stop signs. They are in chosen offices and abuse their power because of their agenda instead of serving voters. That is what a court ruled in 2022 after two local governments had stopped “much needed homes” for decades. The court also said that CEQA was intended for limited use, and that the abuse kept progress within the State, especially with regard to relieving the problem of the low housing stock.
Those lawsuits have more influence on the rich business owners. They prevent young families from reaching the American dream by making the first houses too expensive to possess and maintain. That is another piece of low-hanging fruit for Newsom, because its CEQA reform focused on urban apartments and large infrastructure projects-off for millions of Californians, but also ignoring more structural reforms for the issue of expensive housing.
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Since one of the most important drivers of the population of California is the high cost of living, developers could build more single-family homes to encourage more people to rent or buy the type of house for which they want to flee or ultimately flee. Many former residents of California can even return from affordable states such as Texas, Arizona and Tennessee.
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Finally there is a trash can. This does not earn the same flashy headlines as environmental policy, crime or homelessness, but California has also struggled in this area.
The California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (Calrecycle) currently has a Byzantine system of the standard of greenhouse gas emissions and penalty schedules that press private landfills without processing the amount of waste.
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Not only this force California taxpayers to cover the higher costs of transporting their waste to distant landfills, but it has done a number of landfills bankrupt. At the end of last year, the Chiquita Canyon landfill announced that it would no longer accept waste, thereby eliminating a critical option for the waste removal of Angelenos.
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Newsom cannot solve the entire dumping problem itself, because many provinces use their own ridiculous landfill and environmental regulations. But his pulpit and influence on local and provincial legislators could have those entities set and create affordable waste removal services for all those new houses.
People vote with their feet and millions of people have voted against California in recent decades by moving to more affordable states. Governor Gavin Newsom must be praised to accept his party to accept reforms in the notoriously difficult environmental assessment laws of California. However, there is much more work to do to turn the Exodus in California … not to mention the increase of a presidential run from 2028.
