The California Environmental Quality Act

Sometimes a city can perform those environmental impact reports for sort of a whole region, for a whole portion of the city, and that can be sufficient for developers who want to build within that city. But here's the other problem with SEQUA is that even if a governmental entity does that, even if the State of California does that, outside people can sue to stop it. Outside people can sue to argue, no, no, no, no, no, that environmental

impact report is insufficient. This construction project is going to have all kinds of longer term, broader environmental harms that they're not going to harm. Me myself and I I the person filowing this lawsuit. I who could be anybody. I could be some random nonprofit funded by someone in Los Angeles, doesn't give a fig about anything in Fresno. Really, but I can come into Fresno. I can swoop in and stop massive construction and home building project at this

time where we desperately need more housing. We need more housing for lower income people, we need more housing for the middle class. We need more housing in general, and we don't have it. If there's lots of demand and low supply, what does that do to price? You all know what it does. Price goes up. And this is the insanity of sequa, the fact that almost anybody, including people who might not give a rat's rear end about

the environment. You could have a competing real estate developer swoop in to stop arrival from starting a project with some spurious, you know, environmental lawsuit. You could have, you know, someone who doesn't want lower income housing to be built in their community because they want to preserve the value of their homes. A sort of nimby attack. Not in

my backyard. So the reasons why people can stop construction projects in California using the environmental the California Environmental Quality Act, they could have nothing really to do with the environment. They could they could just use environmental impact as a smoke screen for their true intentions, their their actual desire to either limit competition, to stop lower income people from living in their communities, et cetera, et cetera. This is

happening in Fresno. There's been a big problem with the City of Fresno, their sort of environmental plan that has been sued and blocked, and a huge number of construction projects in the City of Fresno that are going to grind to a halt as a result. Here's the story on it by Edward Smith in GVY. This is a big deal. Fresno business and political leaders are getting a better sense of the impacts of an August sixth court

ruling against the city's environmental assessment. So the city does this environmental assessment, and this provides sort of the cover for people doing development projects within the City of Fresno, allowing them to build. This satisfies the requirements of California

environmental law that the city has done this environmental assessment. Okay, if we develop in this way, doing these kinds of developments along this kind of a zoning pattern, So this spot, you know, designated for residential, this spot designated for industrial, then you can build residential and industrial without doing your

own separate environmental impact report. A list of projects sent to city leaders shows construction was halted on hundreds of homes and several businesses, even though the City of Fresno list acquired by gv wire shows two dozen projects held up by the ruling. Experts and politicians say this is only an initial list. The full scope of businesses impacted is only beginning to be understood. So what happened on

August sixth? This court ruling came down due to a seque lawsuit filed by left wing nonprofit groups to stop all kinds of development in Fresno because Fresno's environmental assessment wasn't sufficient. They think that it's going to harm The environmental impact of Fresno's development plans is going to harm minorities, It's going to harm people with environmental harms. Let's keep

reading about it. The list contains three transportation projects that are the list of construction projects that are being halted. It contains three transportation projects, two storage facilities, an energy project and apartment complex, two industrial businesses and Amazon truck parking lot, nine residential tracts and an entire subdivision. But the California Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decision affects a

wide variety of projects looking to be built. That could mean car washes, to gas stations, and especially affordable housing, says Dick Poschal, principle at Land Development Services. It's essentially a moratorium. Poschel says the public has no idea of the real consequences. Presno City Council member Miguel Arias said the tracts and subdivisions on the list equal hundreds of houses. My understanding is that they are still trying to assess

what is the scope of the project's impacted. Arias said the city may also have to spend an additional three hundred thirty thousand dollars to do an environmental study for the Tower District Specific Plan. Presnan City Council Vice President Karbasi said the impact of the judicial ruling is widespread. The public has no idea of the real consequences. Carbasi said, half of the projects initially impacted are residential. In twenty twenty one, two community groups and so here's here's the

groups who sued. South Fresno Community Alliance and the Leadership Council for Justice and Accountability sued Fresno, saying its twenty nineteen Program Environmental Impact Report did not adequately address traffic, pollution and water problems. The Court of Appeals agreed, saying the PEIR the Program Environmental Impact Report was deficient. The city concluded economic and social considerations outweighed the remaining environmental

impacts of approval and implementation of the project. The appellate opinion stated they gave the city six specific items it needs to fix. Those fixes could take months or years, depending on who is being asked. The court iss rulings said the city should get conditional approval for the pei R by showing the court it has a plan to fix the shortcomings. We are evaluating the courts ruling with our council to determine the next steps, said so Suntai Arose,

the director of communications with the city. All Right, so basically this is a all right. So basically again, for any new construction, you've got to show what is the environmental impact. You have to provide some kind of environmental impact report. But for small business owners, doing an environmental study like that take is really expensive and it takes a really long time. So to save time and money businesses,

and this is from the gv wire article. To save time and money, businesses use or they tier off of a per from the city to understand what they have to do to ply with the state's landmark California Environmental Quality Act. Of the two dozen projects on the list, nine had industrial uses. More than half of the projects impacted were residential. One was an apartment complex. So they're all and they provide this huge, long list of all these different tracts that are impacted, all kinds of different

businesses and potential businesses that are being impacted. And this is what stinks. This is what stinks about California. Here we have this expensive, onerous, difficult regulation. You have our city government trying to make it possible to build these things. And these aren't just like you know, We're not just building for the sake of building. We need more housing. Here is Fresno struggling with the homelessness issue. We need

more housing for middle class people. We need more housing across the board to help us house people in desperate situations. We need more lower income housing. We need all of these projects. We need to bring more businesses into Fresno. We need this construction. We do an environmental impact report. There are always trade offs when you build anything. Yes, there will be some environmental impact from them, but this economic and the court said that, Oh, Fresno concluded that

the economic benefit just outweigh the environmental damage. Yeah, yes, but that's insufficient, it's unacceptable. Now you've got the city council members wondering, well, if the city is going to go through all this effort to put together an environmental impact plan for the city that other businesses can take all, then can then use that as their launching pad for making their own environmental impact reports. Well why should the

city bother? We're spending all this money. We now have to defend it in court, which is making us spend more and more money. So you got Arius is questioning the merits of why do we even have one of these environmental impact reports? Like if it's just if we're just gonna have to defend it and defend it and defend it in court, why not just insist that all these businesses do it themselves. Well again, yeah, you could do that, but then all these businesses would have to

shoulder that cost completely on their own. Like even just for the tower district, the city has a one million dollar tower district specific plan with its environmental impact report to update that it would cost an additional three hundred and thirty thousand dollars for an environmental review, and Analisa Perea, the city council member who represents tower districts, as saying, you know, that's a huge setback to have to spend an extra three hundred and thirty thousand dollars. This is

a total train wreck, it feels like to me. And here's the kind of the quote at the end of the piece by Mike Carbasi. I think it's unfortunate for Fresno's working families that some special interests have effectively created a moratorium on new housing and parks projects in the entire city of Fresno, all in the name of social justice. Carbasi said, there is nothing just about killing jobs and driving up housing prices and rents. We will be feeling

the repercussions for years to come. So one stupid lawsuit by some nonprofit organizations, by some bleeding heart left wing nonprofit organization is going to grind to a halt a whole city's efforts at new construction, at business construction, real estate construction, et cetera. It's going to drive up, as Carbasi says, it's going to drive up home prices. It's going to drive up the cost of rents. It's going to drive up the cost of housing. It's going to

limit new businesses coming into president. It's going to limit businesses being able to develop and to expand. But at least at least some nebulous environmental harm wasn't avoided or some environmental good was achieved. Right. This is the fundamental thing that I sort of hate about environmentalists is the refusal to acknowledge that human beings are actually a thing in the environment, a part of the environment, and that

their good is actually an environmental factor. To consider that human beings have to be kind of part of your ecology. We are not an unnatural blight upon the pristine landscape of California. We are actual, you know, living organisms who need to survive and need homes to survive. In that human life is actually something valuable. Human livelihoods are something valuable. But I think they profoundly do not care about that. They profoundly do not care about human life. They profoundly

do not care about human e college. Here they would rather see this whole city burn than let businesses thrive, let housing actually be built like that. And that's the thing. We have all these problems in the state with you know, whether it's lack of housing, homelessness, et cetera, and the Liberals who control our state just refuse to eliminate the chief obstacles in the way of fixing them. We could, Hey, there's a super majority in the state legislature. They're all

the same party as the governor. They could pass a law tomorrow to get rid of SIKUA, to allow new construction to go on without these ridiculous environmental impact reports that cost gazillions of dollars for businesses. They could stop this whole thing, but they don't. They don't want to because big money Democrat donors won't let them. When we return. Who are the kind of people who insist on these

environmental regulations, Well, it's all the Democrats' money powerbrokers. Next on the on Grouardi Show, this massive story in Fresno about this huge number of real estate development projects, business construction projects that are all grinding to a halt. Why the city of Fresno had its own sort of city wide environmental impact Plan for the impact of development in various quarters of the City of Fresno. A lot of businesses were being built based off of that environmental impact

plan that the City of Fresno had in place. These places that were zoned for housing, new housing was being developed, these places zoned for industrial industrial construction was taking place. All this construction was taking place pursuant to this environmental impact plan. The City of Fresno had an environmental Impact Plan that is on that they developed pursuant to the California Environmental Quality Act SEQUA, the bane of the pane

of California's economic existence. So by SEQUA, if you're doing new construction, you need to provide a very what can be a very elaborate, expensive, difficult to produce environmental impact report. If the city has a generalized one for a region of the city or for the city as a whole, then individual businesses doing new construction can sort of base

their environmental impact reports off of the cities. They can sort of tear off of it, t i eer off of it, and that helps businesses get started, helps businesses grow and develop and build, helps real estate to build. Well, it all gets shut down because another provision of SEQUA is that any random yahoo can sue anybody doing any construction and shut down the construction on the grounds that their environmental impact report is insufficient the mental impacts are

too harmful. So some left wing nonprofits sue the city of Fresno for its environmental assessment, and that grinds tons of projects, hundreds of new homes being constructed, grinds it all to a halt. Why is such a law on the books? California's environmental laws are just business and development and housing killers. Why do they stay on the books.

We're like the only state that has such an absurd kind of law like SEQUA, allowing again random nonprofit yahoos to swoop in and halt an entire city's real estate development with one lawsuit. How can you be a real state developer and actually try to develop, take the risk of building a massive project when you don't know when some jerk's going to swoop in and sue either the city to stop the whole city's construction or you to stop your construction. Maybe a rival real estate developer will

swoop in to sue you. Well, here's why it's not that Democrats fear environmental Waco activist groups themselves. It's not that the Democrats in Sacramento, the Democrats that control three quarters of the state legislates, three quarters of the seats in both houses of the state legislature, the Assembly with its eighty members and the state Senate with its forty members along with the governor. It's not like the Democrats in Sacramento actually fear the Sierra Club or Just Stop

Oil or climate defiance. The problem is that they fear the kinds of donors who back those entities. That's the problem here. So here's an a crazy environmental Waco group, Just stop Oil. You know those people who keep going to famous museums and throwing like orange paint or cans of tomato soup or whatever they're throwing on, you know, priceless works of art. And then they take off their jackets and they're wearing a T shirt that says just stop Oil, or they like, you know, glue their hand

onto a famous painting or something. Just stop Oil and climate defiance are arms I read this. There are arms of the Climate Emergency Fund, a nonprofit founded by Rory Kennedy, one of RFK Junior's sisters and II Le Getty. Yeah, like the Getty Museum, Getty's. Yeah, like the Getty family one of the most powerful money brokers in all of San Francisco area politics, the Getty family that funded Gavin

Newsom's entire career. These are like very like we think of groups like that as these extreme, crazy fringe Democrats. Like again, these are the people throwing kansa tomato soup on works of art. These are super mainstream Democrat donors, the Kennedy's, the Getty's. These are people who get box seats at the Democrat convention. You know, if it's in a basketball arena usually then yeah, they get, they get, you know, the the luxury suites. These are very mainstream

DNC Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, Gavin Newsom donors. And this is the problem. If someone proposed a bill to say, hey, we're gonna massively cut back the California Environmental Quality Act so that random nonprofits can't sue anymore to stop a whole you know, project changing the nature of these environmental assessments.

These are the people that Democrats would tick off, These ultra rich elites who've already got their house They've already got their yacht that somehow it's environmental impact that you know, doesn't have to get measured. They've already got their private jet that somehow doesn't count towards harming the environment. So SEQUA will never go away, even though everyone in the state knows what a train wreck it is, how terrible for all of the liberal lip service. So we need

new housing. Everyone knows that SEQUE was one of the biggest obstacles to new housing, including liberals, and liberals will not change SEQUA because they don't want to tick off liberal donors. That's it. When we return, I want to talk about California and optimism. That's next on the John Girardi Show. I want to talk about conservatism and optimism. It's Friday. I like to do little discursive essay audio essays on Friday where I'm sort of thinking about big

picture things. So here it goes. So I went to an event recently, and I don't want to say the speakers, but he does a lot of speaking on the conservative kind of talker circuit up and down California. I think it's someone who might wind up running for governor soon. And this person was talking about California and talking about all a lot of the problems in California, of which there are many. We just detailed a lot of those

problems with SEQUA. He talked about Proposition thirty six and Proposition thirty six for those who don't know looking at your ballots, for I think a lot of you started to get your sample ballots in the mail. Prop thirty six is the ballot initiative to amend the old Prop forty seven. Prop forty seven was the proposition that lessened a lot of criminal penalties for various kinds of offenses or reclassified a lot of different kinds offenses from felonies

to misdemeanors, et cetera. A lot of people credit Prop forty seven with increased problems with crime in California. Is very backed by a lot of liberals. Prop thirty six is designed to amend Prop forty seven and toughen a lot of its criminal penalty requirements. And there was polling that came out showed about seventy percent of California's were in favor of it, and Gavin Newsom was upset about that. I saw that number and I couldn't believe it. I

was wondering if I was still in California anymore. And this person was like, isn't that terrible that Gavin Newsom is rejecting the will of the people and the people of California realize the problems that they're facing. And throughout this gentleman's talk, he kept talking about, well, that's what the people of California want. The people of California are tired of this. And I kept sitting there thinking, are

they tired of liberal governance? Are they tired of the economic stagnation that's caused by all these different left wing policies? Are they tired of liberalism? I don't think there's any indication whatsoever that Californians are tired of these things. Okay, yeah, they seem to be getting a little tired of the most extreme version of liberal criminal justice. But let's not forget where did Prop forty seven come from. Prop forty seven became a law because a majority of Californians voted

for it. That's how any prop passes a majority vote. And this guy was even talking about, well, if our state, if our lawmakers won't listen to us and do what we want, then we got to take matters into our own hands, and that's why we're trying to pass Prop thirty six. We did take matters into our own hands. The legislature didn't pass Prop forty seven. We did, the voters of California did. Are undoing our own prior mistake. If you think Prop forty seven is mistaken, there will

clearly be some people who voted both for Prop. Forty

seven and for Prop thirty six. And maybe you can say people change their minds, Okay, fine, But there is in the conservative movement, and maybe it's an admirable thing, and it's a very Reaganite thing, this deep confidence in the American spirit, this deep confidence in individual Americans, that deep down to their core, individual Americans, that most of us are good, honest, hardworking, solid, right thinking people and if you're just straight with them, that they'll they'll do

the right thing. And I just don't know that that's true. I think the character of our people, the American people, the Californian people, is just a lot different than it was in nineteen eighty or nineteen eighty four. In nineteen eighty essentially all of the older adults were all of the older adult males who were able bodied were World

War two or Korea or Vietnam War veterans. Pretty much most of those people, most adult men, had had some brush with one of those wars, had had military service, had and especially within politics, had undergone some kind of military service, had put on the uniform of their country,

taken an oath to server. Not the case anymore, Okay, that the kind of bonds of kinship fostered by the military, the bonds of love of country, the kinds of values and virtues of a much more prominent public Christianity, weren't there anymore. Aren't there anymore? Today? We are a very different kind of people today than we were in nineteen

eighty or nineteen eighty four. And you know, again, I was listening to the speaker, and he kept talking about, well, you know, if the people of California will do what's right, and our state legislature is not going to listen to us, then well take it to the ballot initiative process. The ballot initiative process has been every bit as harmful to conservatism in many ways as the normal lawmaking process has been.

I mean, just off the top of my head, here are some things that the ballot initiative process, the wonderful results of going straight to the noble spirit of the people of California bypassing our horrible state legislature. Here's some of the idiotic things that the noble voting deep American fire burning deep in the hearts of every California. Here's some of the idiotic, dumb things that the people of

California have given us. The jungle primary, where we have a bunch of races all up and down the state, including some statewide races where because it's a jungle primary and open primary where you vote for Republicans or Democrats or anybody, rather than just a Republican primary just a Democrat primary, you have a bunch of races where there's no Republican in the race because the top two vote getters were Democrats, which has yielded us wonderful results, like

Senator Marie Alvarado Gill. Why because in a heavily Republican district, Republicans were so stupid that they ran four candidates who each got fifteen percent of the vote, and Democrats ran two candidates who each got twenty percent of the vote. So, in spite of the fact that Democrats are a forty to sixty minority within that state Senate district. Uh. Sorry, we elected a Democrat who has now belatedly tried to pretend that she is a Republican while she's facing re election.

Senator Marie Alvarado gill And has now promptly been hit with a sexual harassment lawsuit by her former chief of staff, saying that she pressured him into performing sexual acts with her in the backseat of a car that made him slip a couple discs in his back. All right, So the jungle primary system voted for by the people of California, our allegedly non partisan by which we mean very heavily

partisan and very heavily partisan for Democrats. Redistricting Commission, Our redistricting commission that even though Republicans are about sixty forty as far as the vote, Republicans are about eighty twenty as far as representation in the state Assembly, State Senate. Prop forty seven. Oh yes, the thing that we're so upset about with criminal justice was something voted upon by the people, the California High Speed Rail. Oh yeah, you know, the thing that we always make fun of on talk radio.

Most of you voted for it, and I mean you, Fresno County, most of you voted for it. The stupidest thing this, this statewide embarrassment of the worst managed infrastructure project in human history. Practically, this tens of billions of dollars sinkhole that we've spent decades working on with not one inch of workable track, that's going to cost twelve and a half a billion dollars just to go from

Merced to Bakersfield. Voted on by the people, enshrining a right to abortion into the state constitution with no limits on, no gestational age restrictions imposed on that right to abortion whatsoever. So have we just legalized ninth month, third trimester abortions? Possibly, quite possibly. In two thousand and four, we had a ballot initiative giving billions of dollars for embryo destructive stem

cell research. It yielded absolutely zero good results. And then in twenty eighteen we reupped for another five billion bond measures. We passed bond measures all the time. The most idiotic government funding scheme imaginable, where for every one billion dollar in a bond, which is a loan to a state or a municipal entity, for every one billion dollar of bond funding you approved for the state. You the taxpayer, have to pay back almost two billion. How many idiotic

things do we vote for? You want to complain about Gavin Newsom, he won all three of his elections sixty to forty. You want to complain about Kamala Harris, she won all of her elections. I don't think the people of California are tired of any of this. I think they are so dumb, they are so brainwashed that they will just they'll never vote for or at very least there's this. I just don't have optimism right now for California. I'm sorry if that makes me a killjoy, but I

feel like cal Republicans, you know what. I'm gonna take this to the next segment, the desire for a quick fix and why it's unrealistic. There's no quick fix for our political problems right now. That's next on the John Girardi Show. I'm talking about my lack of California optimism. I think there are a lot of conservatives who are sort of trying. There's certain kinds of California conservatives. Anyway, we're trying to sell you on the notion of.

voting for the same terrible politicians and policies. And I think there's this conservative instinct to want a quick fix. You'll see this a lot with kind of the Trump folks who will be like, oh, well, look, there was a Trump rally in Orange County because Donald Trump went to Orange County to hit up big time Republican donors for money, because Orange County is kind of the seat of Republican money and fundraising nationwide. Look at all these

Republicans coming out for Trump. We're gonna turn California red. And then you know, the Democrat running for the Senate, or the Democrat running for whatever wins by sixty to

forty and Trump loses sixty to forty. Whatever you might think, whatever optimism you might have for or whatever plan you might want to put together for California, changing, understand that you're going up against a public education system that it's spitting out generation after generation after generation after generation of kids who are taught liberal values, liberal morals, liberal ethics.

Understand that you are going up against powerful money invested interests that are so well entrenched that's almost impossible to unentrench them. A redistricting plan that is entrenched in favor of the liberals, primary systems entrenched in favor of the liberals. It's not something that's going to happen overnight. If there's going to be some conservative revolution in California, it's going to take at least twenty years, and it's not going

to happen this election cycle. That'll do it. John Girardi Show, We'll see you next time on Power Talk