This Is How Fresno Enviromental Groups Stop Development

for some altruistic liberal problem that they perceive. Oh, it's so terrible that we need to defund the police and all the historic oppression of police on communities of color, and all we need to get police out of the president Unified school district, get them out of their contract. But but instead, you know what we could do, And then the solution is always something that involves the city giving a contract to that nonprofit organization. It's not some

disinterested entity. They are trying to get a big fact contract.

They're trying to get money. And this happens a lot that there are a lot of different initiatives where it's under the guise of, oh, some altruistic thing, and then all of a sudden, some group gets some big contract, another sort of way in which these outside nonprofit groups and and it's often they're these nonprofit groups that sort of self anoint They anoint themselves as like the representatives of the poor and downtrodden of Presdent, even though no

one's ever elected them. And one of the big things they've been doing are filing different kinds of lawsuits against different kinds of entities and against the city. They've filed lawsuits against community hospitals for what they alleged to be the illegal shifting of dollars from you know, medical dollars from their downtown Fresno location to their Clovis location, which

I think is kind of a silly lawsuit. Downtown, you know, community is able to move dollars as they wish, and the medical funding that community receives is barely covering the cost of services. When a hospital gets money from medical, what that means is they provide a healthcare service to a person that person has medical Medical reimburses them for that service. And your medical reimbursement as opposed to a private insurance reimbursement, you don't really make much of any

money at all off of medical. Medical is you know, medical may not even be covering the cost. So the idea, oh, they got a ton million dollars. If you hear some of the whole community hospital gets. I'm just going to use some big round number. I'm not sure what the actual scale is. Community gets fifty million dollars in medical funding, Well, it probably costs community about forty nine million dollars to provide that care, right, And it's not like they're making

out like a bandit or something. Heck, it might even cost fifty one million dollars for community to provide that care. So it's not like communities making a ton of money off medical. But all these lawsuits that are allegedly in the service of the poor and downtrodden of Fresno, I think several of them wind up directly harming the people

they purport to help. And this is the case with Leadership Council for Justice and Accountability, which has filed this massive lawsuit against the City of Fresno for its kind of environmental development plan. They use this California law called SEQUA, the California Environmental Quality Act. So what was going on with SEQUA. One of the things you have to do is have some kind When you are a builder and you are building a new project, you have to provide

some kind of environmental impact report. This is a requirement of sequa what is going to be the environmental impact of you building something, whether it's a housing development, a new shopping center, an industrial thing, whatever it is. To do your own environmental impact study is often extremely onerous and expensive, and it's yet another way that California makes it more expensive, more difficult to build and invest and develop businesses. The kind of report you have to put

together is often quite elaborate. So what the City of Fresno did to try to help businesses is they put together their own kind of city wide environmental impact study and plan for Fresno's development. With that, new businesses that want to invest and develop and build were to they're able to use the city's plan and then kind of use that as a springboard for their own particular aspects of what they need to provide as far as the

environmental impact of this project. So the city is trying to do what it can to help businesses invest in the city. It's a smart move, it's a good thing to do. Lots of development projects are in progress based on the city's environmental place. However, the Leadership Council for Justice and Accountability, this activist nonprofit organization, sued the city under sequel for its environmental development plan and got a judge to rule that their environmental development plan is inadequate.

This is bringing tons of development projects all over the city to a grinding halt. Housing industry jobs Now. There's a story in GV wire about this organization and what it does and how it's funded. Leadership Council for Justice and Accountability. In a twenty twenty three video celebrating its tenth anniversary, the Leadership Council for Justice and Accountability spoke about the need to protect neglected communities. This is a

by Edward Smith and GV Wire. There's a really deeply entrenched culture of decision making that absolutely does not believe that advocates that residents, that communities of color deserve a seat at the table, get to be at the table. So we had to start to enter those spaces and say no, we're going to be at the table. We deserve to be at the table. We're not taking no for an answer, said Ashley Werner, the former directing attorney

for the group. A year later, Fresno City Hall encountered a problem and hadn't recently faced a forty seven million dollar budget deficit. Some so forty seven million dollar budget deficit this year. Some Fresno leaders blamed environmental policies more restrictive than those in other communities. Simply put, they said Fresno's hands are tied when it comes to growing jobs and developing new projects. City council member Mike Carbasi described Fresno as a city sinking in the muck and mire

of a philosophical crossroads. Carbasi says, the problem is, for years, while I'll be frank, the private sector has been very quiet. Carbasi said at a September twenty nine City council meeting. We've allowed outside dollars and outside interests to try to turn us into an economy where it's expected all these services and all these public benefits to people, like clean parks and roads that are in perfect condition as they should be, without having the ability to invest dollars to

have jobs created here. Now, for the contrary view comes from Miguel Arias, a much more liberal member of the city council, who says we got here because they were shoving one million square foot warehouse distribution centers down the throat of South Fresno residents who didn't have legal representation at that time, and now they do. Arius said they. I guess Leadership Council for Justice and Accountability. They took the city to court as they have a right to do,

and they won. I in case you were in case you were wondering, I am leaning more towards CARBASI here the I think that the alleged I deeply, deeply suspect that the alleged environmental adverse environmental impacts of having a one million dollar warehouse one million square foot warehouse distribution center in South Presno does not offset the number of jobs it would have created, the amount of economic activity it would have generated for Fresno, the beneficial impact that

would have had on the city on for example, the city budget, development moratorium, or long needed fix. Leadership Council in the South Presno Community Alliance sued the city in twenty twenty one for its program Environmental Impact Report, saying it did not properly address air quality, water availability, and traffic management. Builders rely on these documents to build in

compliance with SIKUA, the state's landmark environmental law. As I was explaining California's fifth the Pellate Court sided with the groups on August sixth, dozens of prospective business owners were told to halt their projects, including hundreds of new homes. The judge gave the city six points to fix before any projects can cite the document and move forward. It's essentially a moratorium, said Dirk Pochal, the principle at Land

Development Services, a consulting company for business owners. But Fresno's employers face more than just that decision. Also in dispute an ongoing truck route study, decisions about land use in Fresno, and a lawsuit against a proposed Highway ninety nine interchange improvement. Behind those lawsuits and environmental policies are community groups with substantial outside funding. It then goes on to talk about Leadership Council for Leadership, Council for Justice and Accountability, how

they are funded. So it's getting funded in part by the Central Valley Community Foundation, who gave them a grant, which is led by none other than former Mayor Ashley Sweeringen, the great crusader for the high speed rail, flip flopper on Conservatives' conservative issues like gay marriage. Extraordinaire unsuccessful candidate for what did she run for? She ran for some state office and lost. So here we have a local San Joaquin Valley entity led by a former allegedly Republican

mayor giving them money. And then on top of that, though, they're getting lots of money from outside groups. The San Francisco based Tides Center, for example. The Tides Center has over one point one billion dollars in assets and they've given quite a bit to all kinds of crazy left wing nonprofits, including Leadership Council, Leadership Council for Justice and Accountability here in Fresno. And basically the Tide Center is it. It's called a dark money entity. I sort of hate

that term. I think it's kind of silly. But basically the idea is donors give to them, and then they give to other nonprofits to support other things, So then the money becomes sort of anonymized. When donors give to nonprofit entities, their donations are not publicly reported. The IRS keeps track of top donors, but it's not publicly reported. Could get leaked. But then if you give to one entity and then that other entity gives again, well you

can anonymize things. Then all you know is that the Tides Foundation gave to you, but you don't know that you know, Bob, you know, Nelson Rockefeller or Bob Q. Smith gave to you so in addition to some local funding, but a lot of their funding is coming from outside. This is outside liberals wanting to impose their environmental priorities on the city of Fresno in ways that obviously damage us economically and have completely hindered us in all kinds

of ways. We've also got this lawsuit going on about truck routes in the city of Fresno, all these different ways that we are being hindered from economic development because of these various kinds of environmental lawsuits and these environmentalist activist groups that are able to sue the city and stop all this stuff, just stop it cold in its tracks, Okay, And it's this. This is the kind of stuff that

we're talking about. This is the kind of stuff we mean when we say that businesses don't want to invest in California. All Right, Fresno, relatively speaking, this isn't the Bay Area. This isn't It's not as liberal as the Bay Area. It's not as liberal as Sacramento, it's not as liberal as Los Angeles. Fresno is still a pretty

conservative place. Our city council is hardly filled with right wingers or anything, but it's a much more moderate city government than you're going to find anywhere in the Bay Area. And the idea that even here we can't create a business environment that is friendly for investment, to help promote job creation for poor people, for lower income people in South Fresno, that we can't do those things be cause a nonprofit organization thinks that the environmental impact is to adverse.

And I'm willing to look at what the environmental impact is, but I feel like it's always on a certain side. There's so much concern about environmental impact and no concern about like, hey, do you see that this community has like twenty five percent of its residents living under the federal poverty line. You see how much unemployment there is.

These people need job. We need to create jobs, stable jobs that maybe more jobs that aren't necessarily tied to the agriculture, you know, the fluctuations of the agriculture industry. Like this is all this. This is a very poor region of the country, and we have these people so concerned about air quality, which everyone suffers from bad air quality. People who live in nice neighborhoods of Clovis and South Presno. All everyone suffers from bad air quality, and it has

to do with living in a bowl. It has to do with the fact that it's an egg based economy. But the idea that we're going to completely shut down the ability of the city to develop jobs and industry, like, I don't see how businesses are going to stay here. I don't see how the community's going to grow. You want city services to be really nice. You're mad about the budget deficit, Okay, we got to invest more. We

have to create jobs when we return. I want to talk about the sort of the understated, underappreciated problem, which is California's bizarre rules about who is allowed to sue. Next on the John Girardi Show, a great piece in GV Wire written by Edward Smith, one of their writers, there about how Leadership Council for Leadership, Council for Justice and Accountability, this left wing nonprofit in Fresno has basically shut down almost all housing development, industrial development within the

city of Fresno through its lawsuits. It's hindering development of truck routes, it's hindering construction of homes, hindering construction of industrial sites and business development. The one thing though, I just want to add, I just want to add to his assessment, which I think is really good, is how California's law is regarding standing. Get us into this mess? So what do I mean by standing? Standing? In the context of law, standing is all right, why are you

here in this courtroom? Do you have the right to bring a lawsuit for the claim in what you're bringing it? Do you you yourself? Are you implicated in this? The example I always give is, you know my buddy Jonathan Keller. Okay, if someone crashes a car into Jonathan Keller's house, I don't have the right to sue the guy who crashed into Jonathan's house. I'll be very upset for my friend.

I'll feel really bad for him. But if I sue the guy and I say, hey, I'm assuing that you for negligence, claim negligence for crashing into my friend Jonathan Keller's house, the judge would look at me and say, why are you here? Why are you suing? I said, well, Judge, I'm really upset for my friend. And he's said, well, no, you don't have a standing. So standing is basically the doctrine that shows you have some kind of nexus, some

kind of connection to the claim that you're making. Usually to have standing, you need to show that you've suffered some kind of cognizable harm, economic harm, physical harm, et cetera. You've lost money, you've you've had your rights curtailed in some way, et cetera. With environmental claims that all you know, so and so is doing something that's harming the environment, that was always a little more dicey. Who exactly is allowed to sue on behalf of the birds in the

trees and the fishies and so. California decided for that thorny problem to say anyone, basically anyone when California wrote SIQUEA, the California Environmental Quality Act, which is the basis for all these lawsuits that Leadership Council for Justice and Accountability has used to kind of more or less put a

total moratorium on development in the city of Fresno. Basically with SEQUA, they said, anybody can sue under SEQUA to stop a construction project they don't like, anyone can sue under SEQUA to say that such and such as not living up to its environmental requirements. And SEQUA has been used to stop construction projects, development projects by all kinds of people who don't actually really give a damn about

the environment. Competing real estate developers have stopped their competitors on the ground's law or you're not following environmental law. People who don't want multi unit housing near them because they think it's going to lower the value of their own homes than not in my backyard crowd have used it to stop the development of more housing, which we desperately need in California. Lots of different people have used SEQUA for reasons that it don't have anything to do

with the environment. Why, because everyone has standing. The sequel was written to say pretty much anyone can bring a claim under sequel without having to show that you have suffered some you have or will suffer some kind of tangible direct harm, an economic harm, a personal harm, whatever.

So that's a huge problem with all of this. You have these nonprofit groups that are able to pool enough money from donors, donors giving tax deductible money for a lawsuit that you know, lawsuits cost a lot of money, but they cost less if they're funded with a tax

deductible donation. So they file this tax deductible lawsuit basically to accomplish the kind of public policy goals that these liberals like, that, these ultra rich liberals who at their cocktail parties want to talk about how wonderful they are for saving the environment. So that is a major problem in all of this, the ways in which California has so massively expanded standing. And it leads me to this. For all the talk, there's tons of talking California about nimbism,

Nimbism is a problem. Local government's doing too much to stop multi unit dwelling housing from being built. Oh, that's so bad. The problem in California is not nimbiism. Is that a contributing factor maybe, But you know what happens in red states. Red states just don't have this kind of environmental red tape. They just let you build. They

let you build, and builders want to build. And builders can build lower income housing and middle class housing and housing for rich people, and they can make money off all of it because it's not so crazy expensive to build because you don't have the layers and layers and layers of environmental regulation. They are just allowed to build. And so they build and they build, and they build and they build and they don't have a housing shortage.

Why because they're just allowed to build and you don't have to worry about nimbiism or whatever because builders can build. So you have all these red states that just don't have the homeless problems that we have in California. They don't have the housing shortage problems that we have in California. Here we are in California's just scratching. Why why, Oh it's rich nimbi's who live in fancy communities in Beverly Hills not wanting lower income housing. That's not the reason why.

The reason why is because builders don't want to build here. And it's completely understandable when some nonprofit jerks with blue hair can fly in from the outside and say, well, act selling your environmental impact study is not compliance. We have California at laws, and some stupid judge appointed by Jerry Brown will be like, oh, yes, thank God's true. That's why we don't have enough housing. It's not rocket science. Democrats all know it, and they refuse to reform SEQUA

because their donors like it. When we return more problems that everyone understands and no one wants to fix. Next on the John Girardi Show. I get more and more depressed about California politics the more I think about it. And one of the various ways in which I get depressed about California politics is something I touched on at

the very end of the last segment. You know, I'm talking about SEQUA, and I'm talking about how it is obviously the thing that makes building, especially building housing difficult, damn near impossible in California. There are layers and layers and layers and layers of environmental regulation that just make it more and more and more difficult, more and more

and more expensive to build. It's not rocket science. If a real estate developer has a requirement every house has to start out with its own solar panel on the top, that was a requirement that we have. If every house has to be built with a solar panel on the top of it, well, that's an extra I don't know what it is. Let's say an extra fifteen thousand dollars costs. That's going to add fifteen thousand dollars to the cost

of every new home. If every real estate developer has to factor in the possibility that their whole project could grind to a halt with one lawsuit from one green haired environmental millennial environmental lawyer from a nonprofit organization saying that you know your environmental impact report under SEQUA isn't sufficient. One lawsuit like that can grind your entire you know, forty million dollar housing project to a halt. Well, you factor that into the cost. You have to factor that in.

That's a risk. It's either a risk you have to be willing to run, or you have to plan on the idea of it being held up for litigation. If a construction project like that is held up, that costs you money. We all know why it's hard to build in California. Everyone understands why. Everyone understands the problem. Democrats understand the problem. Republicans understand the problem. We can look at a red state and we can see they don't

have SEQUA. Their builders can just build. And then their builders do build, and their housing prices are a lot lower, and they don't have as many homeless people. They just don't have the problems that we have. And yet the obvious solutions to this overturning SEQUA, you know, outlaw SEQUA, passing a law to say we're not gonna abide by sequa's requirements anymore. We're going to massively restrict who has

standing to sue. We're gonna get rid of all these different onerous requirements for all the different kinds of environmental impacts soy or massively restrict the kinds of projects that are subject to it, or blah blah blah blahlah blah blah blah blah. If we just got rid of these things, these things that Red States don't have, then it would be massively more realistic for builders to build. But we

don't do it. We don't do it because why well, big time liberal Democrat donors back these crazy environmental groups. They like them, and Democrats are just never going to cross those super wealthy donors. That's the thing. Environmental advocacy groups like the Sierra Clubs, et cetera. It's not that they are so powerful in and of themselves. Okay, they give money to politicians here and there. It's but you know, it's not like that much money. It's not that they

are powerful in themselves. They are powerful because of the massive donors who are behind them. Democrats don't want to tick those people off. That's why they are powerful. It's the same thing with gas and energy energy prices. Everyone from Gavin Newsome on down, everyone understands why gas is expensive in California. No one is ignorant of why. We all understand why is gas more expensive in Califorifornia then in Hawaii, which which makes no sense whatsoever. Everyone understands why.

It's because California insists upon its own unique blend of gas to meet its own unique emission standards. This creates basically a gas island for California. We are in isolated market for gas. Gas companies, if they want to sell in California have to set up separate refinery systems, refineries,

et cetera. Just to sell to the California market. They have to set up this whole different system separate from the gas that they sell at the pomp in Texas and Oklahoma and you know, Oregon and all the rest of the New York York and North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, all the rest of the country. So we are on this little gas island where we are dependent on our own refineries, on the gas company's goodwill to have specific refineries just for us and the gas companies they want

the California market. So they go along, but we're not making it easy for them. We make it more and more onerous and difficult. That's why California gas is expensive. That plus fifty cents on every dollar is gasoline tax. We have some of the highest gas taxes in the country. So it's the combo of those two things. That's why gas is expensive here. It's not rocket science. Everyone knows it. Everyone understands the ways to fix it. Even if you look. If you say, look, our gas taxes help us pay

for our roads. It's a source of revenue that's really important for paying for roads. Okay, fine, do you want to keep the gas taxes, that's great, but change the regulations around the kind of gas we can sell here. Just take the environmental hit. Look, the electrical car revolution is coming. We are having fewer Whether the Biden plan of fifty percent of all vehicles will be electric vehicles by twenty whatever or you know, some slower plant, we

are eventually going to get there with electric vehicles. The market is going to do this. Okay, this is clearly the direction in the country is going in. Given that that's the case, maybe ease up on the requirement that gas has to meet the specific California mission standards. Get us out of this gas island we're in where the only gas we can use of the pump in California, we have this special, our special blend that's different from again Arizona, Nevada and Oregon and Washington and in Texas

and New Mexico and all the other states. Let us just use the same gas all the rest of the country uses. It'll make it a lot cheaper. Overnight, It'll make it cheaper. Maybe not overnight. I'm guessing there's probably more complication than I don't realize, given that we have the existing refinery system. Blah blah blah blah blah. Nonetheless,

that is the thing that makes gas more expensive. Everyone knows it, and yet Gavin Newsom can blithely go up call for a special session of the legislature just to screw things up more and yell that, oh, it's because of gas. Companies are price gouging us. That's why gas is expensive. Notice, how when when you know, all of a sudden, during a Democrat administration, there's widespread national inflation for all kinds of products and services. The only thing

Democrats can say Oh, it's price gouging. It's super The reason your food is expensive is because evil grocery stores are price gouging you. Not like this is a reaction to economic realities. The value of the dollar is less. We have to charge more. All of our expenses have gone up. We have to charge more. It's incredible to me. How, Oh, it's always price gouging is always the move the Democrats go to. When you know, no one price gouges when

a Republican is president. It's just the Republican has ruined the country, and blah blah blah blah blah. It's and it's amazing how gas companies weren't price gouging us before, but now they are that they've all of a sudden become more greedy. So Newsom passes with the with the gas companies telling him we will remove investment in California. If you do this, you will make gas more expensive by passing this legislation. Don't do this, you may make

it difficult for us to invest here. Stop passing these laws. And Newsom says, no, we're going to pass this law anyway. So Newsom passes this law. Thing it's a problem that gas prices spike in the summer, you know, because demand goes up, and therefore what needs to happen is oil refineries need to keep a supply and artificially high supply of gas on hand at all times. Gas that they're just holding on to, that's not going to pumps, just

holding on to for a rainy day. Well, as the gas companies say, to do that requires costs, So you're just going to add more costs on that. We you know, we have to maintain profit margins for investment, et cetera. So uh, we'll just that's just going to lead to higher costs all year round. But Newsom says, well, who cares?

And that's the depressing thing. Everyone he knows why gas prices are high, and the party that has sixty percent of our votes and eighty percent of the legislature just lives in a la la land, pretending like they don't understand why, and refuses to do the policy things that would fix it. Everyone understands the problem. Everyone, everyone understands what the problem is. No one wants to fix it because they're afraid of the Democrat donor class that really

likes those things. That's it. That's the beginning, middle, and end of it. And it makes me wonder why groups like Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, whatever, how do we I mean, I'm very glad we've got the Ballid Initiative Prop thirty six for beefing up criminal punishment and reforming you know, Prop forty seven. I mean, I think that's good. But I wonder where groups like Howard Jarvis taxpay Associated why not use the Ballad initiative process to try to ban,

to try to abolish or massively reform sequa. Why not why not try to use the Ballid Initiative process to say, California's emission standards for gasoline are going to be the same as the rest of the country. We could fix these things. I think they would be popular, But no, we waste money on useless recalls of Gavin Newsom when we return. The real reason I'm hoping Kamala loses not just because she'd be a bad president, just because of

the finger pointing next on the John Girardi Show. Granted, there are a lot of reasons to hope that Kamala Harris loses the election, and a lot of reasons to expect that she will in fact, lose it. The reason, one of the reasons though, that I really want her to lose is first to remember this reality that all these people hate each other. So in the four nodes of power, Obama, Biden, Hillary, Harris, Harris hates Biden for

being dumb. Biden hates Harris for being dumb. Biden hates Obama for not wanting him to run in twenty sixteen. Obama hates Biden for being dumb. Obama hates Hillary, and Hillary hate Obama for twenty sixteen and never trusting each other. Does Hillary hate Biden? Not sure? Does Hillary hate Kamala? Not sure? Not sure either way, it's a bit of snakes. These people hate each other more. And the hatred levels of those people that I just described, it's more than

you've ever hated anybody. Probably, Oh, they hate each other. And if Kamala loses, oh my gosh, the hatred and finger pointing from Biden can Obama. Because Obama was briefly like, I think there should be a contested primary, and then he gave up on that idea when it was clear Harris was getting it. The finger pointing and recriminations are just going to be a delight to watch pop some popcorn for that. That'll do it. John Girardi Show, See you next time on Power Talk