We can’t keep stalling out on critical infrastructure projects!
On May 19th, 2023, Governor Gavin Newsom presented an infrastructure package to a group of state legislators and signed an executive order aimed at speeding up critical infrastructure projects. The package includes 11 California Environmental Quality Act, often referred to as CEQA, reform bills. The state legislators have until June 15th, 2023, to approve this budget request.
Governor Newsom’s proposal includes $180 billion in investments over the next decade to streamline and accelerate construction projects across the state while also creating hundreds of thousands of good-paying jobs. The Governor’s proposal also makes it easier to build future projects with the following goals:
- Streamline environmental planning by coordinating among different local, state, and federal agencies
- Reduce the current two-to-five-year CEQA lawsuit duration schedule to 9 months
- Provide more funding to agencies to speed up reviews
- Reduce required paperwork for reviews
- Exempt specific projects from environmental reviews
Governor Newsom wants to make it easier for California to build and rebuild roads, transit, dams, bridges, and more. The Governor said himself, “The only way to achieve California’s world-leading climate goals is to build, build, build – faster. This proposal is the most ambitious effort to cut red tape and streamline regulations in half a century. It’s time to make the most out of taxpayer dollars and deliver results while creating hundreds of thousands of good jobs.”
Rebuild, along with a large coalition of stakeholders, has engaged on several different platforms and agrees that these CEQA reforms need to be in place.
Click here to read a CalMatters article that discusses the proposal further in-depth as well as answers the question, ‘What about housing?’ in addition to several others.
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