BILL ANALYSIS �
AB 380
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Date of Hearing: April 1, 2013
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES
Wesley Chesbro, Chair
AB 380 (Dickinson) - As Introduced: February 14, 2013
SUBJECT : California Environmental Quality Act: notice
requirements
SUMMARY : Establishes uniform procedures for electronic posting
of CEQA documents by county clerks and the Office of Planning
and Research (OPR).
EXISTING LAW :
1)Requires a lead agency with the principal responsibility for
carrying out or approving a proposed project to prepare a
negative declaration, mitigated negative declaration, or
environmental impact report (EIR) for its action, unless the
project is exempt from CEQA.
2)Requires a lead agency to make these and other documents,
including notices, comments, and responses, available to the
public, including specified individuals and agencies, such as
residents adjacent to a proposed project, and the OPR's State
Clearinghouse for projects reviewed by state agencies, and
provide documents directly to individuals upon request.
3)Requires a lead state agency to file a notice of determination
(NOD) with OPR and requires a lead local agency to file a NOD
with the appropriate county clerk(s). A lead agency is
authorized, but not required in most cases, to file a notice
of exemption (NOE) if it determines that a project is exempt
from CEQA.
4)Authorizes judicial review of CEQA actions taken by public
agencies, following the agency's decision to carry out or
approve the project, subject to statutes of limitations
ranging from 30 to 180 days:
a) Challenges alleging improper determination that a
project may have a significant effect on the environment,
or alleging an EIR doesn't comply with CEQA, must be filed
within 30 days of filing of the NOD.
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b) Challenges alleging improper determination that a
project is exempt from CEQA must be filed within 35 days of
filing of the NOE, or 180 days if no notice has been filed.
c) Challenges alleging an agency has failed to determine
whether a project has a significant effect on the
environment must be filed within 180 days.
5)Requires a lead agency to call at least one scoping meeting
for a proposed project of statewide, regional, or area-wide
significance. Notice of at least one scoping meeting must be
provided to specified agencies, as well as any organization or
individual who has filed a written request for notice.
AB 380
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THIS BILL :
1)Requires specified CEQA notices to be filed with OPR, and
posted by OPR on a public, online database, including:
a) Decisions made by agencies with a certified regulatory
program, which are currently required to be filed with, and
posted by, the Natural Resources Agency.
b) Scoping meetings.
c) Preparation of an EIR or negative declaration.
d) Completion of an EIR.
e) Approval of a project.
2)Requires notices of project approval by a state agency,
currently required to be filed with OPR, to also be filed with
the county clerk of each county in which the project will be
located.
3)Requires notices of project approval by a local agency,
currently required to be filed with the county clerk of each
county in which the project will be located, to also be filed
with OPR.
4)Requires notices of EIR completion, currently required to be
filed with OPR by a state or local public agency, to also be
filed with the county clerk of each county in which the
project will be located.
5)Requires notices currently required to be posted for 30 days
(or 20 days in the case of a notice of negative declaration)
to be posted for at least 30 days or the full duration of any
statutory time period, whichever is longer.
6)Requires that the time limits for CEQA litigation, which
commence on the date of notice filing, be based on the latest
posting date between a county clerk and OPR.
7)Requires county clerks and OPR to post notices within one
business day and date stamp the notices.
8)Authorizes OPR to collect a fee of up to $10 per notice from
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agencies filing the notice.
9)Authorizes an agency in turn to recover its filing costs from
the applicant.
10)Clarifies that scoping meetings, required to be held by lead
agencies for certain highway projects and other projects or
statewide, regional, or areawide significance, are public.
FISCAL EFFECT : Unknown
COMMENTS :
1)Background. Public notice of lead agency actions and access
to documents is essential to CEQA's public participation
purpose. However, CEQA's various notice requirements have
been enacted over the years in a piecemeal fashion. Many of
the procedures predate common use of the Internet and current
expectations about electronic access to information. Local
governments' use of electronic document posting varies widely
and there are no uniform requirements. The state has
gradually incorporated the use of electronic information in
the CEQA process. For example, since 2003, the State
Clearinghouse within OPR, which coordinates the state-level
review of environmental documents pursuant to CEQA, has
distributed EIRs in CD-ROM format for state agency review and
comment. The Clearinghouse now offers most other
environmental documents in electronic format. The
Clearinghouse also maintain CEQAnet, an online searchable
database of CEQA documents. The CEQAnet database provides
summaries of EIRs, negative declarations, and other types of
CEQA documents. The summaries include the project title,
project location, lead agency name, contact information, and
project description. At this time, CEQAnet does not provide
the full text of any environmental documents. Because not all
environmental documents are submitted to the State
Clearinghouse, CEQAnet is not a comprehensive database of all
CEQA documents in California. OPR is the process of updating
CEQAnet, which may improve its functionality and increase the
scope of CEQA documents available. This bill would establish
uniform procedures for lead agency CEQA documents, including
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requiring all lead agency documents to be filed with and
posted online by OPR.
2)Author's statement:
Various time periods for public, trustee, and responsible
agency participation under CEQA are triggered by the
issuance of a variety of notices required by statue. Under
current law, where and how these various notices are made
public (if at all) substantially differs depending on the
type of notice, the nature of the project, and whether the
lead agency is a state agency or a local agency.
State agencies post their notices electronically at OPR's
CEQAnet website, while local agencies post their notices
with the local county clerk-recorder's office. For some
notices, there is no requirement of public posting at all,
or mandatory time frame for how soon after issuance these
notices must be posted, or mandate that the date they are
publicly posted is clearly and actually recorded, yet, in
most cases, the postings trigger short periods of time for
public or interested agency response. Additionally, there
is no clarity on what procedures CEQA's posting
requirements require of local county-clerk's offices,
subjecting these provisions to abuse.
3)Local government concerns. In opposition, the Rural County
Representatives of California contends "(t)he provisions of AB
380 would complicate the administrative process and increase
the risk of actionable procedural violations as well as adding
to the cost of CEQA. Most troublesome is the lack of
certainty caused by the 'whichever is later' provision
relating to posting. This requirement would complicate
planning efforts relating to the start and end of CEQA
timelines."
4)Double referral. This bill is double-referred to the Assembly
Local Government Committee.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
Californians Against Waste
California Bicycle Coalition
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California Coastkeeper Alliance
California Healthy Communities Network
California Native Plant Society
Center for Biological Diversity
Center on Race, Poverty, and the Environment
Coastal Conservation Network
Coastal Environmental Rights Foundation
Communities for a Better Environment
Endangered Habitats League
Environment California
Environmental Defense Center
Escondido Creek Conservancy
Friends of Palm Springs Mountains
Laguna Greenbelt, Inc.
Los Padres ForestWatch
National Parks Conservation Association
Nichols-Berman Environmental Planning
North County Watch
Planning and Conservation League
Rural Residents and Friends
Santa Clarity Organization for Planning and the Environment
Sierra Club California
Surfrider Foundation
The River Project
Unitarian Universalist Legislative Ministry CA Action Network
Opposition
Association of California Water Agencies
Rural County Representatives of California
Analysis Prepared by : Lawrence Lingbloom / NAT. RES. / (916)
319-2092