BILL ANALYSIS                                                                                                                                                                                                    Ó



                                                                  AB 543
                                                                  Page  1

          Date of Hearing:   May 24, 2013

                        ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
                                  Mike Gatto, Chair

                     AB 543 (Campos) - As Amended:  May 6, 2013 

          Policy Committee:                              Natural  
          ResourcesVote:6-3

          Urgency:     No                   State Mandated Local Program:  
          Yes    Reimbursable:              No

           SUMMARY  

          This bill requires a lead agency to translate documents or  
          summaries of documents required under the California  
          Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) when a group of non-English  
          speaking people comprise at least 5% of the residents of the  
          area.  CEQA documents include:

          1)A notice of intent (NOI) when the lead agency decides to adopt  
            a negative declaration or a mitigated negative declaration.

          2)A notice of determination (NOD) when the lead agency decides  
            to carry out or approve a project for which it has adopted a  
            negative declaration or mitigated negative declaration, or  
            certified an EIR. 

          3)A notice of preparation (NOP) when the lead agency decides to  
            prepare a negative declaration, a mitigated negative  
            declaration, or an EIR for the project. 

          4)A notice of completion (NOC) when the draft EIR is complete.

          5)A summary of any EIR, negative declaration, or mitigated  
            negative declaration.

           FISCAL EFFECT

           Unknown costs to state agencies serving as CEQA lead agencies,  
          in the range of hundreds of thousands to potentially millions of  
          dollars.

          For example, the Department of Water Resources is currently the  








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          CEQA lead agency for the Bay-Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP).   
          The draft EIR/EIS is already over 20,000 pages long.  The draft  
          executive summary is almost 50 pages and growing.  

          Assuming current translation services charge between $0.12 and  
          $0. 40 per word and on average, each page contains about 750  
          words ( $80 to $300 per page),  the translating the executive  
          summary for the BDCP EIR/EIS would range from $4,500 to $24,000  
          per language.  Most of the other notification documents that are  
          required to be translated are usually only 1 to 5 pages and  
          would cost up to $2000 per notification, per language.

           


          COMMENTS  

           1)Rationale.   According to the author, with the increasing  
            diversity of California's communities, multi-stakeholder  
            engagement is critical to ensuring that CEQA's environmental  
            goals are achieved in an equitable manner.
              
            The author asserts that a project may have significant  
            consequences on immigrant and low-income communities who live  
            near project site.  Due to language barriers, not everyone can  
            participate in the CEQA process equally.  Translating  
            important CEQA notices and executive summaries in other  
            languages is an important step in rectifying this concern.
           
          2)Background.   CEQA provides a process for evaluating the  
            environmental effects of applicable projects approved or  
            undertaken by public agencies.  For projects that are not  
            exempt from CEQA, an initial study is prepared to determine if  
            the projects may have a significant impact on the environment.  
               If the initial study shows no significant impacts, a  
            negative declaration is issued.  If the project may  
            significantly impact the environment, a full Environmental  
            Impact Report (EIR) must be prepared, including the  
            identification of environmental impacts and required  
            mitigation, compliance and reporting measures intended to  
            reduce the environmental impacts to the extent feasible.  CEQA  
            also provides for public process and legal challenges.   

           3)Support.  Numerous environmental and civil justice  
            organizations support this bill to bring increased access and  








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            equity to the CEQA process.  
             
           4)Opposition.   A coalition of business interests, developers and  
            contractors oppose this bill based on the increased costs,  
            delays and potential difficulties translating highly technical  
            documents into other languages.  
             
           5)State Concerns.    It is unclear if demographic information  
            exists statewide to determine where populations of  
            non-English-speaking residents are 5% or more. This could  
            result in a default position of state and other lead agencies  
            translating all documents in many different languages.  
           
           Analysis Prepared by  :    Jennifer Galehouse / APPR. / (916)  
          319-2081