BILL ANALYSIS Ó
Senate Appropriations Committee Fiscal Summary
Senator Kevin de León, Chair
AB 543 (Campos) - California Environmental Quality Act:
translation.
Amended: June 24, 2014 Policy Vote: EQ 7-0
Urgency: No Mandate: Yes (see staff comment)
Hearing Date: August 4, 2014 Consultant:
Marie Liu
This bill meets the criteria for referral to the Suspense File.
Bill Summary: AB 543 would require the Office of Planning and
Research (OPR) to develop recommended regulations that establish
criteria for a lead agency to assess the need for translating
notices required under the California Environmental Quality Act
(CEQA) into non-English languages by July 1, 2016.
Fiscal Impact:
One-time costs in the low to mid-hundreds of thousands of
dollars from the General Fund to OPR to develop recommended
regulations.
Cost pressures at least in the hundreds of thousands of
dollars from General and special funds to various state
agencies acting as the lead agency under CEQA for
translation costs.
Background: Existing law requires procedures to encourage wide
public involvement, both formal and informal, in the CEQA
process. Specifically, there are a number of notice requirements
and requirements for public availability of CEQA documents.
OPR is required to develop guidelines for the implementation of
CEQA ("CEQA Guidelines") and to update these guidelines every
two years. Though they are referred to as "guidelines," the CEQA
guidelines are adopted regulations adopted by the Natural
Resources Agency upon recommendation of OPR.
The Dymally-Alatorre Bilingual Services Act (GOV §7290 et seq.)
makes a number of requirements regarding translation services.
Specifically, §7295 requires that any materials explaining
services available to the public be translated into any
non-English language spoken by a substantial number of the
AB 543 (Campos)
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public served by the agency. Any notice of the availability of
translated materials shall be given in English and the
non-English language into which any materials have been
translated.
Proposed Law: This bill would require OPR to prepare and develop
criteria for a lead agency to assess the need for translating
scoping meeting notices, notices of preparation, and notices of
approval into non-English languages and for posting requirements
of such translated notices. OPR would be required to develop the
criteria by July 1, 2016 and the Natural Resources Agency
Secretary would be required to adopt the criteria into the CEQA
guidelines by January 1, 2017.
Staff Comments: This bill would necessitate a significant effort
by OPR to establish the required criteria regarding translation
services. The actual costs will depend on the scope of the
criteria; however, the likely one-time costs to OPR will be in
the low to mid hundreds of thousands of dollars.
When the CEQA Guidelines are updated to reflect these criteria,
the state is likely to experience additional costs for projects
when the state is the lead agency. These costs are unknown as it
will be depend on the criteria adopted. As a reference point,
current translation costs range between $90 and $300 per page.
Translation software can provide lower costs translations;
however, because the notices are likely to have technical
information, software translations may not be accurate.
This bill is tagged as a local mandate because this bill would
result in local agencies, when acting as a lead agency, to
translate certain CEQA documents. However, as the lead agency
has the ability to recover its costs through fees, this is not a
reimbursable mandate.