BILL ANALYSIS Ó
SENATE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Senator Ricardo Lara, Chair
2015 - 2016 Regular Session
SB 122 (Jackson) - California Environmental Quality Act: record
of proceedings
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|Version: April 20, 2015 |Policy Vote: E.Q. 5 - 1 |
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|Urgency: No |Mandate: No |
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|Hearing Date: May 4, 2015 |Consultant: Marie Liu |
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This bill meets the criteria for referral to the Suspense File.
Bill
Summary: SB 122 would require the Governor's Office of Planning
and Research (OPR) to implement a public database of all
environmental documents and notices required by the California
Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). This bill would also allow a
lead agency, upon request of a project applicant, to prepare the
record of proceeding concurrently with the administrative
process.
Fiscal
Impact:
One-time costs of $200,000 from the General Fund to establish
the database at the Office of Technology, including necessary
training.
Ongoing costs of $45,000 from the General Fund to the Office
of Technology to host and update the database. These costs may
be offset by savings to various special funds and the General
Fund for reduced administrative costs to state lead agencies.
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One-time costs of $20,000 from the General Fund to OPR to
provide training for lead agencies on the new database.
Unknown costs to state agencies, to the extent they are lead
agency under CEQA, to concurrently prepare the record of
proceeding (various special funds and General Fund). These
costs should be fully reimbursed by project applicants who
request the record of proceedings to be prepared concurrently
with the administrative process.
Background: CEQA provides a process for evaluating the environmental
effects of a project. Under CEQA, lead agencies with the
principal responsibility for carrying out or approving a
proposed discretionary project are required to prepare a
negative declaration, mitigated negative declaration, or
environmental impact report (EIR) for the project, unless the
project is exempt. The purpose of CEQA is to identify
significant environmental impacts, including impacts on
archaeological resources, and then mitigate those impacts to the
extent feasible.
Under existing law, OPR is responsible for maintaining a public
clearinghouse of CEQA notices of exemption, preparation,
determination, and completion that must be available on the
internet. This clearinghouse is known as CEQAnet.
The concurrent preparation of the proceedings during the CEQA
environmental review process is not specifically prohibited
under existing law. However, existing law specifically allows
the concurrent preparation of documents, upon request of the
project application, for certain projects designated as
"environmental leadership development projects."
Proposed Law:
This bill would require OPR to establish a complete database
of documents that would include both environmental documents as
well the various notices required by CEQA. Like the existing
clearinghouse, this database would be required to be available
to the public online. OPR would be explicitly authorized to
coordinate with another state agency to host and maintain the
database. OPR would also be authorized to phase in the use of
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the database by local and state agencies.
This bill would require OPR to develop a budget for the
development, hosting, and maintenance of the database which must
submitted to the Department of Finance for consideration and
approval.
This bill would also explicitly authorize a lead agency to
concurrently prepare the record of proceedings with the
administrative process under CEQA upon request by the project
applicant. This bill would specify the process by which the
project applicant would make such a request and requires the
project applicant and lead agency to mutually agree on the terms
of the preparation. The project applicant would be required to
agree to pay all of the lead agency's costs of preparing and
certifying the record of proceeding in a manner specified by the
lead agency.
Related
Legislation: SB 731 (Steinberg, 2013), SB 37 (Perea, 2013), SB
984(Simitian, 2012), and AB 1570 (Perea, 2012) all proposed
explicit authorization for a lead agency to concurrently prepare
the record of proceedings. None of these measures were passed by
the Legislature.
AB 900 (Buchanan and Gordon) Chapter 354, Statutes of 2011
authorized the concurrent preparation of the record of
proceedings for projects designated as an environmental
leadership development project.
Staff
Comments: CEQAnet is currently hosted by the University of
California, Davis at no charge to the state. However, the
database required by the bill would be a large expansion of
CEQAnet and would exceed the capacity of the arrangement with
UCD. Should this bill pass, OPR would work with the Office of
Technology (OTech) in the Government Operations Agency to host
and manage the expanded database. OTech estimates that they
would have one-time costs of $200,000 to move and upgrade
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CEQAnet.
OTech also estimates having ongoing costs of approximately
$45,000 annually to manage the database. Staff notes that the
ongoing cost is based on a database with more functionality than
is required by the bill, such as having the database linked to a
map. While these functions would certainly add to the usefulness
of the database, a more simplified and less expensive version of
the database seems to be possible.
OPR also estimates one-time costs of $20,000 for to conduct
training and workshops for lead agencies on how to use the new
database.
OPR notes that there would be savings to the state agencies,
particularly when acting as the lead agency, by having all CEQA
documents in one publically available database. OPR requested
that the California Research Bureau (CRB) gather information to
estimate the state's CEQA-related document management cost
savings if an online database held all CEQA-related documents,
as would be required under this bill. CRB estimated that there
would be at least $250,000 in annual savings due to reduced
clerical processing and handling of CEQA-related documents
spread among various state agencies with CEQA responsibilities.
This estimate is substantially higher if savings for materials,
supplies, and delivery services are also included. However, the
CRB notes that these may not all be true savings as few, if any,
state agencies have clerical staff exclusively dedicated to
CEQA-related document management.
The bill specifically requires OPR to submit a budget proposal
to the Department of Finance for review and consideration. Staff
recommends that this language be deleted as it unnecessarily
specifies that OPR comply with a required step in the budget
process.
State agencies who are acting as lead agencies may also have
costs under this bill to concurrently prepare the record of
proceedings with the CEQA administrative process. This cost is
unknown because it is dependent on the number of project
applicants that request concurrent preparation and the scope of
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the project. However, the bill specifically requires the project
proponent to agree to pay all of the lead agency's costs
associated with the concurrent preparation.
Recommended
Amendments: On page 6, delete lines 36-39 and add Sen.
Hertzberg as a co-author, per author's request.
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