BILL ANALYSIS Ó
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|SENATE RULES COMMITTEE | SB 734|
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UNFINISHED BUSINESS
Bill No: SB 734
Author: Galgiani (D)
Amended: 6/21/16
Vote: 27 - Urgency
PRIOR VOTES NOT RELEVANT
SENATE ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY COMMITTEE: 4-1, 8/10/16 (Pursuant
to Senate Rule 29.10)
AYES: Wieckowski, Gaines, Hill, Leno
NOES: Bates
NO VOTE RECORDED: Jackson, Pavley
ASSEMBLY FLOOR: 61-10, 8/4/16 - See last page for vote
SUBJECT: Environmental quality: Jobs and Economic
Improvement Through Environmental Leadership Act of
2011
SOURCE: State Building and Construction Trades Council
DIGEST: This bill extends for two years the expedited
California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) judicial review
procedures established by the Jobs and Economic Improvement
Through Environmental Leadership Act (AB 900, Buchanan and
Gordon, Chapter 354, Statutes of 2011).
Assembly Amendments delete the Senate version of the bill
relating to state land acquisitions, and insert the current
language.
ANALYSIS:
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Existing law:
1) Requires, under CEQA, lead agencies with the principal
responsibility for carrying out or approving a proposed
discretionary project to prepare a negative declaration,
mitigated declaration, or environmental impact report (EIR)
for this action, unless the project is exempt from CEQA (CEQA
includes various statutory exemptions, as well as categorical
exemptions in the CEQA guidelines). (Public Resources Code
(PRC) §21000 et seq.).
2) Establishes CEQA administrative and judicial review
procedures for an "environmental leadership development
project", under the Jobs and Economic Improvement Through
Environmental Leadership Act of 2011, which is part of CEQA.
This bill:
1)Extends the operation of AB 900 by two years, so that the
Governor must certify a project prior to January 1, 2018, the
project must be approved prior to January 1, 2019, and AB 900
sunsets January 1, 2019.
2)Adds the following prevailing wage conditions and enforcement
provisions:
a) Requires contractors and subcontractors to pay to all
construction workers employed in the execution of the
project at least the general prevailing rate of per diem
wages.
b) Provides that this obligation may be enforced by the
Labor Commissioner through the issuance of a civil wage and
penalty assessment pursuant to relevant provisions of the
Labor Code, unless all contractors and subcontractors
performing work on the project are subject to a project
labor agreement that requires the payment of prevailing
wages and provides for enforcement through an arbitration
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procedure.
3)Requires a multifamily residential project certified under AB
900 to provide unbundled parking, such that private vehicle
parking spaces are priced and rented or purchased separately
from dwelling units, except for units subject to affordability
restrictions in law that prescribe rent or sale prices, where
the cost of parking spaces cannot be unbundled from the cost
of dwelling units.
Background
1)Previous, related bills.
a) AB 900 and SB 292. AB 900 (Buchanan and Gordon) and SB
292 (Padilla, Chapter 353, Statutes of 2011) established
expedited CEQA judicial review procedures for a limited
number of projects. For AB 900, it was large-scale
projects meeting extraordinary environmental standards and
providing significant jobs and investment. For SB 292, it
was a proposed downtown Los Angeles football stadium and
convention center project achieving specified traffic and
air quality mitigations. The stadium project subject to SB
292 has not proceeded.
For these eligible projects, the bills provided for original
jurisdiction by the Court of Appeal and a compressed
schedule requiring the court to render a decision on any
lawsuit within 175 days. This promised to reduce the
existing judicial review timeline by 100 days or more,
while creating new burdens for the courts and litigants to
meet the shortened schedule.
AB 900's provision granting original jurisdiction to the Court
of Appeal was invalidated in 2013 by a decision in Alameda
Superior Court in Planning and Conservation League v. State
of California.
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b) SB 743 (Steinberg, Chapter 386, Statutes of 2013).
Subsequent to the Alameda Superior Court holding mentioned
above, SB 743 repealed the provision that gave original
jurisdiction to the Court of Appeal and required Judicial
Council to adopt a rule of court mandating lawsuits and any
appeals to be resolved within 270 days.
Also, SB 743 (Steinberg) established special CEQA procedures
modeled on SB 292 for the Sacramento Kings arena project.
Like SB 292, SB 743 applied to a single project and
included specified traffic and air quality mitigations.
CEQA lawsuits were filed against the Kings arena, and the
lawsuits, including appeals, were resolved 267 days after
certification of the record.
2)AB 900 projects to date. Six projects have been certified
under AB 900. The deadline for AB 900 certification under
current law has passed (which was January 1, 2016). According
to the Office of Planning and Research, the following projects
have had AB 900 applications submitted:
McCoy Solar Energy Project (January 12, 2012).
Apple Campus 2 (April 19, 2012).
Soitec Solar Energy Project (January 7, 2013).
8150 Sunset Boulevard (January 31, 2014).
Event Center and Mixed-Use Development at Mission Bay
Blocks (The Golden State Warriors Arena) (February 17,
2014).
Qualcomm Stadium Reconstruction Project (August 25,
2015).
Comments
1)Purpose of bill. According to the author, "California is
continually recovering from and preparing for future economic
devastation. SB 734 will help large job producing green
projects avoid delay and keep Californians working by
extending the Governor's authority to certify a project to
January 1, 2018."
2)Golden State Warriors Arena and two lawsuits. The proposed
Golden State Warriors Arena and related development at Mission
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Bay in San Francisco, which has received AB 900 certification,
has been challenged under CEQA. The case, Mission Bay
Alliance et al. v Office of Community Investment and
Infrastructure, was filed March 11, 2016. One of the
plaintiffs, Mission Bay Alliance, which is a coalition of UCSF
stakeholders, donors, faculty, and physicians, argues that the
18,500-seat arena would congest area streets with traffic,
slowing down access to the University of California, San
Francisco (UCSF) Medical Center at Mission Bay, which is
located across the street from the proposed arena. In
addition, the plaintiff contends that the basketball arena in
Mission Bay is at odds with the cluster of life science
research and health care facilities that have been built in
the neighborhood. On July 18, 2016, a trial court ruled in
favor of the project sponsor, the Warriors; the decision has
been appealed.
The above lawsuit is one of two legal challenges filed by the
Mission Bay Alliance in regards to the Warriors arena; the
second of which is not CEQA-related. In the other lawsuit,
filed in Alameda County, the plaintiffs seek to invalidate an
agreement between UCSF and the Warriors, which included a $10
million Mission Bay Transportation Improvement Fund for
controlling traffic flow in the area. The plaintiffs contend
that the UCSF chancellor went beyond his authority in reaching
this agreement without University of California Regents
approval. This second lawsuit has yet to be decided.
The Warriors team has stated that the lawsuits have delayed the
opening of the arena by a year, to 2019. One lawsuit has
special, fast-tracking CEQA-related litigation privileges and
the other does not. Although AB 900 may speed up the
litigation process for the CEQA case, the second lawsuit
demonstrates that CEQA is not the only body of law for which
there is to sue; rather, there is a cavalry of
non-CEQA-related causes of action from which a plaintiff may
choose and that are subject to standard civil procedure rules.
AB 900 cannot expedite or insulate a project from
non-CEQA-related litigation and does not guarantee that a
project will be completed faster.
3)Should we expect more from AB 900 projects? SB 743
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(Steinberg) required the Kings arena to be certified
Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold, as
well as minimize traffic and air quality impacts through
project design or mitigation measures, including reducing to
at least zero the net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from
private automobile trips to the arena, achieve reductions in
GHG emissions from automobiles and light trucks that will
exceed the GHG emission reduction targets for 2020 and 2035
adopted for the Sacramento region pursuant to SB 375
(Steinberg, Chapter 728, Statutes of 2008), and achieve a 15%
reduction in vehicle-miles traveled per attendee.
In contrast to SB 743, AB 900 requires lower LEED Silver
certification, a 10% improvement in transportation efficiency
over comparable projects, and zero net GHG emissions, with no
requirement that the GHG emission reductions be from local
sources.
In comparing the requirements of SB 743 and AB 900, a question
arises as to whether it would be more environmentally
beneficial to the state to require AB 900 projects to meet
similar standards as required in SB 743.
4)Equal justice for all? Court calendar preference and
guaranteed time frames. Current law requires the courts to
give CEQA-related cases preference over "all other civil
actions? so that the action or proceeding shall be quickly
heard and determined." (PRC §21167.1). In addition to this
existing mandate, SB 734 provides that the courts must
complete the judicial review process in a given time frame for
certain CEQA-related actions or proceedings when specified
criteria are met.
As a consequence, such mandates on a court delay access for
other cases as well as potentially exacerbating a court's
backlog on civil documents such as filing a new civil
complaint, processing answers and cross complaints, or
processing a demurrer or summary judgment. As Judicial
Council notes, "[S]etting an extremely tight timeline for
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deciding these cases has the practical effect of pushing other
cases on the courts' dockets to the back of the line. This
means that other cases, including cases that have statutorily
mandated calendar preferences, such as juvenile cases,
criminal cases, and civil cases in which a party is at risk of
dying, will take longer to decide."
This bill requires a court to make room on its calendar,
potentially pushing other cases aside, to ensure that
specified time frames are met on certain CEQA cases. Calendar
preferences and guaranteed time frames create additional
demands and burden on our courts that have very limited
resources and a never-ending supply of cases to hear.
5)Projects queuing up. Although this bill is not specific to
any particular projects, proponents of SB 734 have identified
four projects that may apply for AB 900 certification if this
bill is enacted:
a) 6701 Sunset/Crossroads in Hollywood - Nine new mixed-use
buildings, including residential, hotel, commercial office,
retail, and restaurant uses, including up to 308 hotel
rooms and 950 residential units, 84 of which will be
affordable to low-income households (to replace 84
rent-controlled units the project will demolish).
b) Yucca-Argyle Project in Hollywood - Mixed-use project
with hotel, residential, and commercial uses, including 260
hotel rooms and 191 residential units, 39 of which will be
affordable to low-income households.
c) Barlow Hospital Project in Echo Park - Hospital
replacement and residential development on a 25-acre site
near Dodgers Stadium, including 400 new single-family
homes, with no commitments to affordable housing to date.
d) Hollywood Central Park - A 38-acre regional street level
park created by capping US 101 between Hollywood and Santa
Monica Boulevards.
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FISCAL EFFECT: Appropriation: No Fiscal
Com.:YesLocal: Yes
According to the Assembly Appropriations Committee, absorbable
state costs.
SUPPORT: (Verified8/10/16)
State Building and Construction Trades Council (source)
California Chamber of Commerce
OPPOSITION: (Verified8/10/16)
Air Conditioning Trade Association
American Fire Sprinkler Association
Associated Builders and Contractors - San Diego Chapter
California League of Conservation Voters
Judicial Council of California
Plumbing-Heating-Cooling Contractors Association of California
Sierra Club California
Western Electrical Contractors Association
ASSEMBLY FLOOR: 61-10, 8/4/16
AYES: Achadjian, Alejo, Arambula, Atkins, Baker, Bigelow,
Bonilla, Bonta, Brown, Burke, Calderon, Campos, Chang, Chau,
Chiu, Chu, Cooper, Dababneh, Daly, Dodd, Eggman, Frazier,
Gallagher, Eduardo Garcia, Gatto, Gipson, Gomez, Gordon, Gray,
Hadley, Holden, Irwin, Jones, Jones-Sawyer, Lackey, Levine,
Linder, Lopez, Low, Mathis, Mayes, McCarty, Medina, Mullin,
Nazarian, O'Donnell, Olsen, Quirk, Ridley-Thomas, Rodriguez,
Salas, Santiago, Steinorth, Thurmond, Ting, Wagner, Weber,
Wilk, Williams, Wood, Rendon
NOES: Travis Allen, Brough, Dahle, Beth Gaines, Grove, Harper,
Melendez, Obernolte, Patterson, Mark Stone
NO VOTE RECORDED: Bloom, Chávez, Cooley, Cristina Garcia,
Gonzalez, Roger Hernández, Kim, Maienschein, Waldron
SB 734
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Prepared by:Joanne Roy / E.Q. / (916) 651-4108
8/10/16 16:16:52
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