BILL ANALYSIS Ó
SENATE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNANCE AND FINANCE
Senator Robert M. Hertzberg, Chair
2015 - 2016 Regular
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|Bill No: |SB 1000 |Hearing |4/6/16 |
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|Author: |Leyva |Tax Levy: |No |
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|Version: |3/30/16 Amended |Fiscal: |Yes |
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|Consultant|Favorini-Csorba |
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Land use: general plans: environmental justice
Requires each city and county to include an environmental
justice element in its general plan.
Background
General plans. The Planning and Zoning Law requires every county
and city to adopt a general plan with seven mandatory elements:
land use, circulation, housing, conservation, open space, noise,
and safety. Cities and counties may adopt optional elements
that address issues of their choosing, and once adopted, those
elements have the same legal force as the mandatory elements.
The general plan must be "internally consistent," which means
the various elements cannot have conflicting information or
assumptions.
To help local officials interpret these statutory requirements,
the Governor's Office of Planning and Research (OPR) publishes
General Plan Guidelines. OPR's Guidelines recommend the
information that local planners should collect; suggest goals,
policies, and objectives that local general plans could adopt;
and list a wide range of feasible implementation measures to
carry out those local goals. OPR released a draft update to the
Guidelines in November 2015.
The California Supreme Court has called the general plan "the
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constitution for all future development" because it presents a
vision and a set of principles for future growth in the
community. In addition, cities and counties' major land use
decisions-subdivisions, zoning, public works projects, use
permits-must be consistent with their general plans.
Development decisions must carry out and not obstruct a general
plan's policies. A general plan must be current for land use
decisions to be valid, but state law only requires the housing
element to be updated on a specific schedule. Major updates to a
general plan often trigger review under the California
Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), which requires studies of the
impacts of government decisions on people and the environment.
Environmental justice. Since 1999, the Legislature has enacted
several laws to advance consideration of environmental justice;
as defined in state law, environmental justice means the fair
treatment of people of all races, cultures, and incomes with
respect to the development, adoption, implementation, and
enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. SB
115 (Solis, 1999) designated OPR as the lead state agency on
environmental justice matters. Subsequently, AB 1553 (Keeley,
2001) required OPR to adopt recommendations in its general plan
guidelines that local governments may use to address
environmental justice issues. Recognizing the importance of
local planning in environmental justice issues, SB 244 (Wolk,
2011) required consideration of specific water, wastewater, and
fire protection needs for disadvantaged communities in general
plans as well as in some proceedings that determine local
government boundaries. SB 535 (De Leon, 2012) provided that 25%
of the revenue from the state's "cap-and-trade" program for
greenhouse gas emissions must benefit disadvantaged communities,
as identified by the California Environmental Protection Agency
(CALEPA), based on geographic, socioeconomic, public health, and
environmental hazard criteria.
Local governments have also begun to consider environmental
justice issues. According to the most recent Annual Planning
Survey conducted by OPR (in 2014), 101 cities and counties
reported that they considered equity issues in their general
plans. Two cities-Jurupa Valley and National City-have adopted
optional elements in their general plans specifically addressing
environmental justice.
Nonetheless, disadvantaged communities continue to suffer from
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environmental harms. CALEPA, using the methodology it developed
in response to the directives in SB 535, identified 9.4 million
Californians who live in communities with high pollution burdens
from multiple sources and are vulnerable for socioeconomic
reasons or other factors, such as low levels of educational
achievement. Some advocates want local governments to take
additional steps to address environmental justice issues.
Proposed Law
Senate Bill 1000 requires every city and county to adopt an
environmental justice element upon the adoption or next revision
of its general plan. The environmental justice element must
identify:
Disadvantaged communities within the jurisdiction of the
agency, including both those communities identified by
CALEPA for the purpose of allocating cap-and-trade funding
and communities with median household incomes below 80
percent of the statewide median.
Objectives and policies to reduce the health risks in
disadvantaged communities through means that include
reducing pollution exposure, improving air quality, and
promoting food access, healthier homes, physical activity,
and public amenities, as defined.
Objectives and policies to promote civil engagement in
the public decisionmaking process.
SB 1000 defines public amenities to include facilities such as
community centers or water and transportation infrastructure, as
well as other public services such as fire protection, public
lighting, signage, and sidewalks.
State Revenue Impact
No estimate.
Comments
1. Purpose of the bill . Throughout California, disadvantaged
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communities bear a disproportionate burden from pollution and
other environmental hazards. Communities that lack political
power often find polluting facilities sited near them, while
lacking basic infrastructure such as water services, public
transportation, outdoor recreation spaces, and even grocery
stores. This disparate treatment results in poor health
outcomes, such as high rates of cancer, asthma, and birth
defects. Cities and counties have control over many decisions
that affect the exposure of disadvantaged communities, and
burdens that they face can be alleviated by proper planning that
takes their needs into account. By requiring cities and
counties to adopt an environmental justice element in their
general plans, SB 1000 encourages local governments to consider
how these communities are affected by planning decisions in a
comprehensive and cohesive manner. Furthermore, because
subsequent land use decisions by a city or county must usually
be consistent with their general plan, SB 1000 ensures that
those decisions don't hurt the most vulnerable Californians.
Finally, by using the methodology CALEPA has developed to
identify disadvantaged communities, SB 1000 puts cities and
counties in an excellent position to apply for cap-and-trade
funds to help their disadvantaged communities. SB 1000 is an
important step toward ensuring that all Californians live in a
healthy environment.
2. Who pays ? The Legislature first required cities and
counties to adopt general plans in 1937. Over the last 80 years,
legislators have insisted on increasingly detailed local plans.
The recent trend has been to require general plans to pay more
attention to specialized topics: San Joaquin Valley's air
quality (AB 170, Reyes, 2003), wildland fires (AB 3065, Kehoe,
2004, and AB 1241, Kehoe, 2012), tribal cultural places (SB 18,
Burton, 2004), military operating areas (SB 926, Knight, 2004),
flood hazards (AB 162, Wolk, 2007), and just last year, climate
change (SB 379, Jackson, 2015). But California doesn't invest
state General Fund money in long-range, comprehensive, local
planning. The burden of funding these new state mandated local
programs falls on local general funds and on the property owners
who apply for development permits. SB 1000 ups the ante by
requiring an entirely new element, which could spark expensive
wholesale makeovers of general plans and the associated costly
CEQA analyses. SB 1000 is another well-intentioned, but
unfunded, state mandated local program.
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3. Form over function . Environmental justice considerations
affect many aspects of community planning and design and
therefore relate to multiple general plan elements. For
example, the land use element determines how close housing is to
polluting facilities; the circulation element informs access to
public transit, as well as siting of major thoroughfares that
create air quality problems; and the housing element guides
whether low income residents can afford housing. As a result, a
single environmental justice element would have to encompass
many unrelated subjects-likely at the 30,000 foot level-and most
other general plan elements would have to be updated anyway in
order to maintain internal consistency. Requiring consideration
of relevant environmental justice concerns in existing elements
could eliminate duplication and allow local governments to
examine specific environmental justice concerns in greater
depth.
4. Timing is everything . Local governments frequently make small
changes to their general plans in order to keep them current.
SB 1000 requires adoption of the element along with the next
adoption or revision of the general plan, which will likely
require a major revision to the general plan as a whole and
could cause significant delays to element updates that are
already in process. Moreover, only the housing element must be
updated according to a particular schedule (no less than every
eight years). To ensure a predictable schedule for revising the
environmental justice element and to avoid imposing a
significant burden on a local government that may need to make a
small change to its general plan in the near future, the
Committee may wish to consider amending SB 1000 to tie adoption
and revision of the environmental justice element to the next
adoption or revision of the housing element on or after January
1, 2018.
5. Clarifying amendment . A general plan may cover land that is
outside of a city or county's jurisdiction if it is relevant to
the agency's planning efforts. However, SB 1000 limits the
requirement to identify disadvantaged communities to only an
agency's jurisdiction. The Committee may wish to consider
amending SB 1000 to require the general plan to instead identify
disadvantaged communities across all territory covered by the
plan.
6. Mandate . The California Constitution generally requires the
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state to reimburse local agencies for their costs when the state
imposes new programs or additional duties on them. According to
the Legislative Counsel's Office, SB 1000 creates a new
state-mandated local program. SB 1000 disclaims this mandate by
saying that no reimbursement is required because local agencies
may levy charges sufficient to cover any costs.
7. Double-referred . The Senate Rules Committee has ordered a
double-referral of SB 1000-first to the Senate Governance &
Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over bills relating to
the Planning and Zoning Law, and then to the Senate
Environmental Quality Committee, which has jurisdiction over
bills relating to environmental issues.
Support and
Opposition (3/31/15)
Support : California Environmental Justice Alliance
(co-sponsor); Center for Community Action and Environmental
Justice (co-sponsor); American Lung Association in California;
Asian Pacific Environmental Network; California Alliance for
Retired Americans; California Bicycle Coalition; California
Coastal Protection Network; Center for Community Action and
Environmental Justice; Center on Race, Poverty, and the
Environment; Central Coast United for a Sustainable Economy;
Clean Water Action; Coalition For A Safe Environment;
Communities for a Better Environment; Coalition for Clean Air;
Comite Civico del Valle; Communities for a New California;
Community Water Center; Concerned Community Members Parents of
Redwood Elementary School Students; Councilmember David Alvarez,
City of San Diego; Environmental Health Coalition; Environmental
Justice Coalition for Water; Environmental Working Group; Fresno
Barrios Unidos; Friends Committee on Legislation of California;
Greenlining Institute; Inland Congregations United for Change;
Leadership Council for Justice and Accountability; People
Organizing to Demand Environmental and Economic Rights;
Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles; Pueblo Unido
Community Development Corporation; Safe Routes to School
National Partnership; Sierra Club California; Southern
California College Access Network; Women's Foundation of
California.
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Opposition : American Planning Association, California Chapter;
California Building Industry Association; California Chamber of
Commerce.
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