In fairness to the California government, it does a remarkably good job analyzing and auditing the state’s policy programs and missteps. The Legislative Analyst’s Office, State Auditor, county civil grand juries, the Little Hoover Commission and inspector generals do yeoman’s work. The problem, of course, is the state’s leaders rarely do much to fix the identified problems.
So it’s with that admittedly jaded view that we turn to the California Assembly’s Select Committee on Permit Reform’s Final Report released this month. Kudos to Assembly member Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, for this effort. “If we’re serious about making California more affordable, sustainable, and resilient, we have to make it easier to build housing, clean energy, public transportation, and climate adaptation projects,” she said. Bravo.
The report notes that California has a shortage of 2.5-million homes and this exacerbates the difficulty in housing 200,000 homeless people. 80% of low-income people struggle to afford the rent. Only one in six Californians can afford the median-priced home. Meanwhile, its government permitting processes move at a snail’s pace.
“Collectively, the result of our failed approach to permitting is an anemic level of construction for the projects necessary to address our housing and climate crises,” the report explained. “The result is higher costs for housing, electricity, transportation and even insurance. While permitting is but one aspect of a project’s success, it plays an outsized role.” Builders face “permitting processes that are time-consuming, opaque, confusing, and favor process over outcomes.”
The report conforms to the frustrating process we complain about. This delays, lawsuits and cumbersome environmental rules have gotten more attention recently in the wake of the devastating Los Angeles wildfires. As always, though, the big question is what to do about it. There is no one fix, as it is caused by layers of red tape at the state and local levels. Toward this end, the committee details specific ways California can improve.
For instance, the report suggests 11 general reform principles. We recommend that you read it yourself for details, but it implores agencies to eliminate duplicative efforts; seek counsel from those people involved in building projects; provide a straightforward permitting path from the beginning; establish reasonable timeframes; focus on consistency; and establish likely environmental mitigation right away. We particularly like this attitude: “It is imperative that the staff engage the project applicant as partners without whom the beneficial project would not occur.”
The report says agencies should designate a project manager who can work with developers and oversee the entire process. It also calls for the government to prioritize actual potential environmental harms when considering the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) challenges. CEQA has “proven highly susceptible to being leveraged to prevent development of projects for non-environmental reasons,” it correctly explains. Agencies should also prioritize outcomes rather than process.
That is encouraging, but officials need to pass reforms rather than just provide unobjectionable general goals. For instance, fixing CEQA requires an act of the Legislature—and lawmakers have been punting on substantive reforms of that 1970 law for decades. None of this is a critique of this praiseworthy effort, but the governor and Legislature need to act on its suggestions and not just file it with all the many other fine reports that have analyzed state government failures.