Opinion: See what CEQA wrought
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Editorial Board writer Robert Greene untangles the Jerry Brown backstory lurking behind Sacramento’s great 2007 budget debate. The secret is in the enforcement of the California Environmental Quality Act. Excerpt:
CEQA was a landmark environmental law signed in 1970 by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan, who four years earlier ousted Edmund G. ‘Pat’ Brown, father of the current attorney general, who then succeeded Reagan in 1974. Jerry Brown was a big proponent of CEQA -- then. A quarter century later, as mayor of Oakland, he railed against the law for slowing down construction of housing and redevelopment of his city. Then, last November, he was elected attorney general and this year began sending letters to governments that produced regional plans which, in Brown’s view, failed to account for global warming. In one case -- the plan for San Bernardino County -- he sued.
More here.