Our View: Vote YES on Proposition 45: CEQA is a mess; doing nothing would be worse

Proposition 45 on the November ballot says more about people being fed up with a law than about their belief that they can fix it. But its passage will send a strong message: The California Environmental Quality Act, which was enacted nearly six decades ago as a good-faith effort to protect California and the people who live in the state, is broken. It has been hijacked by special interests to obstruct essential building projects. Many projects fall victim to protracted environmental review and frivolous litigation. For proof you only have to look at the years-long struggle to get a new, bigger Veterans Administration medical clinic built in Bakersfield. Despite Congress allocating money for the project, CEQA requirements have been abused to delay the project for years. Local veterans have been denied a much-needed facility because the project has been dragged through repeated environmental impact reports and courtrooms by feuding property owners. To reject Proposition 45, voters would be saying they are OK with how CEQA is being used today. But if the measure passes - as we believe it should - it won't fix the problems. Likely it will lead to litigation, confusion and more red tape. Vote YES on Proposition 45, but demand legislators follow up with real, clear reforms that will continue to protect California and its residents, while responsibly regulating development. Proposition 45 notes that the Legislature, with a two-thirds vote of its members, can amend the measure in the future. And that is what it must do if the proposition creates more problems than it proposes to fix. When the Legislature passed CEQA in 1970 and it was signed into law by then Republican Gov. Ronald Reagan, it was in response to concerns that large public and private development projects were fouling the state's environment. Earlier that year, Republican President Richard Nixon signed a similar federal law. CEQA started out as a four-page document. Today, it contains hundreds of pages. It became bloated by court rulings that expanded its scope and legislators, who did the same. While there have been occasional efforts to rein it in, it just seemed to grow more and more far-reaching every year. And now voters are being asked to do what legislators have failed to do - somehow make sense out of the mess. Good luck with that. Ballot box reforms of government seldom work. Proposition 45 proposes to streamline the permitting and environmental review process by shortening deadlines and limiting court challenges of "essential" projects, as defined by the following broad categories: Housing; water systems (excluding the Delta); clean energy (excluding nuclear energy); health facilities; fire and law enforcement; wildfire risk reduction; education; transportation; and broadband internet. Concern is mounting about what is the definition of an "essential" project that would be given expedited treatment. It seems almost any project - no matter how sensitive - could fit into a leniently-treated "essential" category. For example, some fear controversial data centers would fall into the "essential" broadband internet exemption and receive streamlined review and limits on court challenges. If it passes, enacting Proposition 45 will require the state to develop guidelines to clarify "essential" and establish processes to expedite the permitting of projects. According to the state legislative analyst, it also will require local government agencies to spend millions of dollars to interpret and change permitting processes. Copyright 2026 Tribune Content Agency. All Rights Reserved.