Unionized state workers argue that agencies must assess the extra emissions and traffic a four-day-a-week in-office policy would generate.
California’s cumbersome and frequently exploited environmental review statute is being driven to new extremes by unionized state employees who threaten to use it to block Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to bring workers back to the office.
Since the start of last year, Newsom’s administration has been winding down the telework arrangements adopted during the COVID era for state personnel. Earlier this month, the governor’s office circulated memos directing state agencies to put in place a four-day in-person work requirement by July 1.
State employee unions have actively resisted Newsom’s return-to-office directives by filing unfair labor practice complaints with state regulators and pressing for legislative protections of telework arrangements.
These efforts intensified on Wednesday, when, according to The Sacramento Bee reports, CASE, the union representing state-employed attorneys, sent letters to agencies asserting that their return-to-office policies had not undergone the environmental review mandated by the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).
Requiring workers to return to the office “will generate hundreds of thousands of additional monthly commutes by state employees, producing hundreds of thousands of extra car trips and thousands of tons of extra air pollution from vehicle exhaust,” CASE argued.
Under CEQA, agencies must examine those environmental impacts and consider alternatives, such as continued telework, CASE contended in its letter. The union warned it would sue if this CEQA review was not conducted.
The idea that the governor could order his staff to be physically present in offices without completing a massive environmental assessment will sound only crazy to those who have not followed CEQA’s numerous controversies.
In essence, the law requires government agencies to evaluate the environmental effects of discretionary projects they undertake and to contemplate alternatives that would lessen those impacts.
The statute also empowers third parties to sue agencies for pursuing projects without the required CEQA analyses.
Because the spectrum of government actions that can be deemed discretionary under CEQA is broad, and CEQA lawsuits tend to drag on, the law has become a favored instrument for individuals and interest groups to block policies or projects they dislike.
CEQA is often used to delay the construction of housing, commercial ventures, infrastructure, and more.
The statute is also employed to extract concessions from project sponsors. Unions leverage it to press for all-union labor, while competing developers and community groups use it to squeeze financial concessions from sponsors.
Berkeley’s case became famous when petitioners temporarily blocked growth in UC Berkeley’s student enrollment because the university hadn’t studied the noise impacts on neighboring neighborhoods.
CEQA’s outsized outcomes have prompted California policymakers to curtail the law’s scope.
Last year, the Legislature enacted a measure that exempted infill residential development from CEQA review. A ballot initiative backed by the Chamber of Commerce, likely to be put to voters in November, would drastically limit CEQA requirements for most infrastructure and land-development projects.
Yet, it seems that for every CEQA reform that passes, there is another novel invocation of the law that broadens its reach.
No policy decision is considered too small to become a point of contention leading to a lengthy review and court fight by a motivated special-interest group.
CASE’s threatened lawsuit over Newsom’s return-to-office policy simply adds to the evidence that CEQA has spiraled out of control.
