This blog posting is about the California Environmental Quality Act - better known as CEQA. Simon & Garfunkel, and one of their most famous songs, have a direct bearing on this topic (but you might have to be a little patient to get to that part of what I want to say).
Serious lawyers read the "Advance Sheets." Click this link to be directed to published and citable opinions of the California courts, right after those opinions have been published, and before they have been bound together in the kind of lawbooks you can consult in the local law library. What you will find if you do check out that website link is a set of recently published decisions of California appellate courts (from all over the state) - decisions that determine the constitutionality and establish the judicially-approved meaning of the laws passed by the legislature, among other things. Like I said, serious lawyers read those decisions!
Not everyone really understands how our legal system works in actual practice. Our laws, for the most part, are legislatively-enacted - but that's often only a first step. While laws are legislatively-enacted, initially, they are judicially-established in the end. Anyone wanting to know "the law," needs to read the statutory statements found in the codes that classify legislative enactments and group them together to make it (relatively) easy to know what the Legislature has said about a particular topic. As an example, you can click here for a link to the California statutes. If you do, and look into the "Government Code," you'll find that it outlines the powers and duties of our governmental bodies, including local City Councils and Boards of Supervisors. Want to know something about our traffic laws? Try consulting the "Vehicle Code." Etc.
However, as I said earlier, looking through the Codes will only get you so far. If you want to know with any certainty how various code provisions have been interpreted - and thus how they are actually applied to real life situations - you will need to search through the various court decisions that have adjudicated how the codified laws are applied to real-world activities.
As an environmental attorney, I am particularly interested in any court decisions that construe the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA. You can find CEQA in the California Public Resources Code. Just click this link to get to those code provisions. I started thinking about CEQA back in early June, when I read a court decision that outlined some limitations on who could bring a successful "CEQA lawsuit," challenging a governmental action based on the requirements of CEQA. In fact, you pretty much have to act promptly, if you want to use CEQA to challenge some government activity that might have an adverse impact on the environment. Here's a link to the case that got me thinking about today's blog posting (and about how one of Simon and Garfunkel's most famous songs really captures one of the important tasks of CEQA).
Those reading this blog posting probably know Simon and Garfunkel's famous 59th Street Bridge Song. Click the link at the end of this blog posting and you can hear them sing it. As far as I am concerned, the very first line of the song is what CEQA is all about:
Slow Down, You Move Too Fast
It is my opinion that "slowing down," fully to evaluate the possible environmental impacts of proposed governmental actions, is good for us! That is exactly what CEQA requires.
CEQA also requires a governmental body that proposes to do something that might adversely affect the environment, to respond, directly, to any public comment raising a concern about the proposed action, as part of a legally-required environmental impact review. Again, I, personally, think that's a good thing!
Just in case you haven't had this experience yourself, let me tell you that elected officials often fail to address concerns expressed by members of the public, or comments made by members of the public. Sometimes they do address those comments, of course (that's good politics), but they don't have to. There is no such legal requirement - unless CEQA has kicked in and requires that an EIR be prepared, before project approval. If a development is proposed in your city neighborhood, for instance, and you believe that the proposed project would create a traffic danger, you and a hundred other neighbors can raise that concern by letter, email, and public comment, and the City Council Members hearing your concerns do not have to respond and address those concerns at all, EXCEPT... if the proposed project is subject to CEQA. If it is, then the law will require that comments made in the environmental review process must be addressed and responded to, substantively. If they're not, the courts will reverse any approval of the project.
People are impatient. They don't want to "slow down." They don't want to take the time to require that demonstrable environmental impacts be reviewed (and that they be eliminated, or mitigated to the greatest extent possible, if found to exist). Developers are impatient. Elected officials can be that way, too.
But what's best for the "long run"? I'm with Simon & Garfunkel. What is so often true, as our government starts making decisions, often at the behest of those with a big financial stake in "getting something done," is that we make mistakes, or fail to do our best, because we don't take the time to make sure that we have thought it all through.
There's a remedy for that (in general), as Simon & Garfunkel remind us with their song:
Slow Down, You Move Too Fast
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