Endorsement: CEQA is a mess. Prop 45 is even messier

Proposition 45 would significantly expedite the CEQA review process for eight categories of projects and potentially make it easier to build  environmentally ruinous projects.

By Chronicle Editorial Board, Opinion Staff

Oct 17, 2026

What’s the most polarizing four-letter word in California politics?

CEQA.

That wasn’t always the case. When then-Gov. Ronald Reagan signed the California Environmental Quality Act into law in 1970, the need could not have been more obvious. Californians were fed up with planners bulldozing low-income neighborhoods and communities of color for miles of polluting freeways. They were horrified by the ecological damage and habitat destruction caused by suburban sprawl. They were tired of top-down infrastructure projects that left communities feeling disempowered and voiceless. 

CEQA laid out a basic protective framework: Before approving a project, government officials needed to evaluate potential negative environmental impacts and identify ways to mitigate or avoid them while providing ample opportunity for public review and input.   

But it didn’t take long for the law to be easily manipulated for ends that had little or nothing to do with the environment.  

NIMBYs used the process to delay new infill housing — driving up costs and reducing the likelihood projects get built. Unions leveraged CEQA to extort favorable labor terms on projects. Courts showed a predisposition for allowing just about anything to become grounds for a CEQA challenge — which is how we ended up with a 2022 lawsuit against a UC Berkeley housing project that effectively branded students as a form of pollution.

This editorial board has repeatedly decried CEQA abuses and has urged politicians to take decisive action. 

In recent years, they have, to a degree.

State lawmakers passed, and Gov. Gavin Newsom signed, bills to, among other things, permit more units on many single-family-home lots, streamline the development of dense housing near transit, exempt almost all infill housing from CEQA and speed up permitting timelines for large clean-energy projects.

But it’s still far too easy to bury certain essential projects in delay, litigation and costly uncertainty.  

Proposition 45, placed on the November ballot via signatures gathered by the California Chamber of Commerce, would significantly expedite the CEQA review process for eight categories of projects its authors deem “essential”: housing, water (other than the Delta tunnel), clean energy (excepting nuclear power), healthcare, public safety, wildfire mitigation, broadband internet access, education and transportation (other than high-speed rail). 

How would the measure aid these kinds of projects?

First, it establishes a litany of strict deadlines — some of which are technically already in CEQA but rarely enforced. Government agencies, for example, would have 30 days to determine whether a project application is complete, 365 days to conduct an environmental review and decide whether to certify it and 90 days to decide on permits. If agencies fail to meet these deadlines, applicants could trigger a public hearing within 60 days, at which time a final decision must be made. Applicants can sue if agencies don’t follow these procedures. 

Prop 45 also significantly reduces paperwork. Government agencies could no longer repeatedly ask developers for more information to determine whether an application is complete — they would have one chance to produce an “exhaustive written corrections list.” Agencies would also be prohibited from changing the criteria or scope of their assessments mid-review. Agencies would no longer have to come up with multiple alternatives to environmentally impactful projects; instead, the applicant would propose just one alternative. The measure also restricts the public comments that can be included in the administrative record. 

Finally, Prop 45 permits courts to halt only portions of a project determined to have “a specific, adverse impact upon public safety.” If courts sign off on an environmental review, no further lawsuits would be allowed. Lawsuits, including appeals, would need to be resolved within 270 days, with a possible 90-day extension. 

In aggregate, these changes are far bigger in scope than any previous CEQA reform. 

Some of the stipulations are eminently reasonable. 

Enforcing deadlines is a no-brainer, as is eliminating excess paperwork and reducing frivolous litigation. Project applicants are not entitled to approvals, but they are entitled to decisions being made in a timely manner. 

Furthermore, some of the projects Prop 45 seeks to streamline — like public transit, bike lanes and infill housing — are objectively good for the environment. They shouldn’t be subject to extreme CEQA scrutiny.

Others, however, are beyond questionable.

Prop 45 applies its streamlining process to freeway expansions and greenfield housing development in wildfire zones. And why does it specifically exempt the one transportation project that arguably needs the most help: California’s voter-approved high-speed rail, which is years behind schedule and billions over budget thanks in part to costly CEQA challenges?

Poll testing, said Emma Manoukian Chung, a strategist for the Yes on Prop 45 campaign. There was “voter appetite” for freeways and sprawl, but not high-speed rail. 

But throwing a grab bag of poll-tested projects together and suggesting they should be evaluated on substantially similar terms is neither reasonable nor good policy. 

Huge infrastructure projects — such as freeways and dams — have fundamentally different environmental impacts than infill housing. And infill housing has different environmental consequences than single-family homes in car-centric, high-wildfire-risk zones. 

It makes no sense to apply the same scrutiny and deadlines to each.

It’s also unclear whether Prop 45 applies to data centers. Opponents insist the “broadband internet access” category leaves open the possibility, while proponents insist that it doesn’t. 

Ultimately, that question will likely have to be answered through litigation — ironically, the very thing Prop 45 is trying to curb. 

It’s also ironic that Prop 45, despite aiming to reduce uncertainty, actually creates much more of it.

“This is deep, deep, deep in the weeds of environmental law,” Chris Elmendorf, a UC Davis law professor and one of California’s preeminent CEQA experts, told us. “It’s a super complicated body of law that they’re trying to change, trying to make it easier to build stuff.

“Some of the changes are good and some may be bad, and who knows what kind of second-order effects they will have?”  

That’s why the state Legislature is best suited to handle complicated, nuanced policy, tweaking laws as needed — unlike the all-or-nothing blunt instrument of the ballot box. 

“An initiative should be considered a last resort … when the Legislature is doing nothing,” Prop 45 opponent Darrell Steinberg, a former Sacramento mayor and state Senate leader, told us. But, he said, “just the opposite” is occurring. 

We agree. 

Lawmakers need to craft more fundamental CEQA reforms, particularly when it comes to housing, transportation and green energy projects. Some of those solutions are contained within Prop 45.

But the measure as written would lock California into a regulatory regime that makes it easier to build the same environmentally ruinous projects that gave us CEQA in the first place. 

Prop 45 is poll-tested political Swiss cheese, not a thoughtful effort to produce better outcomes. Vote no.