Gov. Newsom signs housing legislation. (Photo: x.com/GovPressOffice)
Gavin Newsom’s ‘CEQA Reform’ is Gift to Labor Unions, & not affordable housing – Fake News
The housing that will be built by union labor won’t be affordable
By Katy Grimes, July 1, 2025 11:48 am
California’s absurdly strict environmental guidelines and restrictions prevent most large scale projects from ever taking place without legislative intervention. Instead the California Legislature makes annual noise about the need for CEQA reforms, but always kills any sincere attempts at real reform.
This has been going on for decades proving there is no real interest in enacting CEQA reforms, but it makes great headlines.
Monday, California Governor Gavin Newsom claimed he signed “historic legislation to cut red tape, cut through unnecessary CEQA delays, and build more housing faster for Californians.”
Sadly, Gov. Newsom’s so-called CEQA “reform” must be debunked. We’ve been waiting many many years for real reforms to be made to the California Environmental Quality Act, which drives the cost of any construction in California way up.
“I just enacted the most game-changing housing reforms in recent California history,” Gov. Newsom claimed.
Newsom’s claim is fake news – it’s not reform – the CEQA regulations are only going to be lifted for labor union construction. Non-union contractors don’t qualify for CEQA reform.
Yet the vast majority of construction workers in California are nonunion.
A good friend of the Globe, Jon Fleischman of the Flash Report, jumped on Newsom’s claim immediately with “Another Union Takeover – This Time Buried In Housing Bills.“
“You would have to dig into the fine print of legislation signed yesterday to see how non-union business owners and workers got screwed, again.”
Another good friend of the Globe Lance Christensen also weighed in on Newsom’s dubious claims of CEQA reform:
Translation: For the 7 years I’ve been governor, I did the bidding of environmentalists and unions and blocked the ability of people to build homes in California. Now I signed a bill that the news outlets are going to mimic my talking points of “major reforms” that does nothing of the sort. Just like the expedited housing permits in burned out LA…
As the Associated Builders and Contractors clarifies, “the vast majority of construction workers in California choose to work free from union representation, with new data revealing that more than 87% of the state’s private construction workforce is nonunion.”
So the vast majority of contractors in California will not be granted contracts to build “affordable housing,” and the housing that will be built by union labor won’t be affordable.
Fleischman continues:
AB 130 strikes at the heart of competitive free enterprise in California. The bill creates new CEQA exemptions for infill housing developments that meet local zoning and planning standards, but the devil lives in the details, which most media outlets ignore. Section 25 of the legislation exempts housing projects from environmental review while imposing minimum wage requirements and prevailing wage rates on developments that were never subject to these costly mandates—a costly mandate in a bill that purports to make it easier to build housing.
Lance Christensen explains CEQA in this Epoch Times article from March:
Viewed as the Holy Grail of environmental policy, CEQA was signed into law by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan in 1970 in an attempt to allow public input into large government projects. However, a half-century later, numerous lawsuits and ever-evolving legislation have metastasized into a matrix of dizzying regulation and “green tape,” as it were. CEQA is now a major roadblock to building anything in the state, including houses, businesses, hospitals, schools, and factories.
At its core, the law requires state and local agencies to identify significant environmental effects of a project and to avoid or mitigate those effects, if feasible. However, these regulations’ costs often outweigh their benefits and cannot be justified in a business plan. It makes building or rebuilding anything larger than a lemonade stand impossible without navigating endless bureaucratic gobbledygook that may not improve environmental outcomes.
Promises of CEQA reforms from the ruling party have been promised for decades. In 2012, I wrote about just one of those attempts:
Despite promises to pass desperately needed reforms to the California Environmental Quality Act, lawmakers in the state Senate killed the CEQA reform bill co-authored by Assemblyman Jeff Gorell, R-Thousand Oaks.
“The CEQA reform effort that I co-authored was unceremoniously killed today by Senate Democrats, postponing any action till next year,” Gorell posted on Facebook. “Gov. Brown needs to show at least a modicum of leadership on this issue if he truly supports CEQA reform as he states.”
Instead, the Legislature’s practice of passing bills that exempt CEQA for specific projects is Democrats’ preferred way to address the issue. In 2011, lawmakers pushed through two bills at ramrod speed, which expedited the required legal review of any potential CEQA-related court challenges.
The first bill was the proposed downtown Los Angeles football stadium, and the second bill authorized exemptions to selected projects with costs of $100 million or more.
And in 2013, a bill authored by then-Sen. Pres. Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, granting a Sacramento arena development an exemption from the state’s strict environmental laws, greased the skids.
Steinberg insisted at the time that he was only trying to reform the California Environmental Quality Act.
SB 743, is a gut-and-amend bill by Steinberg is titled, “Environmental quality: transit oriented infill projects, judicial review streamlining for environmental leadership development projects, and entertainment and sports center in the City of Sacramento.”
That’s the long way of saying this is not really a CEQA reform bill. It’s a face-saving way out for Steinberg who has been awkwardly intertwined for more than 13 years with the haphazard development of a new sports arena in downtown Sacramento.
After Sacramento officials accelerated approval on this latest arena deal in March, I contacted Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, and asked if he planned on authoring legislation to streamline or bypass the required environmental process for the proposed Sacramento arena. Steinberg’s office denied any plan for a CEQA exemption. However, in order to shoehorn the publicly subsidized arena into downtown Sacramento, this had to be in the cards.
California’s absurdly strict environmental guidelines and restrictions prevent most large scale projects from ever taking place without legislative intervention. But instead of choosing certain projects for exemption, the California Legislature made noise about the need for CEQA reforms, but thus far, has killed any sincere attempts at real reform.
Skip a few years, and in 2019, the Globe reported Dems Squabble On Bill To Expedite California Environmental Review On Development Projects, about a bill to expedite California Environmental Quality Act provisions and judicial reviews on many types of developments, however, it exposed a divide among Democrats in the State Senate.
Notably, Andy Caldwell, executive Director of COLAB in San Luis Obispo County, said, “CEQA must be amended to balance its provisions with economic considerations. Economic vitality and job creation must be considered and appropriately valued in the CEQA process and should be considered an overriding consideration in approving projects.”
Gavin Newsom would never really reform CEQA – he’s too much of a progressive. But that’s the story they are selling to gullible media who don’t ask questions.
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Great photos, so inclusive.
My favorite elements:
>Smiling Scott Wiener, splinting a politically weak, progressive left upper extremity.
>Scott performing a physical assessment.
>Two Ca[li]strophic bay area comrades, in mutual D-party waiver, legislaver nirvana.
Well here it is again, in black and white, thanks to Katy Grimes, her extensive archives, Lance Christensen, and Jon Fleischman: The Worst Governor Ever (Gavin Newsom), has again turned on the extra slime and sleaze machine for ANOTHER huge shameless lie, wherein he is doing something that is the OPPOSITE of what he says it is, that benefits only him and his union donors and hurts everyone else —- all the while confident that no news outlet (except the California Globe) will either catch on to this unmitigated outrage or be willing to report it.
Therefore we need to share this article with every single person and outlet we can get our hands on.
What a guy. Thanks Gov! Enjoy your artificial moment in the fake sun! And be sure to enjoy your liquor! Jerk.
Katy is surely California’s humorous blend of institutional memory, public conscience, and all-around government dots connector.
OH yes. And more!
I have seen some “low-income” housing projects be built as modular components out of state and then shipped to California to be assembled by “prevailing wage” labor. You want to talk about a mess when preconstructed components do not fit together but are assembled together. I have seen 2nd story decks that have been out of level by over an inch and then a flooring material that requires a level floor be applied only to start coming up a month or so after the first tenant moved in. “Low income” housing projects besides being the most expensive price per square foot construction in the state is also plagued with poor quality and substandard materials.
Hal, why am I not surprised?
Katy comes through again with the truth about this bill. I’m not sure what we would do without the California Globe.
Add this to the bill Newsom signed in 2022 to let union members take tax credits for their union dues.
Then the Democrats take union money for their election campaigns. No conflict of interest there, right?
Is that creepy Democrat Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks and creepy Democrat Senator Scott Wiener standing on either side of Hair-gel Hitler Newsom in the photo above? It looks like a spirit cooking session by a coven of demonic Democrats congratulating themselves on implementing another one their satanic schemes?
The only way CEQA is ever really reformed is when it’s eliminated entirely?
LOL, so true, so true
Hey, this article is incorrect. AB 130’s CEQA exemption applies to all urban infill housing that meets zoning rules, regardless of union status; it sets brand‑new minimum hourly wages (~$27–$40) well below existing prevailing‑wage rates. This drew sharp opposition from the State Building & Construction Trades Council, hardly a “gift” to labor‑unions.
Several unions fought the bill precisely because it is not a union‑only carve‑out; they argue the lower wage floor undercuts their members.
Bottom line: The measure may or may not spur enough housing, but its scope is far broader (and friendlier to non‑union contractors) than this article suggests.
Sources
That’s not how I read this section of the AB…
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“This bill would also require specified housing development projects that are subject to this CEQA exemption to be paid prevailing wage rates, as specified, regardless of whether the housing development project is a public work. The bill would require specified projects, including specified projects of 50 units or greater in the City and County of San Francisco, to comply with specified labor standards, extend the liability to a development proponent, as defined, for any debt owed to a wage claimant or third party on the wage claimant’s behalf under specified law, and authorize a joint labor-management cooperation committee to bring an action to enforce the specified requirements, as specified.
Because a lead agency would be required to determine whether a housing development project qualifies for the above-described exemption and because a local government would be required to provide formal notification to California Native American tribes, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program.”
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Dont know which county/city you live in but in SF and Bay Area cities (and most SoCal cities) this in reality means you want a CEQA exemption you are going to be a de-facto union construction site. This another totally Big Labor stich up.
The last paragraph will be the project killer in most counties and quiet a few cities.
A quick look at the make up of the Committee that sponsored the AB (which is interesting in itself), 9 Dems and 3 Republications, that at least 6 of the Democrats are either directly / indirectly supported by Labor Unions or else are suspiciously pro Big Labor. Dark money election funding etc
No reform. Just another Big Labor scam enacted by its paid for lackey in Sacramento.
A rearrangement of the deckchairs on the Titanic that CEQA has become for Labor Union grifters.
I wonder if the removal of CEQA obstacles is going to allow mega corporations to build entire communities without any opposition. The same communities that you can’t buy, because they’re only for rent.