(Jenesse has done a lot of outreach on this issue for the CA League of Conservation Voters. You can find this story on their blog here. – promoted by Brian Leubitz)

Dan Walters recently called out several of the “mushroom bills” making their way through the state legislature in the Sacramento Bee’s Capitol Alert, including one to exempt a billionaire developer’s football stadium from the environmental impact process:

“A marker of a legislative session’s final days is the emergence of legislative language that lobbyists circulate, hoping to get them enacted before opposition can develop.

Known as ‘mushroom bills’ because of they sprout in darkness, these are measures that probably could not pass through the ordinary process because of their controversial nature… As the final week begins, a number of mushroom bills are floating around the Capitol, including one that the City of Industry wants to exempt its planned football stadium from the usual environmental impact process. It’s aimed at short-circuiting opposition to developer Ed Roski Jr.’s stadium plan from nearby cities, which say they will bear the impacts of traffic and other side effects if professional football is played in Industry.

Industry has hired a squad of well-connected lobbyists to pass the stadium measure and also promote its scheme to allow cities to extend soon-to-expire redevelopment projects in return for allowing the state to shift some redevelopment funds to the deficit-ridden state budget.”

(I’d like to point out, they’re not only called mushroom bills because they grow in darkness, but because they grow in… well, something that stinks.) The LA Times’ Garrett Therolf wrote about the L.A. County supervisors opposition to the environmental waivers on the proposed NFL stadium: http://www.latimes.com/news/lo…

The state legislature has gotten an earful from the environmental community about this particular smelly mushroom bill. In a letter sent to leadership last week, several environmental groups, including Sierra Club California, Natural Resources Defense Council, California League of Conservation Voters, and several others signaled their strong opposition to “eleventh-hour schemes to circumvent environmental laws” as the legislative session comes to an end.  

In a week where the state legislature is debating a historic water package, they also, completely out of public view, are pushing through a CEQA exemption on a project that, according to one lawsuit, hasn’t identified the source of its water supply.  

The letter is excerpted below the flip. Let’s hope the legislature, which is suffering extraordinary low approval numbers, does the right thing and rejects this mushroom bill.

“With one week to go in the legislative session, the Capitol is knee-deep in eleventh-hour schemes to circumvent environmental laws.  In only the last few days, proposals have surfaced to grant a CEQA exemption by statute to a billionaire real estate developer who wants to build a professional football stadium in the City of Industry.”

“Regarding the proposal for a CEQA exemption, we understand that one reason for the proposal is that it will create jobs.  Environmental organizations agree that the state’s high unemployment rate is devastating families and is unacceptable and support the creation of good jobs in California.  These groups are vigorously supporting legislation to establish a renewable electricity requirement (AB 64 and SB 14) that will create thousands of high-paying green jobs in new, clean technologies.  And environmental groups and the State Building and Construction Trades Council are co-sponsoring legislation (AB 1404) to ensure that AB 32 offsets will stay in California and create green jobs for the state’s economy.”

“Nor do these groups oppose large construction projects like a football stadium.  What we oppose are eleventh-hour amendments to exempt a massive construction project in the midst of a heavily urbanized area from the state’s most basic environmental protection and public right-to-know law.  By definition, with one week to go in the session, there simply will not be time for adequate public hearings, and the staging of perfunctory and rushed hearings will not change that fact.”  

“Perhaps most fundamentally, we oppose the suggestion that the construction of a football stadium must be a choice between jobs and the environment.  Obviously, the building of Mr. Roski’s football stadium will create jobs whether or not it is subjected to CEQA review.  The only question is whether the jobs will come at the expense of the public’s right to participate in the review of the project and the environmental impacts that will be overlooked by exempting the project from CEQA.  Mr. Roski certainly did not discover only this week that his proposed football stadium would be subject to CEQA.  In fact, proponents have been seeking a CEQA exemption for months, and the idea first surfaced during the February budget negotiations.  Mr. Roski had ample time to pursue a bill through the open legislative process. This is not an emergency that needs immediate attention; instead a billionaire is demanding immediate action to his manufactured crisis.”

“These proposals are bad public policy.  The timing of these proposals is bad legislative governance.”

Let’s hope the legislature, which is suffering extraordinary low approval numbers, does the right thing and rejects this mushroom bill.