Behind the California's Budget Delay: Republican Senators Want Attorney General Brown to Delay Enforcing California Global Warming Laws Unitil 2012

• 68% in this survey of 2500 Californians would be willing to see tougher air pollution standards on commercial and industrial activities even if it made it more costly for those businesses to operate with 18% opposed, and 50% say the same for tougher air pollution standards on agriculture and farming, even with increased costs (to 34% opposed).

• 49% feel the state of California is not doing enough. Only 9% think California is doing "more than enough."

• As for AB 32, the landmark greenhouse gas bill passed by the California legislature last year, 78% of Californians and likely voters support it, including 65% of Republicans. They are out of touch with their own party members, not to mention the Democratic majority in the state and the independent swing voters.

Take a look at what the Republican State Senate Caucus released with their press release yesterday, the 40th day after a budget is supposed to be passed according to our state's Constitution:

"CEQA REFORM

Problem:
California’s need for vital infrastructure is being threatened by the actions by California’s Attorney General Jerry Brown.

The Attorney General has threatened to file lawsuits, and in some cases actually sued counties, infrastructure projects and new housing projects, under California’s Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) for failing to mitigate green house gas emissions. These suits have been filed despite the fact that the regulations has not even adopted. How can California cities counties and businesses obey unwritten regulations?

If successful, there will not be a single city or county in California with a growth plan that complies with the new planning requirements the lawsuit will create outside of the legislative process. Millions of taxpayer dollars intended for roads, schools, parks, and clean water projects will instead be spent on studies, consultants, reports, and litigation.

Solution:

The Senate Republican proposal states that outside groups – including the Attorney General and special interest groups – would not be able to sue under CEQA for failing to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, until the ARB adopts regulations in 2012, in accordance with AB 32."

They don't want Brown, elected Attorney General by the largest majority in the 2006 state election, to take any actions here until 2012!

They also have the gall to talk about "special interest groups." Take a look at the letter that the real special interests sent the Governor and legislature to try to get this special exemption from our laws. You 'll see that it's signed by big oil, the cement folks, and the like. See what the Planning and Conservation League has to say about that letter.

Many of these same folks tried to get a special tax break in what the Republican Assemblymembers demanded to be put in the budget over in the other house. That has been stopped by Senator Perata and others who pronounced that special giveaway dead on arrival--and hopefully it will remain so at this 11th hour.

Take a look at the wild attacks they are making on Brown. They're not just trying to rerun the last election, but they are going back to the reels of Brown's two terms as Governor in the 70's and 80's:

Republican Senate Minority Leader Dick Ackerman has been part of this attack, telling reporters recently: "He's going around and just stopping any development. It's the same thing he did as governor."

Republican Senator Bob Dutton, to make sure you didn't miss his attack on Jerry Brown put up on the Senate Republican site an op ed from the San Bernadino Sun, "Attorney General's Lawsuit An Attack On Taxpayers."

"California’s Attorney General Jerry Brown has always had a penchant for the outrageous and probably always will. You may remember him from when he ran this great state as governor from 1975 to 1983.

His outrageousness as governor ran the gambit from the ridiculous to the regrettable and unfortunately we are still paying the price for some of his decisions three decades ago. He was the governor who appointed the infamous Supreme Court Justice Rose Bird who single-handedly stopped the death penalty and executions in California until she was removed by the voters in 1986."

What has this got to do with California's budget and the price of potatoes?

He goes on:

"He was also the anti-growth governor who turned his back on California’s infrastructure system, which his late father Gov. Edmund Brown helped build while he was governor in the 1960s. That inaction has led to the crumbling of our highways and interstates and is part of the reason why the voters recently supported nearly $20 billion in spending on transportation improvements throughout the state."

Wasn't this the same election that Brown was elected in?

"Well, anti-growth Governor Brown is back, now as Attorney General. He has filed a lawsuit against the County of San Bernardino and charges that its General Plan violates the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Anyone who has witnessed the CEQA process knows that its complex and restrictive mandates pile hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions, of dollars onto the cost of projects. Environmental reports themselves can run thousands of pages long and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to prepare, and once completed are often tied up for years in the courts."

Why have other counties started to factor in greenhouse gases into their plans?

"For an Attorney General who is opposed to growth along with his environmental friends, abuse of the CEQA process is about stopping development in California. They are attempting to subvert the will of the California voters who desperately want to see road improvements and traffic congestion relief that have been ignored for decades. Having lost at the ballot box they believe they can win in the courts."

Excuse me, but who lost at the ballot box? Did the will of the California electorate then put Republicans in charge of the State Senate?

I could go on. Dutton's piece blames Brown for every wrong he believes to have occurred in the last quarter of a century, ignoring the 19 years since Brown left the Governor's office that we have had Republican Governors who must bear some responsibility for whatever he thinks has gone wrong.

Oh, one last thing. Who voted against placing the housing bond on the ballot that these Republicans are complaining about being delayed? Take a look.