Wiener’s legislative changes are primarily designed to reduce the amount of time citizens have to review and appeal environmental impacts to proposed development projects. Wiener seeks to restrict appeals regarding projects to a short time period, so that government and project developers can then go behind closed doors to modify projects without further citizen oversight.

The Planning Department receives approximately 90% of its operating income from developer’s fees. The uncertainty of the public environmental appeals process is considered to be “bothersome,”as appeals cost the Planning Department time, and money....The Planning Department is already brimming with excess cash. According to Keith DeMartini, the department’s financial manager, “We’re projecting better than a $6 million surplus by the end of the fiscal year. We’ve seen more volume of development and more large projects.”

In 1971, the State of California passed an environmental bill of rights called the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). CEQA became law because many California developers and city projects were deemed environmentally harmful. Prior to 1971, the public had little legal say over — and no way to appeal —environmental impact decisions concerning private and public development projects.

CEQA allows citizens to “look before we leap,” protecting us from projects that may either harm the environment, public health, or our quality of life, by requiring project proponents to disclose and minimize environmental impacts. The law also helps citizens find better environmental alternatives to proposed projects. San Francisco is the only city or county in California where every permit is discretionary, meaning that in San Francisco, a CEQA appeal can occur for any planning permit.

Attorney Mary Miles may have said it best in her November 15 letter to the Planning Commission: “The purpose of [Wiener’s] proposed ordinance is to ‘streamline’ approvals, by denying the public adequate time to appeal actions of the Planning Commission and other decision-making bodies to the Board of Supervisors, by limiting the public’s right to be heard, by imposing restrictions on such appeals that violate CEQA, and by imposing burdens that limit the public’s right to participate in the CEQA process. The proposed legislation defeats CEQA’s principal purposes of informed self-government, participation in the decision-making process, and protection of the environment.”

Excerpted from George Wooding's article “Supervisor Wiener’s Attempt to Gut CEQA Appeals”