The ongoing debate over changes to the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, has been marked by polarization, exasperation and, more often than not, mutually-assured destruction. Overreaching efforts to gut CEQA’s core environmental protections are met by equally fierce crusades to prevent any significant changes to the law. Every year this political drama plays out in the theater of the Capitol, and every year we see little movement on CEQA in either direction.

Community members showed up in force to make their voices heard at FresnoCOG’s May workshops for their upcoming Regional Transportation Plan.

This entry is cross-posted from TransForm’s blog.

Even as he acknowledged that we are nearing a climate tipping point and that it will take two more years to recover the jobs lost during the Great Recession, Governor Brown yesterday released a budget that punts fighting climate change and tackling a still-sluggish economy to an undisclosed date in the future.

It’s the one year anniversary of Southern California’s groundbreaking SCS/RTP, so I made the pilgrimage to Palm Desert for SCAG’s annual gathering to see how the Sustainable Communities Strategy is playing out in California’s largest and most diverse region.

As regions throughout the state have been developing their first round of Sustainable Communities Strategies, one question that has consistently been asked is: “How do we fund all of these great projects?” And now, with the release of the California Air Resources Board’s Draft Investment Plan for the cap-and-trade program, we are hopeful that regional and local governments may soon have another revenue option.