California lawmakers exempt their new office building from state environmental law
ByMackenzie Mays and Taryn Luna : latimes –
excerpt
SACRAMENTO —
Tucked into a sprawling budget plan the California Legislature approved Wednesday night was a last-minute exemption from the state’s landmark environmental law that lawmakers granted to themselves
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As part of a $297.7-billion spending plan the Legislature sent Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday, a bill [SB 174] created just days earlier allocates $700 million to the Capitol renovation and exempts the project from the environmental law. Lawmakers passed the budget as Newsom arrived in Atlanta to attend the presidential debate as a surrogate for the Biden campaign. He’s expected to return to Sacramento on Friday and must sign the budget before it takes effect on Monday…
The project involves tearing down the 70-year-old portion of the building known as the “annex” — which contained the governor’s office suite, committee hearing rooms and offices for dozens of lawmakers — and replacing it with a larger, more accessible structure. The main part of the Capitol, which was originally built in the 1800s and includes the rotunda as well as the Assembly and Senate chambers, was restored in the 1980s and remains open to the public while the office wing is under construction.
Then-Gov. Jerry Brown approved the project in 2018; although demolition has already taken place, construction has been delayed by lawsuits over the preservation of the Capitol park’s impressive array of trees, historic architecture and access to the west lawn, the site of many protests and news conferences.…(more)
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