Is there hope for California, after all?

California is catching the deregulation bug. The state legislature has apparently realized that people need houses too, and sometimes the endangered insects have got to go. On Monday, Gavin Newsom signed a bill streamlining permitting for building projects mired in environmental review. 

About time, says Cockburn. Consider for a moment the California High-Speed Rail, a project to connect San Francisco and Los Angeles, which has yet to emerge from environmental clearance despite starting in 1996. The budget has multiplied, in the meantime, from $30 billion to $100 billion. The segment just from San Francisco to San Jose, where the train would use pre-existing Caltrain rail, almost limped across the permitting finish line in 2021. But then the monarch butterfly was added to the endangered species list. While no one claims to have actually seen a butterfly around the Millbrae station (Cockburn once languished on this slab of concrete for an hour without wildlife respite), the Rail Authority decided that in that particular place the “monarch butterfly is assumed to be present… based on historical records and existence of suitable habitat for the species.” After 26 years, though, the segment finally received environmental approval.

As might be imagined, the environmental permitting process has been as conducive to homebuilding as to rail projects. 

Cockburn had long ago consigned California to the socialist-lite sojourn of his neighbors up north in New York City (there, aspirant mayor Zohran Mamdani promises to fix the housing shortage with such tried-and-true ideas as rent freezes and a $70 billion budget for subsidized housing). But instead of freezing rents, the California bill freezes building code regulations, which otherwise multiply like mice. It requires a measure of accountability for government-funded homeless shelters – which are operated with the efficiency of a DMV – instead of building state-run grocery stores.

The state legislature could not forsake its leftist loyalties completely. It doubled the tax credit for low-income renters and threw a few hundred million dollars at vaguely named homelessness programs. But the bill is pretty good for California’s first recent attempt at being reasonable.

In Trumpian fashion, Governor Newsom celebrated his long labor of paper-signing with an X post: “I just enacted the most game-changing housing reforms in recent California history.” He tried being a libertarian for a day. Game-changing, indeed.