Environmental quality: Jobs and Economic Improvement Through Environmental Leadership Act of 2011.

(1) The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) requires a lead agency, as defined, to prepare, or cause to be prepared, and certify the completion of an environmental impact report on a project that it proposes to carry out or approve that may have a significant effect on the environment or to adopt a negative declaration if it finds that the project will not have that effect. CEQA also requires a lead agency to prepare a mitigated negative declaration for a project that may have a significant effect on the environment if revisions in the project would avoid or mitigate that effect and there is no substantial evidence that the project, as revised, would have a significant effect on the environment. The Jobs and Economic Improvement Through Environmental Leadership Act of 2011 authorizes the Governor, until January 1, 2016, to certify projects meeting certain requirements, including the requirement that the project creates high-wage, highly skilled jobs that pay prevailing wages and living wages, for streamlining benefits provided by that act. The act provides that if a lead agency fails to approve a project certified by the Governor before January 1, 2017, then the certification expires and is no longer valid. The act requires a lead agency to prepare the record of proceedings for the certified project concurrent with the preparation of the environmental documents. The act is repealed by its own terms on January 1, 2017. This bill would extend the authority of the Governor to certify a project to January 1, 2018. The bill would provide that the certification expires and is no longer valid if the lead agency fails to approve a certified project before January 1, 2019. If a project is certified by the Governor, the bill would require contractors and subcontractors to pay to all construction workers employed in the execution of the project at least the general prevailing rate of per diem wages and would provide for the enforcement of this requirement. The bill would repeal the act on January 1, 2019. Because the bill would extend the obligation of the lead agency to prepare concurrently the record of proceedings, this bill would impose a state-mandated local program. This bill would, notwithstanding any other law, require a multifamily residential project certified pursuant to the act to provide private vehicle parking spaces that are priced and rented or purchased separately from dwelling units, except as provided. (2) The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement. This bill would provide that no reimbursement is required by this act for a specified reason. (3) This bill would declare that it is to take effect immediately as an urgency statute.