California Environmental Quality Act: public higher education: campus population.

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 (EIR) on a project that the lead agency 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. Existing law makes the selection of a location for a particular campus of public higher education and the approval of a long-range development plan subject to CEQA, requires preparation of an EIR, and requires environmental effects relating to changes in enrollment levels to be considered for each campus or medical center of public higher education in the EIR prepared for the long-range development plan. Existing law makes the approval of a project on a particular campus or medical center of public higher education subject to CEQA and authorizes it to be addressed in a tiered environmental analysis based upon a long-range development plan EIR. This bill would delete the provision requiring the environmental effects relating to changes in enrollment levels be considered in the EIR prepared for the long-range development plan. The bill would provide that enrollment or changes in enrollment, by themselves, do not constitute a project for purposes of CEQA. The bill would authorize the court, if the court determines that increases in campus population exceed the projections adopted in the most recent long-range development plan and analyzed in the supporting EIR, and those increases result in significant environmental impacts, to order the campus or medical center to prepare a new, supplemental, or subsequent EIR. The bill would authorize the court, if a new, supplemental, or subsequent EIR has not been certified within 18 months of the court's order, to enjoin increases in campus population that exceed the projections adopted in the most recent long-range development plan and analyzed in the supporting EIR, as provided. The bill would specify that any injunction or judgment in effect as of the effective date of this bill suspending or otherwise affecting enrollment is unenforceable. The bill would specify that the above provisions apply retroactively to any decision related to enrollment or changes in enrollment made before the effective date of this bill. This bill would appropriate $50,000 from the General Fund to the Regents of the University of California for purposes of this act for the 2021–22 fiscal year. This bill would declare that it is to take effect immediately as a bill providing for appropriations related to the Budget Bill.