CEQA's enemies: Rattlesnakes in coyote clothing

 
 
State Sen. Tom Berryhill, a Republican calling Twain Harte his home at least during this legislative season, has taken over leadership of the anti-California Environmental Quality Act forces since former Sen. Michael Rubio, R-Wasco, ditched the state Senate for a lobbying job with Chevron. The Berryhills are a clan of wrong, blunt speaking Republicans who have been representing parts of the north San Joaquin Valley for decades. 
 
Berryhill warmed up in a March 12 statement to the press with the following nonsequitor: “It is pretty much acknowledged in Sacramento that CEQA needs updating. After all, if it were an easy process there would be no need for the Legislature to waive CEQA to get a football stadium built, right?" Many people, particularly neighbors of the proposed stadium, might righly inquire: "Isn't CEQA designed to compel careful deliberation by local land-use authorities on projects, particularly the size and with the complex impacts of a sports stadium in a heavily populated area of Southern California." -- Mariposa Sierra Sun Times, March 12, 2013
 
"When it comes to the regular guy in Fresno trying to build something it is an entirely different story," Berryhill continued. "The process is so cumbersome and loaded with frivolous lawsuits and delays that nothing moves forward. What we see are groups that have little to do with the environment using CEQA to stall projects, increase the expense for a competitor, negotiate a better labor contract – none of these things have a whit to do with the environment. That is what needs to be addressed so that people get put back to work.”
 
To this one only has to ask: Sen. Berryhill, If the CEQA process was "so cumbersome and loaded with frivolous lawsuits and delays," etc. how is it that the area you and your relatives have represented for so long happened to be the epicenter for the real estate boom that turned into the global financial crisis and local bust, threatening bankruptcies for some of the same local land-use jurisdictions who gleefully with mean glints in their eyes trampled CEQA, the federal Endangered Species Act and other resource regulations whenever it stood between them and the projects of the finance, insurance and real estate special interests who bought them as they bought you and your family long ago?
 
Huh?