Executive Director's Column:
SB 375 - With so much on the line, it’s time to focus on outcomes

Last week, I attended what might have been the 3 billionth workshop held in California focused on discussing SB 375, the State’s landmark legislation aimed at linking land use and transportation decision-making in order to reduce vehicle miles traveled and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. GHG emissions reductions are the objective of California’s AB 32, which strives to reduce the State’s total GHG’s to 1990 levels by the year 2020. Through SB 375, regional planning agencies are tasked with the responsibility of developing plans that will reduce a relatively small portion (about 3 percent) of the total GHG emissions reductions called for in AB 32.

Certainly by now, we all understand that implementing SB 375 is a process, not an outcome. And after more than a year of dialogue, it is clear that we are really hung up on the process part of it.  We remain relatively baffled about what SB 375 really is and how it will be implemented.  We still do not know what SB 375’s impacts will be on local land use and what transportation decision-making will consist of.  We cannot answer the question about how a jurisdiction might have to comply with SB 375’s required Sustainable Communities Strategy (SCS).  We are uncertain about what a completed SCS will look like or how much it will cost to prepare.  We are unsure about whether any clean-up legislation will come along to address shortcomings and concerns.  We do not have adequate modeling to measure and assess GHG emissions reductions from revised land use and/or transportation policies, plans or decisions.  Many of the agencies which supported SB 375 did so with an understanding (even an expectation) that clarifications to concerns and uncertainties would be addressed through clean-up legislation in 2009.  That did not happen.  Now, considering the State’s continuing budget woes and the high level of attention it will require, there is little hope that lawmakers will give meaningful attention to an SB 375 clean-up package that can help us to adequately understand, fund, prepare and implement plans and policies consistent with SB 375’s SCS requirements.  Those uncertainties are contributing factors to the WRCOG Executive Committee’s recent decision to not assume full responsibility for preparing a subregional SCS, as allowed by SB 375.   Let’s face it; the process part of this stinks.

Despite SB 375 and our concerns about it, we all know what is at stake here. It is our future.  It is the outcome.  We need to think long and hard about how best to accommodate 6 million more people in a way that can maintain – and even improve – the quality of life in this region.  It is not likely that the next 6 million who live here can be housed, transported, educated and employed in the same way we did for the first 16 million.  Even if we could, indications suggest that we shouldn’t.  Demographics and lifestyle preferences are changing, funding for infrastructure cannot keep pace with growth, educational demands and financing woes are at a critical juncture, and energy and water availability and costs loom ominously as we consider future growth. 

These issues are going to require regional dialogue and development of outcomes, with or without SB 375.  But with Regional Transportation Plan deadlines looming (into which SCS Plans are to be incorporated), the need for local, subregional and regional collaboration and commitment to develop an understandable, implementable, and successful SCS cannot be overstated, regardless of the clumsy process that must be endured to get there.  It has repeatedly been mentioned that the best thing about SB 375 is that its passage has spurred discussions about the future among planners and policymakers in the region at levels never experienced before in Southern California.  Let’s use this opportunity to see if we can develop an outcome.  Perhaps, then, the process  will get a little easier.