State BTH Cabinet Secretary McPeak Endorses "Anti-Dumb Growth"

It is a pleasure to be able to join Assemblymember Harman and

Assemblymember Wiggins in presenting the California smart growth story. The time is right to be addressing this topic and time is of the essence to reach sustainable solutions. But there is a history that brings us here and it is worth reflecting on that.

At least two previous administrations have engaged on this issue. Governor Wilson, who worked with Carol Whiteside on what was called "growth management" at the time, engaged on the issue. And, certainly Governor Davis was an advocate, starting the California Legacy Project under Mary Nichols, which continues today under the leadership of Mike Chrisman. There have been people toiling in the vineyards for a very long time in California. And those of us who are now serving in Gov. Schwarzenegger's cabinet have been under their tutelage for many, many years.

To the extent that we are poised to make something happen in California, it's generally founded on a legacy of hard work, real learning, and sometimes learning the lessons of failure in trying to figure out how to do it right. We are poised to move ahead because we've got the will. We've got the will in the Legislature, we've got the will in the Governor's Office, and I look around and I see all of you here today.

I have been at this business of anti-dumb growth, trying to figure out how to grow differently, for two-and-a-half decades. We were using the term "growth management" for a long time in my county, then "livable communities," then "sustainable development," and more recently, "smart growth." We've only recently started to use the term "anti-dumb growth" and I'm going to explain why.

The right terminology matters, which was the observation from Utah's visioning experience. It's trying to figure out how to capture enough people who identify with shared values to make business sense out of doing business differently. And that's the challenge before us.

We have an imperative. At least, I know that I do from Gov. Schwarzenegger, who has appointed himself the "jobs czar." He is very focused on jobs, jobs, jobs, and the economy. But, if you go to his website, joinarnold.com, you will find the environmental action plan, which features a lot of language on growth, transportation, and housing. The governor and the first lady are very concerned about people and social equity, if you will.

As a cabinet of secretaries, we have generally coalesced around a compelling conclusion that the dollars we are putting into infrastructure are not getting a high enough return on investment. By that, I mean that we are not getting enough mobility or improvement in competitive advantage. We know we are not providing enough housing for people in this state. We know that we are impacting critical habitat and valuable farmland is being converted to residential forms. We still are seeing increases in our air pollution emissions. And, we still have pockets of poverty. All of those land use patterns spell "dumb growth" to us. And so, we've said we've got to get a handle on it and do something that is the opposite. And the terms advanced over the years have a division of acceptance.

Housing advocates divide themselves into two camps: those who like the term "smart growth" and those who don't. Those who don't like the term smart growth see it as the latest fad for trying to shut down growth and to oppose housing. And so let's try to figure out what's causing this pattern of land use that some call sprawl – we prefer to label it as inefficient or inappropriate development. Let's try to formulate an initiative that integrates the efforts of all of our cabinet agencies in the state and advance a better way of growing.

The real question is, can we physically grow in a way to adequately and responsibly accommodate our population increase and our workforce? Can we grow differently to preserve and enhance California's quality of life and economic competitiveness? And I'm going to tell you the answer is a resounding "yes."

As I look around the room, we have all of the wisdom we need. But, we have to figure out how to stitch it together, and that is no easy task. We in the administration have not been empowered to negotiate with the legislators. We have conversations when we're invited in. So Assemblyman Tom Harman, Assemblywoman Pat Wiggins, other legislators and I have had those conversations.

In California, the three ‘E's of smart growth are finding their way into our documents, into our policy discussions, and into the testimony that we submit. The three ‘E's are: economy, environment, and equity. In order to have smart growth, we need a prosperous economy, a quality environment, and social equity. In a simple-minded way, it's sharing more of the economy, and quality of environment with a greater base of people. It is something that you will see over and over again in the documents that are coming from the administration. But it's also something we've missed in the smart growth or anti-dumb growth dialogue. We haven't paid adequate attention to the role played by an adequate housing supply in the right place.

What has been causing the inefficient land use patterns and the spillover of housing in the Bay Area to the Central Valley or to the San Joaquin Valley? From San Diego to Riverside, and from Los Angeles and Orange into the Inland Empire? Jurisdictions in those regions have not accommodated housing to match their population increases and job generation. And we have a system of land use planning that is rather toothless and does not require that every jurisdiction care for their own workforce.

We continue to assume and support the concept that land use authority should reside at the local level, but these decisions should also be made within a context that pursues the state's interest of a prosperous economy, a quality environment and social equity. There cannot be one trumping the other.

It turns out that infrastructure challenges of transportation, water, and energy don't stop at the borders of cities and counties. You've got to have a coalescing of local effort to enlighten self-interest at a regional level. Foundations such as the California Center for Regional Leadership have formed in this state to organize planning at a regional level around the three ‘E's. We've got a foundation or platform for working with those regional plans.

We currently have a cabinet working group with ten members. We'd like to start by looking at what each of the different agencies do differently to help local government and regions. We are going to do everything that we possibly can to get a change in housing policy by the end of this session. And there is a sense of urgency.

The governor and the first lady care deeply about the obesity epidemic and physical fitness. So our agenda looks to promote healthy, walkable communities. You can measure that in terms of reduction in the single- occupancy vehicle trips generated by each unit, which is a goal of the BTH.

For transportation, we need to have more mode choices. We need to have an integrated multi-modal regional transportation system that will actually improve mobility in the next twenty years as opposed to just spending a whole lot of money and not being able to improve mobility. On this front, I can assure you that Governor Schwarzenegger is committed to rebuilding the state.

If you compare where we were in the January budget proposal to the May revise, every extra last cent is being invested in infrastructure, but in a different way than it was in the past. We've been directed to review all of the transportation investments and to look at how we can get a higher return, which comes right back to land use. Through thoughtful land use, we can make sure whatever dollars we are spending in transportation will serve more people– more employers, more workers, and more residents.

Secretary Chrisman in the Resources Agency is working on the Legacy Project, informing local government as to what our most critical environmental assets are.

Secretary Kawamura in Agriculture is working on identifying our most valuable and productive farmland, about 90% of which is under cultivation today. It's not everything, but it's land that we don't want to have urbanized in the foreseeable future. This involves aligning our Workforce Investment Act funds to the regional economies.

We're also looking at encouraging the integration of human services into neighborhoods. Clearly, we've got to put a priority on how we take state bond dollars and assist strategic investments in neighborhoods, especially in neighborhood schools.

We need to be mindful of the fact that we've got pockets of concentrated poverty throughout the state. The San Joaquin Valley is a very large area of concentrated poverty by demographics. We need to figure out how strategically to direct the state's investments from CalPERS and CalSTRS to achieve social gains while maintaining economically viable rates of return to satisfy the fiduciary responsibility of the fund managers.

Secretary Chrisman mentioned earlier that we're going to engage in a conflict in California over the California Environmental Quality Act. In 1972, Democratic Assemblyman Jack Knox authored CEQA and Republican Assembly Speaker Bob Monagan sponsored the legislation. Today, both of them will tell you that CEQA is not anything like what they thought it was going to be. The goal of protecting our environment is very laudable. But the reality is that we're spending about $1 billion doing environmental impact reports and in litigation. This is an expenditure of dollars that we need to figure out how to capture for the environment, rather than being tied up in paper exercises.

We don't have any money, so we've got to figure out how to make the most out of the resources we have. We think it could be a real incentive if we were to use a performance-based self-certification of housing elements. This is only possible when there is greater clarity of what the obligation is of local governments, and we are actually targeting our transportation dollars to get the best return. These are very hard conversations we are having with a lot of project sponsors and regional hosts of transportation projects.

One way to solve this problem is to have up front integrative plans-land use, housing, transportation, and resource plans-at a countywide and regional level within a master EIR. Under this scenario, any development that is consistent with the plan for a certain period of time does not have to do an EIR. Those counties or regions would then be empowered to establish an environmental enhancement fund, where instead of doing the EIR, project sponsors contribute a certain percentage of the value of their project to that fund. Then we would finally find some resources that would make sense.

Lastly, we were thoroughly glad as a cabinet that SURDNA, the Funder's Network and CCRL were looking at California. We hope that you find that we are a great opportunity here and that you invest in us, because we desperately need the help.

It is our great hope that we will be able to partner with the Legislature and all of the leaders in California to figure out how to grow this golden state in a way that offers a prosperous economy, environmental quality and social equity for the people of this state.