September 2, 2026
Hypocrisy alert!
As it fights a modest ballot measure that would make it easier to build desperately-needed housing and other essential projects in California, one of the state’s most powerful labor groups was simultaneously negotiating a backroom deal in the Legislature to get even more aggressive reform enacted to build a sports stadium.
Why would the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California oppose reform in one instance but embrace it in another?
Power. Environmentalists and NIMBYs abuse the process to kill development; unions abuse it as a negotiating tactic.
The Building Trades, as the group is colloquially known, supported a murky gut-and-amend process to turn a stale bill regulating where human remains could be dumped into a bill paving the way for the Midway Rising sports arena and housing development in San Diego.
The bill, Senate Bill 344, sailed through the Legislature with limited input from the public. Proposition 45, on the other hand, will be voted on by millions of Californians after gathering around one million voter signatures to put it on the ballot in the first place.
Prop. 45, supported by the California Chamber of Commerce, simply streamlines the environmental review process under the California Environmental Quality Act so that essential projects can’t get dragged out indefinitely. Prop. 45 imposes tighter deadlines on project reviews and lawsuits, but, unlike SB 344, which shielded the project from CEQA litigation, it preserves judicial review.
And the labor protections are hardly the difference. Midway Rising is being built under a project labor agreement. Prop. 45 similarly requires projects using its streamlined process to meet prevailing wage and workforce standards already established in California law – the very standards the Building Trades have championed for years.
Yet, the Building Trades have already spent around $2 million fighting Prop. 45, with President Chris Hannan calling it an “attempt to dismantle key protections under California’s landmark environmental law.”
At the same time, SB 344, which goes considerably farther, was hailed as a worthwhile attempt to address “the housing crisis that has been decades in the making,” according to a lobbyist representing the Building Trades.
Apparently CEQA reform is only fine when the Building Trades want it.
The real difference is leverage. Prop. 45 locks in the labor standards the Building Trades have long fought for — but it also limits the union’s ability to hold up development to extract extra concessions project by project. SB 344 gets a favored project built while preserving the union’s power to hold the next project hostage.
CEQA is a major impediment to building housing and other projects. That’s why developments like sports stadiums and so-called affordable housing projects routinely seek CEQA relief. The process takes too long, is too expensive and gets weaponized by activist groups trying to kill or delay projects.
Labor unions are different, though. They aren’t opposed to building – they’re opposed to building without them dictating terms. And here’s the irony: working Californians, including most Building Trades members, are getting crushed by the very housing shortage their leadership is fighting to perpetuate. Prop. 45 would mean more housing and more construction jobs. But union leadership would rather protect its leverage, while their rank-and-file members face higher housing costs.
Either way, reform is long overdue if California wants a future with housing in it. That’s why former Gov. Jerry Brown called CEQA reform “the Lord’s work.” CEQA itself is one of the biggest causes of the state’s housing crisis and it stands in the way of building other essentials, like renewable energy production and water storage.
Powerful special interests are more interested in retaining power than addressing problems. The hypocrisy shown by the Building Trades in supporting SB 344 and opposing Prop. 45 proves this for all to see.
So no, CEQA reform was never about the environment for the Building Trades. It’s about power — and who gets to keep it.
Matt Fleming is a columnist for the Southern California News Group. Write to him at FlemingWords@gmail.com