27-05-2025
- Business
- San Francisco Chronicle
California environmental law nearly killed a childcare facility in our community. Enough is enough
Like many communities, Napa County faces a severe childcare shortage — 1 in 4 childcare facilities closed during the pandemic. That has left parents with only one licensed childcare slot for every four children under age 5 and one licensed infant care slot for every nine infants in our county.
For many parents, that's forced some difficult choices. In our role as Napa County supervisors, we recently heard one mother testify that due to unavailable childcare, she routinely had to bring her infant son with her to the vineyard where she works as a manager, though she knew it was unsafe.
High-quality, affordable childcare is a top priority for our community. That's why we were encouraged last year when Le Petit Elephant, a locally owned childcare provider, proposed converting an old church into a childcare facility.
The expansion would double Le Petit Elephant's capacity to 250 slots — restoring more than half of the slots lost during the pandemic — all while staying within the footprint of an existing building. The Napa City Council and Planning Commission both approved the project, and the county the state provided $2.7 million in combined funds to make it a reality.
Then, this hopeful story ran into the harsh reality of California's outdated permitting system.
Shortly after the project was approved, a few of its neighbors sued under the California Environmental Quality Act, known as CEQA, to stop its construction. Despite broad political support for the project, a few opponents citing traffic concerns derailed it with a yearlong delay and costly litigation.
Thankfully, the parties eventually resolved the lawsuit with a settlement. But that delay came with a steep cost.
In addition to paying $100,000 in legal fees, Le Petit Elephant's owner, Milli Pintacsi, had to pay $600,000 in fees and interest to replace a pre-approved $6.6 million small business loan, her team told us. She's still trying to replace the loan, and the project can't be built without it. The settlement also requires that the new childcare slots be phased in over three years, meaning dozens of families will have no options for the affordable infant and childcare they need now.
This unfortunate outcome leads us to ask: Why does CEQA give a few individuals de facto veto power over a project that a majority of the community wants and needs?
It's reasonable to be concerned about traffic and other environmental impacts, and residents should absolutely have a voice — a megaphone, even. But CEQA now goes beyond that: It hands opponents the procedural equivalent of a jackhammer.
Is this really the path to better planning?
No. And it doesn't have to be this way.
Napa's experience underscores why a meaningful update to CEQA is long overdue. And California lawmakers now have a historic opportunity to modernize the law.
A new bill authored by state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, SB607, would help prevent costly delays and lawsuits against projects with minimal environmental impacts. Among other benefits, the bill would raise the legal standard for challenging environmental reviews in court, requiring substantial evidence to proceed.
To file suit under today's CEQA, opponents of the childcare center expansion didn't need to provide any actual evidence that the project would have a significant environmental impact — it was enough to assert that such impacts could happen. Passing SB607 would require more evidence before a legal challenge can move forward and would make projects like Le Petit Elephant less vulnerable to expensive litigation. This will mean that when projects do face legal challenges, they will be more focused on real environmental impacts, not conjecture.
SB607 is the first comprehensive attempt in decades to fix CEQA's structural problems, and it would help communities across the state avoid the problems we've had in Napa.
Yes, our region is known for its agricultural protections and environmental stewardship. And we value CEQA's original purpose: to ensure that government understands and mitigates significant environmental impacts of projects.
But over the past 50 years, CEQA's scope has been dramatically expanded by the courts. While we fully support scrutiny of serious environmental threats, CEQA is now so broad that anyone can tie up virtually any project in court for years. The law has recently been used to block an expansion of the Alameda Food Bank, a new Planned Parenthood clinic in South San Francisco, and even wind farms and affordable housing. The mere threat of litigation under CEQA is derailing many worthwhile projects — especially those in low-margin sectors like childcare. Fear of an expensive lawsuit plays too big a role in what is and is not possible to build in California.
For decades, state lawmakers have tried to fix CEQA through narrow exemptions — for example, to make it easier to build student housing or near bus lanes. While well-intentioned, this piecemeal, Swiss cheese approach is unsustainable. Dozens of narrow exemptions passed over decades have made CEQA so complicated that anyone who wants to build something to make California a better place is practically forced to keep a trial lawyer on retainer.
We need comprehensive reform to make the law less subjective and easier to understand and follow. That's the essence of good policymaking.
Moreover, CEQA's current application actually undermines the power of local governments to do what's best for residents. Local lawmakers like us are elected to approve good projects and allocate public resources in our community's best interest. When outdated legal processes block well-planned projects that serve real community needs, people rightly lose faith in government's ability to deliver results.
SB607 gives state lawmakers the chance to restore that trust by better balancing environmental protection with the practical needs — like housing and childcare — of our communities. We urge them to seize this opportunity.
