Adopted state budget includes SEQRA reform

Gov. Kathy Hochul recently signed the state budget for the upcoming fiscal year after months of negotiations between legislators and lobbyists. The approved $269 billion budget includes increased funding for childcare, restrictions on ICE activity, and reform to the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA), to encourage quicker development.

The environmental review law requires municipalities to “equally examine the environmental impacts along with the social and economic considerations” that a project, such as a housing or commercial development, may have on the surrounding area during the planning stage.

The approved amendments to the law now include exemptions from environmental review for housing developments on “previously disturbed sites” that are already connected to water and sewage systems, as well as for housing developments with a maximum of 100 units.

“Previously disturbed sites” include areas that haven’t been developed for two years prior, not located in FEMA 100-year floodplains, and have not been used for agricultural purposes for three of the last five years.

“Red tape and duplicative reviews have stopped New York from doing the very building that made us the envy of the world, making our housing more expensive and our infrastructure outdated—that ends today,” Gov. Hochul said.

The governor’s office added that the state environmental review process can add up to two years to building developments, and that SEQRA reviews increase the cost of building housing by around $82,000 per unit in New York City alone.

Local environmentalists have been concerned about the added exemptions from SEQRA, with some feeling that the sweeping reform will allow for increased development with unknown consequences.

David Ansel, vice president of water protection at Save the Sound, has been representing local environmental groups, including his own, in Albany, to inform lawmakers about their concerns.

“We’re disappointed about the amendments,” Ansel said regarding the approved SEQRA reform.

Ansel said the wording of the reform makes it unclear which projects are required to undergo SEQRA review, and that without such review, residents and local legislators may be unaware of which projects are going up around them and whether they fit into their surroundings.

Ansel also pointed to the addition of unused agricultural land to SEQRA exemptions as an area of concern. And with Suffolk County’s east end lined with farms and fields, those impacts could be felt locally.

“That could create huge incentives for people who’ve owned farms for generations to sell them to developers,” Ansel said. “Then there’s no SEQRA review, and all of a sudden, you get an apartment building in the middle of what was a potato farm, and I don’t think the people who live near or around that are going to be very excited about that.”

For projects that undergo SEQRA review, an environmental impact statement about that project is created and made public, so that residents, municipal legislators and board members can have transparent access. In towns, villages, or other municipalities that don’t explicitly require developers to prepare an environmental impact statement, evaluating the environmental impacts a project may have will become murkier under the new law, Ansel said.

Despite his concerns, Ansel said there were changes to the reform during the budgeting process, including clarifications that industrial uses are not exempted.

While he’s still lobbying to roll back these changes in Albany, Ansel said he’s focusing on informing local legislators about the SEQRA reform to make a meaningful difference.

“I think it’s going to come [down] to local communities, to municipalities to pass zoning laws in their communities that require an EIS [environmental impact statement], and that’s probably the best way for communities to protect themselves,” Ansel said.

Along with SEQRA reform, the approved state budget includes increased funding for child care and addresses rising energy prices.

The governor added around $1.7 billion to the state’s childcare and pre-kindergarten budgets, nearly doubling the total funding for both areas for a total of $4.5 billion allocated. This has led to the addition of more pre-kindergarten classes in schools across the state, including local school districts, which expect increased pre-K capacity in the fall. The budget also expands childcare subsidies for “tens of thousands of families.”

The approved budget also allocates $1 billion to energy rebate checks due to rising energy costs, with $200 to joint filers with incomes under $150,000 and $150 to joint filers with incomes between $150,000 and $300,000.

In addition to addressing the cost of living and child care, the governor signed restrictions on federal immigration enforcement, including prohibitions on state, local, and federal officers “from wearing face coverings while interacting with the public” and on the use of local law enforcement facilities for immigration enforcement purposes.

These changes also prohibit state and education employees from granting immigration authorities access to non-public areas of state-owned buildings, such as childcare facilities, hospitals and schools, without a warrant.

“While Washington continues to make life more difficult for New Yorkers, I’m doing everything in my power to make real, tangible progress on the issues New Yorkers are facing and I will always fight for the people who call this great state home,” Hochul said when signing the budget.