AB 499: Sunlighting shady CEQA lawsuits

On some occasions, parties that should be notified of a CEQA lawsuit are not. If any so-called "indispensible party" is not made aware of the pending litigation, a suit may be dismissed. In some cases, the omission of notice is exploited by certain parties to intentionally overturn a case. AB 499 (Hill) would have required the lead agency in a CEQA case to list these indispensible parties or "recipients of approval," thus avoiding anyone being left in the dark. The veto shut the door to this much-needed transparency.