That's a mischaracterization. The law Jerry Brown proposed dealt with "as-of-right" zoning, i.e. if a parcel of land has been zoned for housing, and someone wants to build housing on it, they can do so without the NIMBY neighbors holding up the project indefinitely with frivolous lawsuits and "environmental" reviews. Unfortunately, Brown attached a low-income housing restriction onto it, but it was definitely a step in the right direction.

Real environmental review, by qualified people, happens when the land is zoned in the first place. Most "environmental review" lawsuits are not about the environment at all. The real environmental experts already had their say, or else the land wouldn't have been zoned. Most of these lawsuits seek a new review, often for bullshit reasons, and are filed by NIMBYs to bully the developers into giving up on developing the land by piling on years and millions of dollars of litigation. If that fails, they fall back on "quality of life" and noise complaints.