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.
That's not how it works, especially in hot markets. Zoning is not absolute and the current process allows for all kinds of variances and exceptions.
The Pen Factory project is an excellent example. Local NIMBYs defeated a really neat project that even included low income housing. The original developer said "screw it" and sold the property to a developer that is now doing a by the books and within exact letter of zoning project that will result in a lot of office space and no mitigations for extra traffic or anything. No reviews will stop it.
The environmental reviews cannot be used as an effective NIMBY weapon is the developer is using original zoning. Instead, most project I have seen in LA push boundaries for profitability, often resulting in legal fights with locals.
In the San Francisco area, new environmental reviews can, and have been, used as an effective weapon against development.
The point of Jerry Brown's law was to make zoning absolute, and to bypass variances and exceptions which generally accomplish nothing except to allow NIMBYs to bring frivolous lawsuits.
The proposal was to allow for as-of-right development if the development adhered to local zoning ordinances. That means no variances. As soon as a developer wanted a variance, they'd be back under the current system.
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.