Which of the 2,600 new bills (and counting) will impact cities?
Of course, there are areas where local leaders will vehemently disagree with the Legislature. Cal Cities lobbyists are busy pushing back on top-down housing measures, a slew of bills that would limit policing technologies, a .gov domain mandate, and pension divestment.
Housing, Community, and Economic Development
Addressing the housing supply and affordability crisis gripping nearly all regions of the state is a top priority for legislators, local officials, and residents. Seven in ten Californians view housing affordability as one of the top problems in their community. There is also growing concern that housing prices are so expensive that younger generations will be priced out of being able to buy a home.
Yet once again, lawmakers are trying to solve this crisis by introducing bills that limit local decision-making, require by-right housing approvals without public input or environmental review, and force cities to allow the conversion of non-residential buildings into housing units.
Three significant bills epitomize this top-down, one-size-fits-all legislative approach: SB 423 (Wiener), AB 1532 (Haney), and AB 1490 (Lee). Cal Cities strongly opposes all three of these measures.
SB 423 — the subject of a recent action alert — would greatly expand SB 35 (Wiener, 2017) and eliminate its 2026 sunset date. Under SB 423, nearly all cities, including those in the coastal zone, would be required to ministerially approve SB 35 projects; allow the state to approve housing developments on property owned or leased by the state; and prohibit a city from enforcing its inclusionary housing ordinance if the income limits are higher than those in SB 35.
AB 1532 and AB 1490 would force the conversion of non-residential buildings into new housing units regardless of the underlining zoning. AB 1532 is primarily focused on the conversion of office buildings. AB 1490 goes several steps further; it would allow retrofitting and repurposing of any existing building into new residential units.
There is some glimmer of productive cooperation in the Legislature in the form of two bond measures. AB 1657 (Wicks) would dedicate a yet-to-be-determined amount of funding to affordable rental housing and homeownership programs. SB 834 (Portantino) would authorize $25 billion in bonds to fund homeownership programs, predevelopment infrastructure improvements, and other affordable housing programs.
Cal Cities supports both measures in concept and is working with the authors on the details. If signed into law, the bills will go before the voters for approval.
Lawmakers have introduced dozens of other housing bills aimed at local government, including those related to housing projects on school property, student housing, streamlined grant applications, local government housing, and a right to housing. These bills include:
SB 4 (Wiener) Planning and zoning: housing development: higher education institutions and religious institutions
Cal Cities Position: Pending
AB 1630 (Garcia) Planning and zoning: housing development approvals: student housing projects
Cal Cities Position: PendingAB 519 (Schiavo) Affordable housing: consolidated funding application process
Cal Cities Position: Support
ACA 1 (Aguiar-Curry) Local government financing: affordable housing and public infrastructure: voter approval
Cal Cities Position: PendingACA 10 (Haney) Fundamental human right to housing
Cal Cities Position: Pending
Community Services
This year, the Legislature is hyper-focused on local "accountability" for state homelessness funding. Although the state’s limited-term funding has helped people transition into permanent housing, it has not created a meaningful reduction in the number of people entering homelessness. Securing an annual ongoing appropriation would move the needle on this critical issue and support cities' efforts to reduce homelessness and increase housing.
Building on the success of last year’s historic behavioral health legislation is also a major Cal Cities priority. Cal Cities is a strong supporter of Sen. Susan Eggman’s SB 43 and SB 363. SB 43 would make it easier to provide treatment to those unable to care for themselves; SB 363 would establish a real-time dashboard of available beds in psychiatric and substance abuse facilities.
Both bills are supported by behavioral health advocates and the Big City Mayors Coalition, which is sponsoring the measures. Eggman, a clinical social worker, introduced similar measures in 2022, which Cal Cities also supported.
Other bills of note include:
AB 24 (Haney) Emergency Response. Opioid Antagonist Kits
Cal Cities Position: PendingAB 33 (Bains) Fentanyl Addiction and Overdose Prevention Task Force
Cal Cities Position: PendingSB 19 (Seyarto) Anti-Fentanyl Abuse Task Force
Cal Cities Position: PendingAB 550 (Schiavo) Homelessness. Public Hearings
Cal Cities Position: PendingAB 799 (L. Rivas) Homeless Housing, Assistance, and Prevention Program. Homelessness Accountability Act
Cal Cities Position: PendingAB 67 (Muratsuchi) Homeless Courts Pilot Program
Cal Cities Position: PendingAB 1215 (Carrillo) Pets Assistance with Support Grant Program. Homeless Shelters. Domestic Violence Shelters. Pets
Cal Cities Position: PendingSB 37 (Caballero) Older Adults and Adults with Disabilities Housing Stability Act
Cal Cities Position: PendingAB 262 (Holden) Children’s Camps. Regulation
Cal Cities Position: Pending
Public Safety
Concerns about repeated retail theft are top of mind for Cal Cities, which is working with Asm. Al Muratsuchi on AB 1708. The bill would reform Proposition 47. If signed into law, the proposed changes would be placed on the 2024 statewide ballot for voter approval. Cal Cities will be issuing an action alert on this legislation next week on this critical reform measure.
The fentanyl crisis has also exploded to the top of the legislative priority list and for good reason. An analysis of state data found that fentanyl was responsible for 1 in 5 deaths among 15- to 24-year-old Californians, a sevenfold increase from 2018. The report was conducted late last year.
Thus far, lawmakers have introduced over 20 bills that would increase accountability and penalties for anyone who illegally furnishes the drug. The measures with the biggest potential benefits to cities are AB 367 (Maienschein) and SB 44 (Umberg). Both bills are sponsored by the city of San Diego and are supported by Cal Cities.
AB 367 would create stronger penalties for individuals who cause significant or substantial physical injury through the distribution of controlled substances, including fentanyl. SB 44 takes a different approach to deterrence: The bill would require a court to advise anyone convicted of distributing a controlled substance that they may be charged with homicide if someone dies from their drugs.
Other measures would increase access to naloxone, which can rapidly reverse an opioid overdose. The Cal Cities-supported AB 1166 (Bains)would protect anyone who is not trained in emergency medical services or as a health care provider from civil damages if the treatment is administered in good faith.
Lawmakers are also laser-focused on limiting the use of certain policing technologies, including radio communications, biometric facial recognition, and police canines. Cal Cities opposes these measures for one simple reason: arbitrary, overly broad restrictions on these tools may not increase public safety, but they will limit a peace officer’s ability to enforce the law in highly dynamic — sometimes atypical and dangerous — situations.
Other notable bills include:
AB 642 (Ting) Law Enforcement Agencies. Facial Recognition Technology
Cal Cities Position: SupportAB 1034 (Wilson) Law Enforcement. Facial Recognition and Other Biometric Surveillance
Cal Cities Position: OpposeAB 742 (Jackson) Law Enforcement. Police Canines
Cal Cities Position: OpposeSB 719 (Becker) Law Enforcement Agencies. Radio Communication
Cal Cities Position: OpposeSB 796 (Alvarado-Gil) Threats
Cal Cities Position: SupportAB 40 (Rodriguez) Emergency Medical Services
Cal Cities Position: SupportSB 402 (Wahab) Emergency Services Limiting Police Response
Cal Cities Position: Oppose
Revenue and Taxation
In response to the state's stagnating revenues and stubbornly high inflation, lawmakers introduced a suite of bills intended to provide financial relief for consumers through a variety of new tax exemptions, often at the expense of local governments. Several proposals have direct impacts on local revenue streams, such as sales and use tax exemptions that include the local 1% Bradley Burns sales tax.
Some bills would indirectly incentivize land development, most notably SB 721 (Becker). The bill would amend cities’ existing taxation authority to specify that taxes levied on vacant sites by a city, county, or special district are a special tax (to be used for specific purposes), for parcels identified in a city’s housing element inventory. Cal Cities is working with the author’s office to determine the necessity of this clarification and its impact before submitting a formal response.
Cal Cities is also sponsoring AB 972 (Maienschein). Once amended, the bill would coordinate, align, and streamline local government assistance resources by convening a statewide, cross-agency workgroup, no later than April 2024.
A uniform and streamlined application process would allow cities to effectively and equitably access funding opportunities. Likewise, centralizing local government assistance resources and developing a coordinated system to manage available funding would deliver the maximum number of projects as efficiently and equitably as possible.
Other bills include:
AB 1203 (Bains) Sales and Use Taxes. Exemptions. Breast Pumps and Related Supplies
Cal Cities Position: PendingAB 1249 (Ta) Sales and Use Taxes. Exemption. Tax Holiday. School Supplies
Cal Cities Position: PendingAB 84 (Ward) Property Tax. Welfare Exemption. Affordable Housing
Cal Cities Position: PendingAB 1492 (Alvarez) Taxation. Welfare Exemption
Cal Cities Position: PendingSB 653 (Archuleta) Property Taxation. Exemptions
Cal Cities Position: PendingAB 362 (Lee) Real Property Taxation. Land Value Taxation Study
Cal Cities Position: PendingSB 532 (Wiener) Ballot Measures. Local Taxes
Cal Cities Position: PendingSB 721 (Becker) Special Taxes. Vacant Land
Cal Cities Position: PendingSB 769 (Gonzalez) Local Government. Fiscal and Financial Training
Cal Cities Position: Pending
Governance, Transparency, and Labor Relations
Building on the effective, remote meetings conducted by local governments at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, lawmakers proposed several remote meeting bills, including two bills co-sponsored by Cal Cities. Those two measures, combined with a council member pay reform bill, would reduce barriers to various local legislative bodies.
AB 817 (Pacheco) — pending amendments — would allow non-decision-making legislative bodies currently governed by the Ralph M. Brown Act, such as advisory bodies and commissions, to participate in two-way virtual teleconferencing without posting their physical location.
Pandemic-era remote meetings noticeably reduced barriers to participation. People who were usually unable to participate due to time, distance, or physical participation requirements were able to attend public meetings. By maintaining that access for certain legislative bodies, AB 817 would create greater access to leadership opportunities and provide more diverse input on critical community proposals.
In addition to Cal Cities, AB 817’s co-sponsors include the California Association of Recreation and Park Districts, Urban Counties of California, Rural County Representatives of California, and California State Association of Counties.
AB 557 (Hart) would eliminate the sunset provisions in AB 361 (R. Rivas, 2021). The Rivas measure allows cities to meet remotely during proclaimed states of emergency under modified Brown Act requirements. AB 557 would also provide greater flexibility for agencies that meet on a fixed date every month by extending the SB 361 renewal period to 45 days.
Cal Cities is co-sponsoring AB 557, along with the California Special Districts Association, and California State Association of Counties.
Cal Cities is also sponsoring SB 329 (Dodd), which would allow general law cities to adjust city council pay caps for inflation based on the California Consumer Price Index. Currently, in general law cities, city councils may vote to receive a salary, not to exceed limits based on population size provided in state law. This limit has not been increased since 1984, despite inflation rising over 300% during that time.
Other notable bills this year include:
SB 252 (Gonzalez) Public retirement systems: fossil fuels: divestment
Cal Cities Position: OpposeSB 251 (Newman) Political Reform Act of 1974: elected officers: conflicts of interest
Cal Cities Position: OpposeAB 37 (Bonta) Political Reform Act of 1974: campaign funds: security expenses
Cal Cities Position: SupportAB 597 (Rodriguez) Workers’ Compensation. First Responders. Post-traumatic Stress
Cal Cities Position: Oppose
Transportation, Communications, and Public Works
The most notable transportation bills should sound familiar. Asm. Laura Friedman, the Assembly Transportation Committee Chair, introduced two placeholder bills that appear to pick up where she left off last year with AB 2237 and AB 2438. Both measures stripped away local flexibility to meet the greenhouse gas reduction goals.
Ultimately, AB 2237 was held in committee and AB 2438 was vetoed. This year’s iterations of those bills, AB 6 and AB 7, are part of a broader conversation about transportation funding and planning. Cal Cities is participating in weekly meetings with the author’s office and stakeholders to preserve local control and decision-making when examining the state’s climate and transportation goals.
Cal Cities is also engaged in productive conversations that would make it easier to plan, fund, and finish infrastructure projects. The Cal Cities-sponsored AB 400 (Rubio) and SB 706 (Caballero) would expand the use of design-build and progressive design-build delivery methods for public works projects.
Also pertinent: Cal Cities is supporting AB 334 (Rubio), which would protect design professionals from distorted conflict of interest laws. The law’s current lack of clarity inadvertently precludes design professionals from bidding on successive phases of a local public works project. AB 334 would expand the bidding pool, reduce costs, and increase the quality of projects.
Legislators are also considering over two dozen electric vehicle (EV) charging measures, including SB 30 (Umberg) and AB 1504 (McCarty). SB 30 would identify charging stations on highway corridors near cities through new signage, which would also spur economic development. The Cal Cities-opposed AB 1504 would expand administrative review requirements to charging stations installed in the public right-of-way and charging stations installed with a battery storage system.
Cal Cities is opposing AB 1637 (Irwin), which would force local governments to acquire and transition all domain websites and email addresses to .gov by 2025. This mandate would not provide any immunity against hacking or malware attacks and would result in enormous technical and rebranding costs.
Other bills include:
AB 744 (Carrillo) California Transportation Commission: data, modeling, and analytic software tools procurement
Cal Cities Position: SupportAB 241 (Reyes) and SB 84 (Gonzalez) Clean Transportation Program
Cal Cities Position: WatchAB 316 (Aguiar-Curry) Transportation. Autonomous Vehicles
Cal Cities Position: SupportAB 415 (Rodriguez) Emergency Fairgrounds Communications
Cal Cities Position: SupportAB 735 (Berman) Workforce Development. Utility Careers
Cal Cities Position: Support
Environmental Quality
With extreme weather events, dramatically swinging California between droughts, floods, and record-breaking temperatures, the Legislature remains focused on meeting its ambitious greenhouse gas emission reduction goals.
One of Cal Cities’ top priorities is securing more flexibility for cities’ SB 1383 (Lara, 2016) organic waste diversion requirements — a key greenhouse gas reduction program — through AB 573 (E. Garcia). The bill would help cities in rural and border areas meet compost procurement targets when in-state facilities are unavailable or cost prohibitive. when in-state facilitates are unavailable or cost prohibitive.
To ensure cities can muster better disaster responses, Cal Cities is engaging on the three proposed climate bonds aimed at the 2024 ballot: AB 1567 (E. Garcia), SB 638 (Eggman), and SB 867 (Allen). These three measures collectively propose $20 billion in bonds for safe drinking water, wildfire prevention, drought preparation, flood protection, and extreme heat mitigation.
Cal Cities is also focused on ensuring local governments are reimbursed for the costs of implementing a new single-use plastic mandate through AB 1526 (Asm. Natural Resources). Passed last year, the landmark law requires all packaging in the state to be recyclable or compostable by 2032 and 65% of all single-use plastic packaging to be recycled in the same timeframe.
Other bills include:
AB 2 (Ward) Recycling. Solar Photovoltaic Modules
Cal Cities Position: PendingAB 573 (E. Garcia) Organic Waste Disposal Reduction Targets
Cal Cities Position: PendingAB 863 (Aguiar-Curry) Carpet Recycling. Carpet Stewardship Organizations. Fines. Succession. Procedure
Cal Cities Position: SupportSB 560 (Laird) Solid waste. Extended producer responsibility
Cal Cities Position: PendingSB 615 (Allen) Solid Waste. Lithium Vehicle Batteries
Cal Cities Position: PendingSB 707 (Newman) Textile Recovery
Cal Cities Position: PendingAB 50 (Wood) Energy Utility Communication
Cal Cities Position: PendingAB 698 (Essayli) Gas Stoves
Cal Cities Position: PendingAB 1132 (Freidman) Solar Permit Fees
Cal Cities Position: PendingSB 272 (Laird) Sea Level Rise Planning
Cal Cities Position: PendingSB 69 (Cortese) CEQA Document Requests
Cal Cities Position: Oppose Unless AmendedAB 1000 (Reyes) Land use. Housing
Cal Cities Position: PendingAB 460 (Bauer-Kahan) State Water Board Authority
Cal Cities Position: PendingAB 1572 (Friedman) Non-functional Turf
Cal Cities Position: Oppose Unless Amended
How to make your city’s voice heard
Policy committee meetings started in the Capitol this week, which means the legislative season is in full swing. These small, focused meetings are great opportunities for city officials to voice their support and opposition to specific legislation.
Some sample letters of support and opposition are already available, along with action alerts on the biggest legislative issues. Starting next week, Cal Cities Advocate will provide information about the top bills facing cities, any notable legislative changes, and how to make your city’s voice heard, in a new, digestible format each week.