PCL’s Capital Insider for July, 2025
PCL’s Statement on the AB 130/SB 131 Backroom Budget Deal
Article updated July 17, 2025 at 11:39 am
The Process
On Monday, June 30th, the California legislature passed two budget “trailer bills,” AB 130 and SB 131, which were quickly signed into law that evening by the Governor, along with the rest of the budget, in time for the July 1st budget deadline. In fact, a provision had been put in the main budget bill that the budget could not be enacted unless SB 131 was also passed by the budget deadline, but that provision was made before 130 or 131 were even written, publicly anyway.
130 and 131 were then negotiated in an extreme rush, behind closed doors with almost zero access provided to capitol stakeholders to what was happening, and obviously no transparency to the broader public. 131, the most far-reaching, was published on Friday, June 27th, and 130 only a day earlier. On Monday, the proceedings of the one Senate hearing on the bills (the Assembly didn’t have one) put on full display that even the legislators hadn’t had a chance to understand the basic scope of these bills, let alone the implications of the many, many details. There was much vocal frustration and disapproval of the deal that had been forced upon them, but despite not having enough time to begin to understand what they were voting on, the vast majority of both houses held their noses and voted for it.
These bills were to fulfill the Governor’s promise that major California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) reform had to happen in the budget, specifically that two policy bills, AB 609 and SB 607, would be incorporated into the budget. In the end, 130 and 131 did include 609 and much of 607, and much more. So much more that capitol staff and advocates alike are still trying to sort out the implications. Certainly, it did indeed include major CEQA reform and exemptions, which we and our allies consider to be the largest rollback of environmental and public health protections in California since the passage of our primary environmental laws in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
For the moment, we’ll set aside the substance of these bills and whatever one may think about the growing movement towards deregulation in our state, and focus first on our extreme objection to the process and our grave disappointment with how this happened.
The budget process is notoriously one of the least transparent processes of our legislative structure. It can be argued that there are justifiable reasons for this, including that the budget must be adopted on a much faster timeline than the rest of the legislative timeline. However, the historic trade-off for this has been that the budget is meant to be reserved strictly to fiscal matters of the state and not include policy matters. Policy is to be reserved for the normal legislative process, for the legislature’s many committees, and the public to be afforded the time for input and refinement.
The once-taboo practice of loading budget trailer bills with complex and controversial measures has now become an annual practice. We object to the growing trend to use the budget in this way in principle, but this unprecedented side-step of the legislative process in a fast-tracked budget deal–which enacts such significant changes to the one law that gives our communities a voice in the planning decisions that affect them–is all the more disturbing.
We feel that what has transpired in recent weeks regarding the passage of the budget is a shame to our state and to our democratic process. We call on the legislature to halt this growing autocratic trend of using the budget in this manner and to demand clean-up legislation for the 130/131 deal.
The Bills
PCL’s founders came together in 1965 to help write what became CEQA, which was signed into law by Ronald Reagan in 1970. PCL has been a steward of the law ever since, but PCL has also not been entirely unbending on questions of how to improve the CEQA process and how it’s used. PCL, in concert with many cross-interest stakeholders, has proposed our own CEQA reforms aimed at making the process more efficient, and we have been constructive in helping shape proposals that would streamline CEQA for the right things in the right places, including affordable housing and supportive infrastructure in low-VMT areas.
However, the 130/131 budget deal goes too far. The deal will result in ecological and public harm, degrade community access to the decisions being made around them, produce tremendous legal uncertainty, and cause more litigation, not less.
We are extremely grateful to Senate Pro Tempore McGuire and other members in both houses, who resisted this deal and did what they could to make it less bad–the most harmful provision of SB 607 was indeed left out of the final 131 deal–but less bad is still not good.
130 and 131 are huge bills, with many aspects, but we will focus primarily on the provisions related to CEQA here. There are more concerns and errors than can comprehensively be described here, and again, had these bills gone through the normal legislative process as they should have, many of these problems could have been corrected.
Both 130 and 131 were described repeatedly by legislators, the Governor, and the press as housing bills. 130 is primarily focused on housing, but 131 (like SB 607 before it) has implications far beyond housing:
AB 130: AB 130 incorporates, among many other things, three bills of interest to PCL: AB 306, AB 1254, and AB 609.
–AB 306 was a highly controversial measure, now law, which freezes building codes for 5 years in the name of expediting rebuilding efforts after the LA fires.
–The provisions of AB 1254 establish a Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) mitigation banking system, where funds to support affordable housing in location-efficient areas can be used as mitigation for transportation impacts. PCL was supporting 1254, but the 130 language did not exactly align with the original bill, leaving us with some concerns.
–PCL was most concerned with the provisions of AB 609, a bill PCL was engaged on and hoping to help improve through the normal process. These provisions enact a full CEQA exemption for all housing projects within the entirety of the Census-defined Urbanized Area. In most of the state, the Urbanized Area has a far greater footprint than the more condensed footprint identified in our regional transportation plans regarding where to target housing and infrastructure investment to meet our GHG reduction mandates. PCL worries that an “infill” exemption this broad, coupled with the lack of affordability requirements, will undercut existing incentives that are more strategically targeted towards locations and investments identified in our regional plans to meet our climate and equity goals.
SB 131: Again, we are thankful that the very worst part of SB 607 was left out of the budget deal, but, along with all the other parts of 607, we got in exchange a long list of CEQA exemptions for whole classes of projects, from vegetation management to High-Speed Rail, the most concerning of which is for manufacturing:
–SB 131 creates an entire exemption from CEQA for “advanced manufacturing” facilities on land zoned for industrial use. “Advanced” does not mean clean. These facilities can be massive sources of pollution, use extremely high amounts of water and energy, and produce extremely toxic emissions and waste—the very projects that should undergo a robust environmental review. This CEQA exemption is incredibly broad, includes some of the most polluting projects in California, and puts the health and safety of Californians, especially vulnerable frontline communities, directly at risk.
–The bill does not include historically standard protection language for endangered species. SB 131’s provisions do not apply to “natural and protected lands.” However, inexplicably excluded from this bill is the language from Government Code Section 65913.4(a)(6)(J) regarding habitat for candidate, sensitive, and endangered species, which is found in SB 35 (2017), SB 423 (2023), AND even AB 130.
–131’s “near miss” provisions allow for limited review on a singular criterion that would disqualify a project from an existing CEQA exemption. Not only do we find that these provisions, as written, would be legally unworkable in many cases, but sprawl development could also use the “near miss” to receive extremely limited review under exemptions meant only for infill.
These concerns above are top priorities, but the list of problems in 131 goes on and on: Tribal consultation requirements were left out, extreme limitations are created on what interagency correspondence can be included in the administrative record, among many other poorly framed exemptions, as well as technical and clerical mistakes. We hope all of these concerns can be addressed in the weeks (and likely years) to come, but please see below for how you can take action on the top priorities right now.
Looking Ahead
CEQA is too often scapegoated as the cause of California’s problems and the obstruction to the state’s ability to build the things we need faster. While PCL is not unbending on questions of CEQA reform, we do not subscribe to this view. The long timelines and high costs of building in California are due to a broad spectrum of socio-economic factors, and the disproportionate blame that has been placed solely on CEQA by some is simply intellectually dishonest.
We at PCL, along with the many allies we work with, also want to build the things we need faster, but not at the expense of public and ecological health. We are dedicated to identifying pathways and policies to advance affordable housing and a new generation of climate-resilient infrastructure more efficiently, through better planning standards and improved governmental coordination—but not by undermining the public process that CEQA provides, which allows our communities access to the decisions being made around them.
There is a growing movement at the federal level, and now in the California Capitol too, to deregulate our environmental and social protections in the name of building faster. This is a trend PCL finds disturbing. We do not believe that an unchecked private market will simply produce the things we want; we fear it will more likely result in more of the harms we experienced in the early 20th century, which led us to enact the environmental laws we did 50 years ago.
Let’s not make those same mistakes again.
The fight over this dangerous bill is not over. Please take action today.
Your voices make a difference.
ACTION ALERT
Call your state legislators now to demand clean-up legislation for the bad budget deal!
There are many problems with the 130/131 budget deal, but when SB 131 passed, legislators made a commitment to consider “clean-up” amendments to address two egregious features of the bill, including:
- The bill broadly exempts a vague class of “advanced manufacturing” facilities, which will expose surrounding communities to dangerous pollution.
- The bill’s exclusion for “natural and protected lands” is too narrow; it does not include habitat for endangered species.
There will be additional fixes needed, but these two issues are our coalition’s top priorities right now. With your help, we need to urge members of the Senate and Assembly to communicate with their leadership that these fixes need to be made immediately. Please call today, you can use the script below as a guide.
FIRST – Call your State Assemblymember and State Senator. Their contact information can be found at https://findyourrep.
SECOND – Call the Speaker of the Assembly, Robert Rivas, at (916) 319-2029.
THIRD – Call the Senate President Pro Tempore, Mike McGuire, at (916) 651-4002.
Sample Message
Hello, my name is [insert name] of [insert city].
I am calling regarding AB/SB 131.
At a June 30th budget hearing, legislators committed to work to fix parts of the budget trailer bills that threaten significant harm to communities and the environment. I urge you to follow through on these promises.
Please support these urgent fixes:
Please remove AB/SB 131’s exemption for advanced manufacturing facilities. This exemption will expose residents to toxic industrial projects with zero protections for environmental justice communities living alongside industrially zoned land.
Please amend AB/SB 131’s definition of “natural and protected lands” to include habitat for protected species under the federal and state Endangered Species Acts and the state Native Plant Protection Act.
Thank you for taking these actions to protect our health and our environment.
End Sample Message
Thank you for taking action today.
Your voices make a difference!
Get the Latest from the Capital
– Follow PCL on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and more!
Get the latest on bills, issues, and alerts, and check our “This Week In the Legislature” posts to see what’s happening in the capital!
PCL is on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, BlueSky… and yes, still on Twitter (X).
