PCL’s Capital Insider – October 2025

PCL’s Capital Insider for October 2025

2025’s Legislative Recap: Not an “Abundance” of Transparency

 Article published October 8th, 2025

It’s surely not lost on the readers of this Insider that it has been a trying year for those of us fighting for environmental and community protections, both at the federal level and, surprisingly, at the state level in California.

Talk of “abundance” and “affordability,” and a desire to demonstrate that we can “build things faster” has taken hold of the California Capitol. And while our readers may have widely varying views on the many aspects entailed in abundance and affordability, we at PCL are disturbed by how these goals have so far largely resulted simply in an extremely rapid movement to deregulate decades of environmental and public health protections. PCL cares deeply about building the things we need faster—affordable housing, sustainable transportation, and a new generation of energy infrastructure—and is dedicated to finding ways to do it, but without degrading critical environmental review and public access to our planning processes.

We are concerned that the reduction of review and public process has been the best our state government has provided as an answer to our needs, and all the more disturbed by how many of these major policy changes have been passed through last minute budget measures that have been negotiated behind closed doors with little to no transparency, and without the public vetting that the normal legislative process would provide. We find the increasing use of the budget to pass significant policy matters to be profoundly undemocratic, and we call on the Legislature to resist this tendency moving forward as we work together to find solutions to California’s challenges.

As concerning as these trends are, this year was certainly not a total loss—PCL and our many allies were able to work with legislative champions to pass some very important measures, improve others, and block some of the worst. Here are some highs and lows of our priority bills for the first year of the 2025-2026 legislative session.

Budget Trailer Bills 131 and 130: Exemplifying the concerns described above, SB 131 and AB 130 were jammed through the budget and signed into law right at the deadline in June, with almost no time for the legislators to understand their implications, let alone the public.

The most controversial, SB 131, largely replaced the provisions of SB 607 that had previously been removed in committee. SB 131 has multiple concerning measures that weaken the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) in various ways. While the most concerning provision of 607 was held out 131, in exchange, a long list of CEQA exemptions for various classes of projects was added—the most egregious of which is an extremely broad exemption for “advanced manufacturing,” a definition that includes a broad scope of heavily polluting industries.

There was tremendous pressure from advocates, the public, and within the Legislature for clean-up to 131, and while it didn’t get done this session, AB 1083 was introduced in the final days by Assemblymember Connolly and dozens of other co-authors. AB 1083 will fix many of 131’s most concerning provisions, principally the “advanced manufacturing” CEQA exemption, and will be a top priority for PCL next year.

AB 130 includes many provisions focused on housing, including the contents of two previous bills on which PCL was engaged, AB 1244 and AB 609. The AB 1244 provisions, which PCL supported, establish an option for mitigating transportation impacts through paying into the Transit Oriented Development Program to fund affordable housing projects in location-efficient areas. Engagement in the rule-making for this process will be a priority for PCL in the coming year.

The AB 609 provisions, which PCL voiced strong concerns about, establish an extremely broad CEQA exemption for “infill” housing, without many criteria for labor or affordability that have previously been standard. Our primary concern is that the infill definition written in 130 includes, in most places, an area far larger than the land use footprints identified by our Regional Transportation Plans, which outlined targeted investment for housing and infrastructure designed to meet the GHG reduction mandates established under SB 375 (2008). This could have been corrected through the policy process, but the conversation was cut off by passing these provisions in the budget under AB 130.

Delta Trailer Bill success: In May, Governor Newsom’s Department of Finance published language for two Budget Trailer Bills intended to bypass specific environmental review and approval processes for the Delta Conveyance Project (DCP). PCL, joined with an incredible coalition of environmental advocates, Delta communities, local governments, Tribes, and legislators, was able to block these trailer bills from being introduced. As a result, the DCP and related Water Quality Control Plans will continue to be subject to environmental laws, and communities and Tribes will still have the opportunity to weigh in. You can download a PDF copy of the proposed trailer bills here and  here.

AB 43 (Schultz) Wild & Scenic Rivers: extending state protections for designated rivers in the federal system: In 2018, the Legislature enacted AB 2975 (Friedman) to safeguard California’s rivers against federal environmental rollbacks anticipated under the first Trump administration. The bill authorized the Secretary to extend state protections to rivers removed from the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System, and set a sunset date of December 31, 2025. AB 43 responds to subsequent rollbacks under the current Trump administration by eliminating the sunset date and making these protections permanent. The bill was signed into law by the Governor on Tuesday, October 7th!

AB 263 (Rogers): Scott River & Shasta River Watersheds: This bill, already signed by the Governor, will extend Scott and Shasta emergency in-stream flow protections necessary to prevent salmon extinctions. AB 263 arose out of a partnership with the Karuk Tribe and Yurok Tribe and has received broad environmental support, in addition to being a focus of PCL’s water advocacy.

AB 1413 (Papan): Sustainable Groundwater Management Act: Groundwater Adjudication: PCL supports this bill, which would help solidify deference to the “sustainable yield” identified by Sustainable Groundwater Management Plans in ensuing adjudication matters in a given basin. The details have been contentious, and the bill is now a two-year bill, but it will remain a priority for PCL’s support in 2026.

AB 527 (Papan): California Environmental Quality Act: geothermal exploratory projects: geothermal field development projects: enhanced geothermal system wells: PCL engaged with many partners on this bill in good faith to find a responsible solution for expediting geothermal energy development, as did the author and the proponents. Unfortunately, the more we educated ourselves on the potential impacts of the processes involved, the more our questions and concerns grew. While the bill added a significant number of safeguards, we were still not comfortable with offering a CEQA exemption for these exploratory projects. The Governor vetoed this bill on October 6th, stating that the bill had the potential to increase the cost of developing new geothermal energy sites.

AB 697 (Wilson): Protected species: authorized take: State Route 37 project. This bill would provide an exemption from the California Endangered Species Act for the $500 million expansion of State Route 37—a highway that runs through sensitive wetland habitat and is projected to be underwater by 2040 due to sea-level rise. Despite the objections of many stakeholders, the proposal met almost no opposition from the Legislature and was signed by the Governor.

AB 1139 (Rogers): California Environmental Quality Act: exemption: public access: nonmotorized recreation: PCL initially opposed this CEQA exemption for the opening of newly acquired lands for public access. Our point was that simply opening access to natural areas can have very significant impacts if not managed correctly. Thankfully, after much good-faith discussion with the author and proponents, we feel we have found the correct policy for ensuring that the needed planning and resources are in place before opening public access to new lands, and we were able to remove our opposition. This is an example of how the legislative process is supposed to work. On October 6th, the Governor signed AB 1139 into law.

SB 772 (Cabaldon): Infill Infrastructure Grant Program of 2019: applications: eligibility: This bill proposed expanded applicability of the Infill Infrastructure Grant program, but the criteria remain under debate, and it has become a two-year bill.

SB 5 (Cabaldon): Enhanced infrastructure financing districts and community revitalization and investment areas: allocation of taxes: agricultural land exclusion: PCL supported this proposal to prohibit the allocation of property taxes on protected agricultural land toward   Enhanced Infrastructure Financing Districts (EIFDs), which fund local infrastructure development projects. We believed this bill would have reduced the loss of protective status for important agricultural lands and urged the Governor to sign it; however, the bill was vetoed on October 6th.

AB 1319 (Schultz): Protected species: California Endangered Species Act: With the rapid removal of environmental protections at the federal level, AB 1319 is all the more critical. This bill will make it easier for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to add a species to the provisional candidate list for protection under the California Endangered Species Act if its protections are reduced at the federal level. This bill has been a priority advocacy issue for PCL and is currently awaiting the Governor’s signature.

SB 72 (Caballero): State Water Supply Targets: This costly bill will establish an unreasonably high interim water planning target for the California Water Plan, leading to a misguided overreliance on massive water storage and conveyance projects rather than localized and sustainable water solutions. Governor Newsom signed the bill on October 1^st.

SB 427 (Blakespear/Stern): Habitat Conservation Fund: This bill started as a permanent extension of the Habitat Conservation Fund, a $30 million annual pot of funding for conservation and restoration projects statewide. PCL served as primary testimony for SB 427 on behalf of the National Wildlife Federation, our national affiliate and co-sponsor of the bill. The bill passed with an overwhelming bipartisan majority in both houses and has been signed into law.

SB 484 (Laird): Coastal resources: coastal development permits: infill area categorical exclusion: This bill would require the Coastal Commission to identify infill areas within at least three local jurisdictions that do not have a certified local coastal program, and to exempt affordable housing projects from the coastal development permitting requirement in those regions. The Governor signed the bill on October 6th, and PCL believes this represents an innovative and responsible example for promoting equitable housing in the coastal zone.

SB 486 (Cabaldon): Regional housing: public postsecondary education: changes in enrollment levels: California Environmental Quality Act: PCL supported this bill’s provisions to improve accommodation of UC and CSU student enrollment in regional housing needs allocations (RHNAs), but opposed portions of the bill that we believed would have reduced the university systems’ responsibility for planning for that housing themselves in their respective Long Range Development Plans. After effective engagement with the author, a solution was found to provide more flexibility to universities without reducing these obligations, and PCL was able to remove its opposition. The bill currently sits on the Governor’s desk.

SB 601 (Allen): Water: Waste Discharge: Despite our advocacy, this critical bill, which would create a state backstop to federal Clean Water Act rollbacks, faced significant opposition from wastewater dischargers and has been made into a two-year bill to allow further time for deliberation with opposition.

AB 66 (Tangipa): California Environmental Quality Act: exemption: egress route projects: fire safety: PCL opposed this bill, but worked with the author and proponents to find solutions for how to establish the necessary planning and safeguards to be able to expedite needed fire egress responsibly. Some of our recommendations were accepted, but others were not. The bill eventually stalled in committee and is now a two-year bill.

SB 715 (Allen): Regional Housing Need Assessment: Methodology & Distribution: This proposal, which PCL supported to allow for the reallocation of housing from high-risk areas to lower-risk areas, is now a two-year bill. SB 715 stands to be a vehicle for discussion of planning for safety and evacuation in high-risk areas more broadly, and will remain a priority for PCL in 2026.