With a budget passed, California's Legislature has turned to policy committee reviews of bills and to negotiations over a water bond facing a July 3 deadline to be finalized for November voters. So this roundup takes a look at June legislative developments other than the budget that are of interest in land use and city planning.

As discussed in last week's coverage, especially http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3509, a budget bill has been passed and signed, and it includes some policy measures such as a new power for the Coastal Commission to impose fines for violations of coastal access rights. (See SB 861 at http://bit.ly/1na4EDS.)

Six measures are now on the November 2014 ballot, including the water bond bill placed on the ballot in 2012 and Governor Brown's bill for a state "rainy day fund" reserve. For current versions of the November ballot measures, see http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/ballot-measures/qualified-ballot-measures.htm and news coverage at http://lat.ms/1iNQQmC.

Thus far the Legislature has failed to agree on a new water bond proposal to replace the 2012 version, as discussed in last week's news briefs at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3518. But an advocacy analysis by the California Economic Summit said negotiations for a different water bond were still in progress. See http://bit.ly/1qdJRV0. The LA Times was reporting negotiators meant to propose a new replacement bond package to the Assembly Appropriations Committee July 1. See http://lat.ms/1pG7LLb.

As a function of legislative deadlines, every bill that is still officially making progress in the current session has been passed by its house of origin and by a policy committee in the other house. So, for example, AB 1537, to redefine Marin County as "suburban", has been passed both by the full Assembly and by the State Senate's Transportation and Housing Committee.

Following is a review of June fates of bills relevant to land use and city planning. (For descriptive notes on many of the bills' provisions see our prior discussions at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3498 and http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3503.)

Bill standings, end of June 2014:

SB 1439, the Ellis Act restriction bill to slow San Francisco evictions, was defeated narrowly in the Assembly housing committee and Sen. Mark Leno, its sponsor, announced he would not press the bill farther this session. For more see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3518.

SB 2372, the business property transfer restriction earlier viewed as a breakthrough toward possible Prop 13 reform, is still formally a live bill but may have lost liberal supporters. SB 1021, also a property tax tweak at the edge of Prop 13's application, failed in committee. See our separate report at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3521.

AB 1537, to redefine Marin County as "suburban" rather than "metropolitan" for housing element purposes, passed the Senate Transportation and Housing Committee 8-1 on June 25. It goes to Appropriations next. The bill would reduce the default housing density for Marin County local housing elements from 30 units per acre to 20 units per acre.

The Marin IJ at http://bit.ly/1x2WZi6 and the latest legislative summary at http://bit.ly/1lrbdAY cited an argument for the bill that default densities of 30 units per acre were interfering with negotiations to build affordable housing at all. Arguments against the bill include that housing element planning processes are free to adopt other densities, and that exemption from the 30-unit default density might set a bad precedent of relaxing standards designed to promote affordability. (On that last issue see Ethan Elkind's May 27 commentary at http://bit.ly/1qLpvln.) As argued by former Marin Assembly member Vivien Bronshvag, the measure is pushback against ABAG requirements viewed as imposed arbitrarily on a regional rather than locally suited basis: http://bit.ly/1mM1que.

The Sustainable Cities Collective reported at http://bit.ly/TIxhAw that although Marin County housing stock grew by just 0.25%, Marin County towns gained population by about 1% in 2013 (excluding unincorporated areas, which grew more slowly). For more background from May see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3503.

SB 968, for public access to the disputed Martins Beach, was approved 7-1 in the Assembly Judiciary Committee June 26, but in significantly weakened form. The Mercury News reported that the original bill called for the State Lands Commission to make a forced purchase of the access road if owner Vinod Khosla wouldn't open it, but the current bill only calls on the commission to consider buying it. The news report attributed the change to lobbying by former Assembly member Rusty Areias, now with California Strategies and representing Khosla. See http://bit.ly/UJxiVZ.The bill's author, Sen. Jerry Hill of San Mateo, told the paper, "This keeps the bill alive and keeps the conversation going." (For legislative history see the CACities page at http://bit.ly/1vqgONB -- the official page may not be fully updated.)

The case has drawn wide attention meanwhile, including a recent feature news writeup in the New York Times at http://nyti.ms/1z3t0s7.

The Surfrider Foundation's lawsuit in San Mateo County Superior Court on the same issue is currently set for trial July 16. Briefs in the matter can be viewed at http://openaccess1.sanmateocourt.org/openaccess/civil/default.asp under Case No. CIV 520336. One particularly remarked brief, filed by attorneys for Khosla's LLCs in early June, reaches back to an 1859 land case interpreting application to the site of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo for authority against Surfrider's claim of access rights under the Coastal Act.

SB 270, to ban single-use carryout bags, has amended the provision mentioned at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3481 that encourages local governments to pass their own plastic-bag bans before the state-level one comes down. The current bill withholds state-level preemption from local plastic bag ordinances that go to a first reading before September 1, 2014 and are adopted by September 1, 2015. Localities recently banning plastic bags include:

  • The city of LA, where a prior ordinance just took effect for small grocers: http://lat.ms/1lFAEU6
  • Davis passed a ban in late June, and Sacramento Bee coverage notes bans now exist in 110 California jurisdictions, including bans within the year by Chico, Truckee, South Lake Tahoe, Palm Desert, Palm Springs, Desert Hot Springs and Nevada City: http://bit.ly/1vpVcRl
  • The League of California Cities has been noting cities working on bans, including Encinitas: http://bit.ly/1pFDGeG and Martinez: http://martinezgazette.com/archives/15028
  • The city of San Jose and creekside cleanup activists each say they're seeing less plastic bag litter since the city's bag ban took effect in 2012. See http://www.sanjoseca.gov/index.aspx?nid=1526. 

AB 2130 was signed by Governor Brown just three days before the mandatory effective date of a public health bill that would have required all food handlers to wear protective gloves -- even bartenders and sushi chefs. Assemblyman Richard Pan brought the measure to undo his own earlier bill. See http://bit.ly/VBch0d. For last year's tongue-in-cheek commentary and background from Josh Stephens, see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3438.

SB 69, to replace Vehicle License Fee revenue for four newly created municipalities, including Jurupa Valley, was still moving and still appeared to have a chance. For details on this compensation bill for new towns stranded by 2011 budget cuts, see our recent news feature at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3515.

AB 1521, similar to SB 69, would replace funding that was expected as of 2011 for recent annexations to existing cities. Itw as approved by its first Senate committee but with a revised funding formula. See http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3516 and, for the recent amendments, http://bit.ly/1qCEuQQ.

AB 1513 was still moving through the Legislature on a public safety track but tenant advocates feared it could be bad for tenants' rights in housing. The bill would create a pilot program in Lancaster and Palmdale allowing an owner of residential property labeled as "vacant" to resume possession of it "by declaration" in an expedited, police-enforced 48-hour process. The process would place the burden on occupants of the property to prove they had rights to be there. It's presented as an anti-squatter measure but tenant advocates fear it could be used to short-circuit the procedural guarantees of the eviction process in conventional landlord-tenant relations. See the final item in prior legislative briefs at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3498 for some concerns on this unusual bill. The June 23 Senate committee analysis explains the concerns further with some intensity, breaking into anxious block capitals at several moments. See http://bit.ly/1iooOZ2.

AB 2145, to change rules on community choice aggregation for clean electrical power, dropped a provision that would have required individual electricity customers to opt in to clean power rather than being automatically enrolled. The Santa Rosa Press Democrat at http://bit.ly/1mfIsgE attributes the change especially to advocates for the existing Sonoma Clean Power community-choice aggregation utility. The opponents' site at http://www.no2145.org celebrated removal of the provision but criticized others that remained, and looked toward a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing in August. The bill, sponsored by the Coalition of California Utility Employees, is supported by PG&E, San Diego Gas & Electric, significant organized labor groups and a few chambers of commerce. The opponents (a longer list) are mainly city governments, small utilities and environmental groups. The state legislative page for the bill is at http://bit.ly/1p5rUqk.

SB 1199, to designate almost 37 miles of the Mokelumne River as "wild and scenic," passed the Assembly Natural Resources Committee June 23 in a version previously amended to adjust the affected area around EBMUD's Pardee Reservoir and to defer to upstream water districts' rights and projects. These amendments did not resolve a further question about the bill's future that was raised earlier this season in a news analysis by East Bay Express co-editor Robert Gammon (http://bit.ly/1qduHzh). Writing back in May, Gammon suggested that EBMUD might push to condition the scenic designation on what he termed a "poison pill": a requirement for a community approval process (in addition to legislative approval) that would fail if agreement couldn't be won from conservative local officials upstream. The bill appeared to have achieved Assembly Natural Resources passage June 23 without picking up such provisions. A June 24 statement on the vote by the Foothill Conservancy, which has campaigned for scenic designation, was celebratory in tone but said sponsor Loni Hancock "has pledged to work with the opponents of the bill on amendments to address their concerns." See http://bit.ly/1iUn3Ja.

AB 2293, to impose added insurance requirements on "ride-sharing" services, passed the Senate Insurance Committee June 25 in what Patrick Hoge of the SF Business Times called a "significant defeat" for the Uber and Lyft services.

The bill would require Internet-dispatched car services, defined as "Transportation Network Companies," to carry defined levels of liability insurance coverage for drivers while they have their phone apps turned on waiting for calls, in addition to coverage already required by law for drivers who have actually accepted calls.

The legislation responds in part to a tragedy last New Year's Eve in San Francisco, when an Uber driver who was between calls struck and killed a six-year-old girl, Sophia Liu. Witnesses at the June 25 hearing included Sophia Liu's mother, Huan Kuang, who was also injured in the crash. Outside, cab drivers picketed in support of more regulation.

For details see http://bit.ly/1x90bZo and http://bit.ly/1z3ZD9c. The Insurance Committee legislative analysis of June 23 at http://bit.ly/1iPRGjl is especially detailed.

KQED has a more detailed but earlier discussion at http://blogs.kqed.org/newsfix/06/17/2014/Uber-Lyft-Insurance-crack-down. It includes description of AB 612, a bill on permit conditions for drivers such as drug testing that would imitate current requirements for taxi drivers.

Bills also in play

The following bills were also passed by their policy committees, hence are still alive in the session. Many of these were previously profiled in our May and June legislative analyses. (Bill information, including legislative analyses, is at http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/.)

SB 1424, City of Martinez tidelands transfer.
SB 2135, affordable housing priority for surplus public land
AB 2104, overriding HOA landscaping rules to save water
AB 2493, post-Redevelopment release of $750 million in project funds to cities.
SB 1129, post-Redevelopment cleanup
AB 2280, re-create some elements of Redevelopment with a housing emphasis
AB 1404, allow and require San Francisco Redevelopment's successor agency to rebuild over 5000 affordable housing units lost to the city through "urban renewal" demolitions 1955-1975
AB 2417, provide CEQA exemptions for "purple pipe" distribution of recycled water
AB 1739 & SB 1168, groundwater management: see ACWA comment at http://bit.ly/UJPNtd
AB 2453, Paso Robles water district governance by a locally controversial "hybrid" board structure
SB 1077, pilot program imposing auto tax based on miles traveled
AB 1999, state historic rehabilitation tax credit -- see League of CA Cities tracking page at http://bit.ly/1r9uezM

Gut-and-amends

Two bills that were originally written for post-Redevelopment purposes are now gut-and-amends directed toward other goals:

AB 2292 was originally proposed as a quasi-Redevelopment bill, to expand infrastructure financing districts (IFDs) specifically for Oakland's Coliseum City, Howard Terminal and Oakland Army Base sites, all of which were already development targets. However, the June 11 State Senate Governance and Finance Committee approval was for an amended bill that replaced all references to the three sites with authorization for IFDs to fund broadband communications network facilities.

AB 2549, originally to create a local commission on Milpitas' post-Redevelopment funding losses, passed the Governance and Finance Committee as a gambling control measure.