By Reuben Duarte, Vice President for Policy and Legislation, and Lauren De Valencia, APA California Lobbyist
2025 Legislative Session Comes to an End
After several long days and nights, the Legislature adjourned the 2025 Legislative Session on September 13, taking action on many big ticket items, including those of importance to the planning practice in California and tracked and in many cases work on by APA California. In addition to passing hundreds of policy related bills already moving through the Legislature, additional deals on Cap and Trade, energy and stabilizing the state’s wildfire liability fund were put into print in the last week and passed before adjournment. The Governor now has until October 13 to take action on bills that made it to his desk.
Related to the budget, both the Assembly and the Senate put additional budget trailer bills into print, including some intended to address additional clean-up changes to the two CEQA streamlining bills passed in budget trailer bills AB 130 and SB 131 in June. Only SB 158 was sent to the Governor and discussions on addition clean-up will be held in the fall, with potential action in 2026.
There are many high profile bills that passed in the final days of the legislative session, however we want to bring your attention to one bill for now that has made it to the Governor and should be reviewed if you are working on implementation of AB 98 from 2024.
AB 98 (2024) Clean-Up Headed to the Governor After APA California Secures Important Updates
We are excited to share that an agreement was reached at end of session, and final amendments included changes that APA California requested. On the final day of the session, SB 415 passed and was sent to the Governor.
Over the last several months, APA California participated in numerous conversations on technical clean-up to AB 98 (Carrillo and Reyes, 2024), which was introduced and passed at the end of session in 2024. AB 98 creates new warehouse standards and requires local agencies to update their circulation elements to include truck routes by 1/1/2026 for jurisdictions in the “Warehouse Concentration Region” (WCR), as defined, or by 1/1/2028 for all other jurisdictions.
APA California opposed AB 98 due to substantial concerns with the new planning mandates and no opportunity to address these issues before the end of session last year. However, as a condition of the bill passing, the authors committed to working with APA California and others on technical clean-up and implementation issues in 2025. APA California issued our priorities to be addressed in the clean-up legislation last fall.
Two clean-up vehicles, AB 735 (Carrillo) and SB 415 (Reyes), were introduced this year. Both bills have moved together with identical language throughout the year, and APA California consistently advocated for amendments to provide planners with more clarity, time, and assistance in the implementation of AB 98.
Ultimately, SB 415 was the vehicle sent to the Governor and makes the following changes to AB 98:
- Allows jurisdictions outside the Warehouse Concentration Region (WCR) to adopt an ordinance rather than update their circulation element to address truck routes as mandated in AB 98. This must be implemented by 1/1/2028 or by 1/1/2030 for a jurisdiction that is a city with a population equal to, or less than, 50,000 persons or a county with a population equal to, or less than, 100,000 persons.•
- Provides an off-ramp for jurisdictions without an existing logistics use development that do not have to adopt an ordinance. If a jurisdiction later approves one, they will have two years to adopt an ordinance after the first logistics use development is approved.•
- Provides a safe harbor from the Attorney General’s enforcement provisions for all jurisdictions making a good faith effort to comply with the ordinance or circulation element update, which is critical to the WCR jurisdictions who must still update their circulation element by 1/1/2026.
In addition to the amendments to address the planning mandate concerns, several other changes have been made. These include amendments that will clarify development standards and applicability to agriculture and manufacturing facilities, provide for enforcement of truck routes, and apply general clean up throughout the statute.
IMPORTANT: The bill has not yet been acted on by the Governor. We will be working to ensure his signature so that the provisions of the bill go into effect as of January 1, 2026.
Join us at the Annual Legislative Update at the APA California Conference on September 30th with Special Guest – Assemblymember Buffy Wicks!
2025 has been yet another busy year for planning-related legislation and there’s a lot to discuss. For more details, please join us at the APA California Conference in Monterey on September 30, for the extended Legislative Update Session. This year we will be offering two sessions, back to back, providing more time to dive into legislation related to housing, land use and CEQA, among many other topics the Legislature focused on this year. As always, we will provide an in-depth recap of the 2025 Legislative Session and this year we look forward to welcoming Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, who has authored several of the bills we will be discussing. If you aren’t able to make it in person, we highly encourage you to watch the recording on demand. There are many new planning mandates to be aware of!