California Air Resources Board

Would have for the installation of residential heat pump HVAC systems and heat pump water heaters, required the California Energy Commission to develop standardized permitting checklists, establish limits and requirements for local agency permitting, and cap permit fees, among other things. The bill was sponsored by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. Held on suspense in the Senate Appropriations Committee.

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Permanently exempts active transportation plans, pedestrian plans, and bicycle transportation plans for the restriping of streets and highways, bicycle parking and storage, and signal timing to improve street and highway intersection operations from CEQA. This bill expands the project types applicable for the CEQA exemption of certain transportation-related projects and extends the exemption from January 1, 2030, to January 1, 2040. The bill extends and expands other CEQA exemptions for public projects related to transit and requires certain CEQA-exempt projects that exceed a specified dollar amount to meet certain criteria.

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Requires that a housing development project within a specified distance of a transit-oriented development (TOD) stop, be an allowed use as a transit-oriented housing development on any site zoned for residential, mixed, or commercial development, if the development complies with applicable requirements. Among these requirements, the bill requires a project to include at least 5 dwelling units and establish requirements concerning height limits, density, and residential floor area ratio in accordance with a development’s proximity to specified tiers of TOD stops. The bill provides that a local government that denies a project meeting the requirements of these provisions located in a high-resource area, as defined, would be presumed in violation of the Housing Accountability Act and immediately liable for penalties, beginning on January 1, 2027. These provisions do not apply to a local agency until July 1, 2026, or within unincorporated areas of counties until the 7th regional housing needs allocation cycle. The bill specifies that a development proposed pursuant to these provisions is eligible for streamlined, ministerial approval pursuant to specified law, except that the bill exempts a project under these provisions from specified requirements and specifies that the project is required to comply with certain affordability requirements, under that law.

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Makes appropriations for regional Clean Cars 4 All programs and Community Air Protection Programs.

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Makes appropriations for the support of the State government for the 2025-26 fiscal year.

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Summary

Would have authorized the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) to jointly adopt a commute benefit ordinance that requires covered employers operating within the common area of the BAAQMD and MTC respective jurisdictions to offer all covered employees one of the following choices: (1) A pretax option, (2) Employer-paid benefit, (3) Employer-provided transit, or (4) Employer-provided regional transit pass. The bill would have authorized MTC to propose new taxes, allocate new revenue, and issue bonds for specified transportation projects, among other things. Remains at the Assembly Desk.

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Summary

Makes appropriations for the support of the State government for the 2024-25 fiscal year, including a provision to shift the fund source to the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund for emerging opportunities.

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Summary 

This bill requires CARB, by January 1, 2025, to develop and adopt regulations requiring corporations with revenues in excess of $1 billion doing business in California to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions to an emissions reporting organization using a specified protocol, but authorizes CARB to adopt a different protocol beginning in 2033. The bill allows reporting entities to include their emissions reported under the Mandatory Reporting Regulation with the reporting required by the bill. The bill requires CARB to establish assurance provider qualifications and a process for approval of assurance providers that ensures sufficient provider capacity, as well as timely reporting. The bill requires CARB by July 1, 2027, to contract with a university, as specified, to report on public disclosures made by these businesses, including in the context of State greenhouse gas reduction goals. The bill requires CARB to update the disclosure deadlines by January 1, 2030, to ensure Scope 3 emissions are reported as close in time as practicable to Scope 1 and 2 emission disclosures. The bill also requires reporting entities to pay an annual filing fee of no more than $1,000 and requires CARB to adopt regulations to impose administrative penalties for failure to report. 

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Summary

Would have changed retention rules surrounding information captured by automatic license plate readers (ALPR).  Current law authorizes the Department of the California Highway Patrol to retain license plate data captured by license plate reader technology for not more than 60 days unless the data is being used as evidence, or for the investigation of felonies. This data can be shared with law enforcement agencies and requires both an ALPR operator and an ALPR end-user, as those terms are defined, to implement a usage and privacy policy regarding that ALPR information. This bill would have required, if the ALPR operator or ALPR end-user is a public agency and not an airport authority, ALPR data be destroyed within 24 hours if it does not match a hot list. Held on suspense in the Senate Appropriations Committee.

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Summary

Expands California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) exemptions for specified transit, bicycle, and pedestrian projects, and extends these exemptions from 2023 to 2030.

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