As California’s Congress approaches the end of the legislative session at the end of August, many bills are going into the final round of discussions.
Each year, Greenbelt Alliance selects legislative priorities to endorse, collaborate, and advocate for. Those guide our team in determining opportunities to take action that will advance our mission to educate, advocate, and collaborate to ensure the Bay Area’s lands and communities are resilient to a changing climate. Learn more about our legislative priorities here.
Stay tuned for our upcoming recommendations and endorsements for the November elections with our Voter Guide for Climate Resilience.
Check out the bills we are closely monitoring this session:
Bills We Endorse
Nature-based Solutions
Senate Bill 1182 – Master Plan for Healthy, Sustainable, and Climate-Resilient Schools (Senator Gonzalez): This bill would require the commission to develop a Master Plan for Healthy, Sustainable, and Climate-Resilient Schools, including assessments of a representative sample of the state’s public elementary and secondary school buildings and grounds, and establishing a set of priorities, benchmarks, and milestones for health, resilience, and decarbonization of public school campuses and support facilities. These Master Plans should be developed by March 31, 2026, and engage with a diverse group of stakeholders and experts regarding their development.
Housing
Assembly Bill 1820 – Housing development projects: applications: fees and exactions (Assembly Member Schiavo): This bill would require cities and counties to provide an estimate of the impact fees required for a proposed housing development at the time of building permit application, among other things.
Transportation
Senate Bill 960 – Transportation: planning: complete streets facilities: transit priority facilities (Senator Wiener): Among other things, this bill would strengthen requirements that state-owned surface streets accommodate all road users, including pedestrians, cyclists, and public transit users. This bill codifies Caltrans’ Director’s Policy for Complete Streets for the SHOPP; directs Caltrans to set performance targets for the continuous improvement of transit on state-owned surface streets and integrate transit priority into their investment plans; and streamline the agency’s approvals of transit priority and complete streets improvements. It also directs Caltrans to develop—by January 1, 2026—a transit priority policy with performance targets to improve transit travel time reliability, speeds, reduced transit and rider delay, and improved accessibility at stops, stations, and boarding facilities.
Assembly Bill 2086 – Transportation funding: California Transportation Plan: public dashboard (Assembly Member Schiavo): This bill would require the state to track and regularly report to the legislature and the public on how transportation investments are advancing California’s safety, climate action, equity, and economic prosperity goals through a public online dashboard.
This would be done by:
- Require Caltrans’ annual transportation program budgets to describe how they are advancing each of the “Core Four Priorities”.
- Require the CTC, to develop guidelines and metrics to assess progress toward the Core Four Priorities, including feedback from the public and the Interagency Equity Advisory Committee by 2026.
- Require Caltrans, by 2026, to report on past five-year performance of how the transportation budget adheres to the state’s goals, by district.
Starting in 2027, require Caltrans report to the legislature on how funding made available to it in the prior year was used to advance the Core Four Priorities and targets established as part of (2). - Require Caltrans to create or update an existing online dashboard to display project investments as it pertains to the Core Four.
Photo: Karl Nielsen/Greenbelt Alliance
