Council Celebrates Wildly Successful Legislative Session
With the Legislature last Friday wrapping up its work, the Bay Area Council celebrated one of its most consequential and productive sessions in our 80-year history. It was the product of a more than 12-year effort to elevate our voice, influence and effectiveness in the state capital and more effectively represent and champion the priorities of our member organizations and the region overall. The work continues. We sponsored or co-sponsored more bills than any other time in our history and influenced and added our support to many more. Here’s a quick summary of our activities and successes.
The Council played a leading role in achieving the most significant modernization of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) in years. AB 609 (Wicks) creates a durable, statutory exemption for qualifying infill housing projects, cutting years off project timelines and lowering costs. SB 607 (Wiener) updates and streamlines CEQA review procedures to better align with the state’s housing, transit, and climate goals. Originally proposed as standalone bills sponsored by the Council, Governor Newsom championed these proposals and wrapped them into his budget.
The Council also rallied support in the final days of session to block a repeal of the advanced manufacturing CEQA exemption included in the Governor’s budget package. This fight will continue in January, when legislation to narrow the exemption is expected.
Working with Sen. Scott Wiener, the Council heavily engaged on SB 63 to authorize a regional transit funding measure and accompanying budget language creating a bridge loan program to keep Bay Area transit operators solvent. We also fought back against attempts to make the funding mechanism a tax on business. And we secured provisions that will provide strong accountability for transit agencies to improve their effectiveness. We’re now beginning work to organize a regional coalition to qualify and pass a measure in November 2026.
On homelessness, the Council co-sponsored and helped pass AB 255 (Haney), a landmark bill that transforms the state’s approach to homelessness by allowing state funding for drug-free housing. With Sen. Wiener, we co-sponsored SB 79 to dramatically open up areas near transit hubs for new and denser housing. Two other bills, AB 961 (Avila-Farias), which extends the life of a critical program for infill developers, and SB 71 (Wiener), which removes the January 1, 2030 sunset on existing California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) exemptions for green transportation plans and projects.
Two other bills the Council co-sponsored, SB 328 (Grayson), which caps hazardous waste generator fees for housing, infill, nonprofit, and open-space projects, and SB 587 (Grayson), which would have advanced a manufacturing and R&D equipment tax credit, were made into two-year bills and will return next year.
Following our support of Proposition 4, the state climate bond approved by voters last year to invest $10 billion in a range of water, drought, wildfire and other climate resilience projects, the Council helped secure passage of SB 105 (Wiener), which Gov. Newsom signed today. And we succeeded in getting more than $100 million in funding for two of our highest priorities, including $63 million for coastal resilience projects and $40.5 million for the San Francisco Bay Restoration Authority and San Francisco Bay Conservancy Program.
The Council’s advocacy was critical in extending California’s Cap-and-Invest program through 2045. This outcome is a major success for California’s climate leadership and for the business community that powers our state’s economy. It also builds on the Bay Area Council’s longstanding role in shaping climate policy.
The Council also left its mark on the state budget, where we succeeded in maintaining funding for key affordable infill housing programs and protecting long-term transit funding. We secured the Legislature’s support for carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration (CCUS) technology and successfully advocated for focusing high-speed rail capital investments on projects in the Bay Area, including the Caltrain corridor, the San José Diridon Station Plan, and related grade separations and electrification efforts. With federal dollars for science and research either cut or at risk, the Council advocated for state funding to support the engines of our innovation economy.
