PRIORITY BILLS IMPACTING OFFICE, INDUSTRIAL, AND RETAIL BUILDINGS & TENANTS
Updated on May 19, 2023

Note: The California State Legislature introduced more than 2,600 bills in 2023. We have identified more than 400 that impact the commercial real estate industry. This is just a partial list of some of the top bills of interest. If you don’t see a bill you are interested it’s probably is on the big list, but drop us a note to make sure!

●      SB 34 (Umberg; D-Santa Ana)

This bill, until January 1, 2030, would require the County of Orange, or any city located within Orange County, if notified by the department that its planned sale or lease of surplus land is in violation of existing law, to cure or correct the alleged violation within 60 days. The bill would prohibit an Orange County jurisdiction that has not cured or corrected any alleged violation from disposing of the parcel until the department determines that it has complied with existing law or deems the alleged violation not to be a violation.

POSITION: Oppose

STATUS: Senate Floor

●      SB 48 (Becker; D-Menlo Park) 

This would direct the CEC to expand energy benchmarking to include water use, and it would require the CEC to develop mandatory building performance standards for existing buildings.  Once adopted, buildings covered by the regs would have 15 years to comply.

POSITION: Strong Oppose or OUA

STATUS: Senate Floor

●      SB 56 (Skinner; D-Richmond)

Would require load-serving entities to develop an integrated resource plan.  While this should have been done BEFORE we jumped into electrification, it is a good thing and needs to be done to understand grid stress points.

POSITION: Support

STATUS: 2-Year Bill

●      SB 83 (Wiener; D-San Francisco)

This bill would require electric IOUs to interconnect a development project (of any size) to the electric distribution system within eight weeks of receiving notice that the project has received its necessary approvals.  If an IOU does not interconnect a project within eight weeks, the bill would penalize the IOU by requiring it to pay the project applicant.

POSITION: Monitor – working with IOU’s

STATUS: Held in Senate Appropriations Committee; Failed Passage

●      SB 229 (Umberg; D-Santa Ana)

This bill would require a local agency that has received a notification of violation from HCD to hold an open and public session to review and consider the substance of the notice of violation. The bill would require the local agency’s governing body to provide prescribed notice no later than 14 days before the public session. The bill would prohibit the local agency’s governing body from taking final action to ratify or approve the proposed disposal until a public session is held as required.

POSITION: Oppose

STATUS: Senate Floor

●      SB 253 (Wiener; D-San Francisco)

This bill requires any partnership, corporation, limited liability company, or other business entity with total annual revenues in excess of one billion dollars and that does business in California to publicly report their annual greenhouse gas emissions.

POSITION: Oppose

STATUS: Passed Senate Appropriations Committee with amendments to require reporting entities to pay an annual fee for the reasonable regulatory costs associated with the bill. Now on the Senate Floor.

●      SB 410 (Becker; D-Menlo Park)

This bill (Powering Up Californians Act) would require the PUC to establish a working group on or before March 1, 2024 to propose processes to improve the ability of utilities to be informed well in advance of needed increases in distribution system capacity for future housing developments, building electrification, electric vehicle charging infrastructure, and other activities that require increased distribution system capacity. SB 410 would require the PUC to establish, on or before September 30, 2024, reasonable average and maximum target interconnection time periods and certain reporting requirements so that utility performance can be tracked. The bill would require the PUC to require a utility to take any remedial actions necessary to achieve the PUC’s targets and would require all utility reporting to be publicly available.

POSITION: Monitor

STATUS: Senate Floor

●      SB 416 (Laird; D-Monterey)

LEED Certification of state buildings. Similar to what he tried in 2007-08 (which we killed), this would require state-owned AND LEASED buildings to be LEED GOLD or better.  The biggest problem here is that actual certification from USGBC costs a lot of money and takes a lot of time.  At a minimum, the bill should be amended to remove the “certification” mandate and just say “comply with standards similar, or better than, LEED Gold”.  In addition, why require compliance with a standard that is administered by a non-state entity (USGBC) when the California Green Building Standards have voluntary Tiers that are more stringent than LEED Gold?

POSITION: Oppose Unless Amended

STATUS: Senate Floor

●      SB 423 (Wiener; D-San Francisco)

SB 423 would expand SB 35 to nearly all cities, including those in the coastal zone. It would also allow the state to approve housing developments on property it owns or leases and prohibit a city from enforcing its inclusionary housing ordinance if the income limits are higher than those in SB 35 and removes the sunset date on SB 35.

POSITION: Monitor

STATUS: Passed out of Senate Appropriations Committee with amendments (not available yet). Now on Senate Floor

●      SB 585 (Niello; D-Fair Oaks)

Prohibits construction-related accessibility claims from being initiated until a defendant has been served with a demand letter specifying each alleged violation and given 120 days to correct the alleged violation.

POSITION: Support

STATUS: Senate Floor

●      SB 597 (Glazer; D-Contra Costa)

This bill would mandate rainwater catchment systems in residential buildings.   The priority here is to keep commercial buildings out of the bill.

POSITION: Support if Amended

STATUS: Senate Floor

●      SB 604 (Wilk; R-Antelope)

This bill would require PUC and public utilities to do a grid assessment…..something that the state should have been done prior to implementing the decarbonization policy.

POSITION: Support

STATUS: Failed Deadline for Senate Policy Committee

●      SB 670 (Allen; D-Agoura Hills)

This bill would require the CARB, in consultation with the Office of Planning and Research and the Department of Transportation, to develop a methodology for assessing and spatially representing vehicle miles traveled and to develop maps accordingly to display average vehicle miles traveled per capita in the state at the local, regional, and statewide level.  It will make the implementation of VMT in CEQA much more litigious and give a definite advantage to one side only – project opponents.

POSITION: Oppose

STATUS: Held in Senate Appropriations Committee; Failed Passage

●      SB 745 (Cortese; D-Santa Clara)

This bill would require the BSC to develop and adopt mandatory water conservation standards for new buildings that gain a 25% reduction in potable water use over standards in effect today.   Dozens of water agencies have come out in strong opposition to the bill, which is helping us leverage amendments that could allow us to go neutral or support.

POSITION: OUA or SIA

STATUS: Senate Floor

●      SB 747 (Caballero; D-Greenfield)

This bill makes numerous improvements to the Surplus Land Act, including expediting the approval of residential developments which meet SLA requirements for affordable housing and improving clarity on the scope and application of the law to avoid delays and uncertainty. This bill reaffirms that Economic Opportunity Law remains an alternative process to allow cities and counties to acquire and dispose of property to improve economic opportunities for local residents.  SB 747 makes an array of helpful changes to the SLA, including clarifying that only leases of less than 35 years are subject to the SLA, provide exemptions to assist transit, ports, airports, and other important agencies.

POSITION: Support

STATUS: Senate Floor

●      SB 795 (Stern; D-Calabasas)

This bill would direct the CEC to establish a registry for HVAC systems purchased in the State of CA.  Forgetting for a moment that Stern is the author, this is an issue we have been supporting for years.  95% of the air conditioners purchased in CA are installed WITHOUT building permits.  It is a huge contributor to the underground economy and creates an unlevel playing field for contractors who play by the rules.

POSITION: Support

STATUS: Senate Floor

●      AB 9 (Muratsuchi; D-El Segundo)

This bill would require CARB to ensure that statewide greenhouse gas emissions are reduced to at least 55% below the 1990 level by no later than December 31, 2030.

POSITION: Oppose

STATUS: Assembly Floor

●      AB 38 (Lee; D-San Jose)

Lighting retrofits in state owned or leased buildings must comply with light pollution requirements.

POSITION: Oppose or OUA

STATUS: Assembly Floor

●      AB 68 (Ward; D-San Diego) - Strips local governments of their land-use authority by permanently prohibiting certain housing projects. It essentially mandates exclusionary land use policies, which will further restrict housing supply, raise costs and prices of homes, make commercial and retail projects more difficult, further economic inequality, and undermine employers’ ability to recruit for jobs.

POSITION:  Oppose

STATUS: Failed Deadline in Assembly Policy Committee

●      AB 70 (Rodriguez; D-Pomona)

This bill require certain private and public buildings that are modified, renovated, or tenant improved after January 1, 2024 to make a “trauma kit,” available on their premises; provides that a “Good Samaritan” who uses such a kit to administer emergency medical care and an entity that trains lay rescuers to use the kit is not liable for injuries resulting from such use under specified circumstances; and protects a person or entity that acquires a trauma kit from liability for the misuse of a trauma kit.

POSITION: Monitor

STATUS: Assembly Floor

●      AB 362 (Lee; D-San Jose)

This bill directs the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration to conduct a study on the efficacy of a statewide land value taxation system.  This bill could jeopardize the protections enshrined in Proposition 13.

POSITION: Oppose

STATUS: Failed Deadline in Assembly Policy Committee

●      AB 480 (Ting; D-San Francisco)

AB 480 changes the penalty provisions of the Surplus Land Act and makes procedural changes to noticing provisions that apply to “surplus land” and “exempt surplus land” disposed of by local agencies subject to the SLA.  would further undermine the ability of local agencies to conduct appropriate economic development activities on properties they acquire or otherwise own, by expanding the HCD’s scope of authority to include the review of “any action to dispose of land,” which would include properties retained for agency use, properties declared “exempt surplus,” and properties that local agencies are authorized by other laws to acquire and dispose of for economic development purposes.

POSITION: Oppose

STATUS: Assembly Floor

●      AB 539 (Nguyen; D-Elk Grove)

This bill would prohibit a high-frequency litigant from recovering any amount, other than actual damages, that exceeds $1,000 for each offense. The bill would also prohibit a party alleging an accessibility-related violation due to disability from alleging more than one violation per defect and from, through repeated visits, using the previously identified defect as the basis for additional damages. The bill would also prohibit a plaintiff from alleging an accessibility-related violation unless the plaintiff had a bona fide intent to be a customer of the business at the time that the plaintiff accessed the business.

POSITION: Support

STATUS: 2-Year Bill

●      AB 772 (Jackson; D-Riverside)

CEC would be required to adopt regs requiring fast charging EVSE in single family homes. Wrong agency and bad policy for grid and cost-effectiveness.

POSITION: Oppose

STATUS: Amended into a bill on an unrelated subject. We can be neutral now.

●      AB 914 (Friedmann; D-Burbank)

Provides CEQA exemption for electrical infrastructure upgrades

POSITION: Support

STATUS: Assembly Floor

●      AB 1000 (Reyes; D-San Bernardino)

This bill proposes a statewide setback of 1,000 feet from “sensitive receptors” for all new or expanded logistics use facilities 100,000 square feet or larger in California.

POSITION: Oppose

STATUS: Failed Deadline for Assembly Policy Committee

●      AB 1218 (Lowenthal; D-Long Beach)

This bill would move the replacement, relocation assistance, and right to return requirements in the Housing Crisis Act into a stand-alone section thereby making these changes permanent while allowing the fundamentally important pro-housing production reforms included in SB 330 to expire.  AB 1218 also expands the use of the demolition requirements beyond just housing development projects.

POSITION: Oppose

STATUS: Assembly Floor

●      AB 1482 (Gabriel; D-Ventura)

This would place a one-size-fits-all time limit on public utilities to approve and energize new EVSE.  This places an unfair burden on utilities and moves new EVSE installations to the front of the line in terms of utility service priorities.

POSITION: Oppose

STATUS: Held in Assembly Appropriations Committee; Failed Passage

 ●      AB 1532 (Haney; D-San Francisco)

This bill would make an office conversion project that meets certain requirements a use by right in all areas regardless of zoning.  The bill defines “office conversion project” to mean the conversion of a building used for office purposes or a vacant office building into residential dwelling units. The bill would define “use by right” to mean that the city or county’s review of the office conversion may not require a conditional use permit, planned unit development permit, or other discretionary city or county review or approval that would constitute a “project” for purposes of CEQA, as specified.  The bill would exempt an office conversion project from impact fees, as defined, that are not directly related to the conversion of an office building into residential dwelling units.

POSITION: Monitor

STATUS: Failed Deadline in Assembly Policy Committee

●      AB 1580 (Carrillo, Juan; D-Lancaster)

This would require the appropriate state agencies to work cooperatively in in deployment of federal funded programs that incentivize EV infrastructure.

POSITION: Support

STATUS: Held in Assembly Appropriations Committee; Failed Passage

●      AB 1708 (Muratsuchi; D-El Segundo)

AB 1708 would increase accountability for repeat theft offenders and offer pathways for pre-plea diversion programming.  If passed, the bill would send the issue to the voters for approval at the next statewide general election.

POSITION: Support

STATUS: Failed Deadline in Assembly Public Safety Committee