Assembly Standing Committee on Natural Resources

[Roll Call]

Motion move the consent calendar by Mister Wood. A second by Miss Pellerin. Madam Secretary, can we call the roll.

[Roll Call]

Six Members voting. The consent calendar has been adopted. If you are Senator Blakespear, Senator Caballero, or Senator Ochobo, please make your way to room 447.

[Background]

Senator, welcome for SB 1175. Ready whenever you are.

Mister Chair, Members. Current regulations allow local governments to apply for waivers for some or all of the SB 1383 collection requirements for areas. That are high, at a high elevation, sparsely populated and or rural.

However, these waivers are not based on well established boundaries, such as city or county lines, but on census tracts, which are geographic regions currently used only for census purposes. The result is that the boundaries of areas eligible for a waiver make little sense for the purposes of disposing of organic waste.

For example, one of my communities, Running Springs, is an unincorporated town in the San Bernardino mountains. It's split between two census tracts, one with low population waiver and one with an elevation waiver.

This means that neighbors living literally across the street from each other have to comply with different collection requirements, which poses logistical challenges for waste management entities. Due to these challenges. Many households in the San Bernandino mountains have lost regularly scheduled organic waste pickup.

Given that much of this region is designated as a very high fire hazard zone, regular disposal of highly flammable organic waste, such as pine needles, is one of the most utmost importance. To better ensure communities can design efficient waste management routes, SB 1175 will require CalRecycle to consider alternatives in addition to the census tracts when deciding the boundaries of a jurisdiction eligible for a waiver.

These alternatives include established boundaries of cities and census-designated places, as well as boundary maps submitted by local governments who developed the waste management routes. Testifying in support of the bill is John Kennedy, Senior Policy Advocate with the Rural County Representatives of California.

Thank you. Good afternoon, John.

Good afternoon. John Kennedy with RCRC. We represent 40 of the state's 58 counties, our largest being Sonoma, just about 500,000 residents. So, we've been trying to implement SB 1383 for a number of years now. One of the big challenges that we've faced is how we do collection in a lot of these sparsely populated rural areas.

So, as the Senator mentioned, there are a couple different exemption pathways for local governments. There's a high elevation waiver process that. Gets at some things. There's a rural exemption for 19 rural counties, but everyone else has to work with the low population waiver. For cities, it's clear it's a population of 7,500 or less and 5,000 tons of trash or less. For unincorporated areas, it's a population density metric.

So, what we deal with is we have to have fewer than 75 residents per square mile in order to satisfy and qualify for this waiver. That has been a challenge in some remote jurisdictions where you have large census tracts with a very heavily and densely populated anchor in municipality, but then the rest of the census tract is very sparsely populated, rural, hard to get to, narrow roads, and many other logistical challenges for solid waste entities.

So, we support this Bill because it provides some additional flexibility both for CalRecycle and for local governments. The census tract might not be the best fit, but maybe census blocks are a better fit. Maybe there's some other map based on the jurisdiction. This could cut both ways.

It could mean some people fall out of the waivers as well. But we think it's important to have that flexibility for locals, for CalRecycle to make 1383 work better and present fewer headaches. So, thank you for the indulgence. Thank you for the bill and urge your aye vote.

Thank you. Are there any persons here in the committee room who would like to register their support for the bill?

Ada Waelder with the California State Association of Counties in support.

Melissa Sparks-Kranz with the League of California Cities in support.

Nicole Wordelman on behalf of San Bernardino County in support.

Jean Hurst here today, on behalf of the Riverside County Board of Supervisors in support.

Any persons in the hearing room. Who would like to register their opposition to this bill? Seeing none, we'll turn it back to Committee Members. Any questions, comments, concerns by Committee Members? We have a motion by Mister Flora.

Second.

A second by Mister Wood. Would you like to close?

Thank you, Mister Chair. Just want to. Just before, I neglected to thank my staff, my team member, Nikki Taylor, for working diligently on this, on this particular bill. And looking for the best, optimal way of addressing some of the concerns and issues that we had in our district. So, I'm grateful for her. I also want to thank all the stakeholders. And just in closing, SB 1175 will provide local governments with more options as they work to meet the state's ambitious and mission reduction goals. I respectfully ask for an aye vote.

Thank you for your work on this measure. Madam Secretary. Can we call the roll?

The motion is do pass to Appropriations. [Roll call]

That Bill has seven. That Bill is out, but we'll leave it open. Senator Caballero, would you like to go? Oh, you got here first, but I. I will let y'all decide. You're the last two bills.

Thank you, Senator. Then this is SB 768?

Yes. Yes. And big thank you to Senator Blakespear for letting me go ahead.

So thank you for the opportunity to present SB 768. In 2013, the Legislature passed and the Governor signed SB 743 by Senator Steinberg. That Bill established a special administrative and judicial review process under CEQA for the City of Sacramento.

You know, we all want stadiums, and we all want the opportunity to be able to bring people, but it was a special process that would allow them to do an infill project without having to use a level of service analysis for traffic for CEQA, because there's no way you can mitigate a heavily congested downtown area if you're going to be building.

And so, in addition, the bill also tasked the Govenor's Office of Planning and Research to develop new CEQA guidelines to replace the current criteria. And that was the level of service.

What was happening under the level of service is that cities and counties in building infill projects were building more lanes and bigger streets in order to accommodate more traffic, as well as putting turns and turns in the traffic signals.

And what that was doing is keeping everybody at the intersection a lot longer, aggravating the traffic, and creating more pollution. And so what OPR did is they devised another methodology to satisfy CEQA, and that's the vehicle miles traveled.

Vehicle miles traveled is a measure of how many vehicle trips are generated by a project and it must now be accounted for in the construction of any new development regardless of where it is located.

So, with projects with high VMT, the developer may be assessed a mitigation fee or be required to build an amenities or design features that reduce vehicle miles traveled, such as improving or increasing access to transit, adding bicycle lanes, providing ride-share options, and providing transit passes.

While many of the project's amenity are not a direct fee, they still result in an increased cost to developers. For example, a proposed VMT mitigation fee ranged from $50,000 to $2 million per new home for a recent housing project out of San Diego. This faced significant opposition and was ultimately not approved.

But it just gives you an idea of the extra cost per unit of building housing when you're using a VMT, even in an urban area. So, California's housing crisis is not just a supply issue, it's also an affordability issue. And if you're going to add a VMT cost to every single home, it can be cost-prohibitive.

To be clear, increasing public transportation and bicycle accessibility are admirable goals for the environment. The problem is, is that we're placing the onus on developers to do this with a VMT metric, which will drive up the cost. Furthermore, it's difficult for developers in some areas to mitigate for VMT.

And what concerns me is, representing a rural area, to require a VMT in an area that is not congested and where people are moving to from high-cost regions in the state means that you're penalizing the very people that, well, first you're penalizing the communities that are trying to build housing for their own workforce and are having an influx of people moving from farther away.

But also, you're penalizing the people that will eventually buy those new homes in the region. So, VMT has the capacity to discourage much-needed housing and economic development in our state's rural and suburban counties, which is why I've authored this bill.

The idea behind the study is to analyze what are other measures we can do to make sure that we're meeting our CEQA needs. But that can also help to mitigate the impacts that you would have because of the longer commutes. You don't stop people from commuting because it's a higher cost. You just make them go further and further.

My district has changed significantly over the years because of the commuters from the Silicon Valley, and they're coming because of the price of homes there, they can finally afford to live in their own place. But VMT has created a real stress and strain on rural communities.

So, the idea behind this study is to have the Department of Transportation, in conjunction with some of the departments that are mostly connected to this, Department of Housing, OPR, do an analysis of are there other ways for us to meet our climate goals, and is there a different way of looking at traffic rather than VMT?

So, with me today are lead witnesses, Mark Neuberger from the California State Association of Counties and John Kennedy from the Rural County Representatives of California.

Welcome back, John.

Okay, hello. Good afternoon again, John Kennedy with RCRC. We're pleased to be here today to support SB 768. First, I'd like to provide a little bit of context for this bill and the differences between rural and urban areas. So, we've got five counties with over 2 million residents each, but we also have eight counties with under 20,000 residents.

We have seven counties with a population density over 1,000 people per square mile, 18 counties with under 25 people per square mile, and nine counties with under 10 people per square mile. So, while VMT may be a very useful metric to evaluate transportation impacts and mitigate those impacts in dense urban areas around a lot of transit, it's really poorly suited for application in rural jurisdictions.

We supported previous legislation that would have focused these VMT metrics to those transit and transit priority areas. We recognize this bill is not that today, but it provides some useful metrics and tools for rurals.

So, in rural areas, our communities, our businesses, our populations are located much farther apart, partly due to the fact that the federal and state governments own a lot of our jurisdictions. The dominant local economies are industries like AG, where populations are interspersed among very large, open areas dedicated to productive use.

So, this makes VMT a really misleading metric in some cases that's not really helpful for measuring much less mitigating transportation impacts. OPR even admitted in 2018 that there are fewer options available for reducing VMT in rural areas. That's a huge understatement. Caltrans SB 743 program mitigation playbook really is unworkable in rural areas.

All of the mitigation options are focused on transit, on telecommuting, on road diets, on parking, and none of these work in our communities. And I can go into the reasons why if you'd like.

Coming up on two minutes.

Yes, I will. I'll sum up. We support the author's efforts here. We support efforts to have the Transportation Agency evaluate VMT, analyze differences in how VMT is dealt with in urban, suburban, and rural areas, and increase predictability by clarifying what projects presumptively considered increased capacity, what induced vehicle miles traveled, and what is exempt from the VMT analysis altogether. So, urge your I vote today.

Appreciate it. And that was 230. I was a little generous with that one, but next witness.

I'll make mine brief. Mark Neuberger, California State Association of Counties, the voice of the state's 58 counties. I want to thank the author for sponsoring this bill that we support as well as the Committee for hearing it.

We completely agree with RCRC's comments provided and just want to add additional perspective. We feel the state's transportation system must be fully integrated with planned land use, support the lifestyle desired by people, and compatible with the environment by considering the project's impact.

We believe that the study provided by this bill will allow for a better understanding of how VMT has been implemented and how it's impacting the unique challenges that the state's 58 counties are facing in building and modernizing their transportation system.

That was incredible. Very well done. Do we have any witnesses here in the hearing room who would like to register their support for this measure?

Hi there. Megan Mekelburg here on behalf of Valley Clean Air Now in support. Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Hi. Mark Watts representing Riverside County Transportation Commission inn favor. Thank you.

Thank you, Mark.

Hello. Waleed Hojeij with the League of California Cities in support. Thank you.

Audrey Ratajczak from Cruise Strategies on behalf of the California Building Industry Association. We don't have a formal position right now, but we thank the author for the Bill, and we're continuing to work with her on some amendments to clarify the impacts on housing. So, thank you.

Thank you so much. Are there any persons in the hearing room who'd like to register their opposition to this measure? Seeing none, we'll turn it back to Committee Members. Questions, comments, concerns? We'll start with Bauer-Kahan

I just want to thank the Senator for this work. I think, you know, I live in a more urban community, but what we've seen in my community is a displacement of the very few jobs we have in my community to build more housing because of the value in those houses.

And now those folks are commuting further and further, as you were mentioning, is happening in your community. And I've always thought that we should be incentivizing the building of jobs in communities like yours and mine in order to reduce the VMT.

That that's actually the most effective way to do it and not just stop building at all. And I think this analysis will hopefully move us in that direction where it sort of prioritizes what the community needs.

So, if you're building a giant Apple campus, you have to build housing near it. And if you're building in my community, you can put more jobs in, and people can commute less, and that that's really what's going to move the ball forward as it relates to VMT and the climate impact. So, I think this is really thoughtful and I hope it really changes the game.

Thank you very much.

Assembly Member Friedman.

Thanks. I agree with Assemblymember Bauer-Kahan that it is really important that we combine the housing with other land uses that will reduce VMT.

I'm going to support the bill today, but I also want to just, you know, caution that I think VMT is still an incredibly important metric because it's the only thing that we have to really quantify whether the projects that we're building in some of these rural areas or farther-flung areas are sprawl projects.

And I understand that people are driving a lot in a lot of these areas, but we're also trying to mitigate that by using these impact fees to create more transit. And when I was in, I, you know, I did a transit tour.

I did a transportation tour in Fresno and went to farm communities where people were very clear in saying that they wanted more public transportation, that they were elderly, a lot of them didn't own cars, they were really isolated.

There was one bus that went every day from these little, teeny towns into Fresno, which is where their doctors were, and they couldn't access what they needed in terms of food and medical care because there hadn't been the kind of investment and public transportation that they really needed.

So, it's more important that we think about VMT in a lot of these areas than in our urban areas where people in many cases can walk to more things and have more alternative ways of getting around. So, you know, I understand, you know, people moving further away not because they necessarily want to.

Sometimes they do, but sometimes they have to. It happens in Los Angeles. It happens all over our state because of the housing crisis. But we also can't just say, hey, that's just the price for people living further away. We've got to accommodate them and still find ways to reduce VMT. It's really important for the climate.

It's not just about people's choices. This is about the fires that we're having every year, the extreme heat that we're seeing. And we all have to take this very, very seriously and recognize that all of our climate goals are based on a substantial reduction in VMT.

Otherwise, we can't make the kind of impact that we need on climate change to have areas where we can still grow crops and where people can still live safely. Thank you.

Thank you, Miss Friedman. Assembly Member Wood.

Thank you, Mister Chair. And thank you Senator Caballero for bringing this bill forward.

I very much appreciate what you're trying to do. I think it's another example of one size does not fit all. When I think of the rural communities that I represent, we don't. It would be great if we had the kind of transit that the Member from Burbank is talking about, but we don't.

We have some regional buses that maybe go around the community sometimes, sometimes not. And it's a huge challenge for us. So, recognizing that more and more people are because of the high cost of housing, because of the lack of housing supply, another issue obviously, are struggling to find a place to live.

So, support you on this and appreciate your efforts on behalf of rural communities. Thank you.

Would you like to close?

Thank you very much Mister Chair. And thank you for all the comments. I agree with everything that has been said and one of the things I thought about doing quite frankly, and you mentioned some more is that is to align GO-Biz and the infusion of money they put in projects with where we have housing but no jobs.

And that's incendiary because then people start saying wait a minute, I've got big projects that are coming down the queue and I want to be funded in my district. You raise a really good point, which is the other piece that I've been trying to struggle with is that the way that we fund transportation is by regions and by the type of transportation that's offered.

So, BART is separate from the train which is separate from the bus which is, I mean they're all separate, right? And I've been dying for BART to extend their service, but they can't even make, they can't even provide service to the entirety of their region.

BART hasn't gone south past Milpitas forever and I'm waiting for it to some point to get to Santa Cruz and to Monterey and we've been waiting for the ACE train to come from the Bay Area over to Merced. And when that happens that'll be fantastic.

But it seems to me that we should have our, we should set our priorities. If we really want to do climate change using transportation as the mitigation, we ought to be funding the infrastructure in a way that goes way beyond what the locals can afford to pay.

And so, this, you know, it would be great to get together a group that says how start to set priorities and then fund them and see how that works. But in the interim, I just think we need more information. VMT was always designed for urban centers, and it works really well.

And I don't disagree with the interest in constituents in small rural communities wanting to be able to get. There are no big stores in most of these communities, there are no pharmacies, there are no doctors. And so, when they have to seek that service, somebody has to drive them 30 miles.

And as my good friend from Northern California said, sometimes that public transportation comes, and sometimes it doesn't. And sometimes it's supposed to come at a certain hour, and it just doesn't. And so, part of it is trying to figure out what do we do in the meantime when I have communities that are desperate for housing, and they're living under the requirements

We've said to grow up, not out. They've increased densities, but they can't get people to come in because the cost of doing it is too high. That's when I get concerned. So, that's what this report is about and I respectfully ask for your aye vote.

Well, I think you've made it pretty plain for all of us. I really appreciate the conversation from my colleagues up here on the dais. I think that's how good policy is made, and even further when we study the issues that have nuance to them. So, thank you for bringing this forward.

This bill has a do pass. Madam Secretary, can we call the? Oh. We need a motion. Mister Wood. And a second. Miss Bauer-Kahan. Madam Secretary, can we call the roll?

The motion is do pass to Appropriations. [Roll call]

The bill has nine. It's out, but we'll leave it open.

The Bill has nine. It's out, but we'll leave it open.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

Senator Blakespear. Also, on behalf of all the UCLA alumni who watched you do the adjourn in memory for Bill Walton, thank you for doing that.

Senator Blakespear. Also, on behalf of all the UCLA alumni who watched you do the adjourn in memory for Bill Walton. Thank you for doing that.

Oh, well, thank you for watching. Appreciate that.

Well, thank you for watching. Appreciate that.

You can begin.

You can begin.

Well, hello, Chair and Colleagues. Thank you.

Well, hello, Chair and colleagues. Thank you. Yes, thank you for coming up. I'm pleased to present to you SB 689, which will reduce delays in the building of bike lanes, dedicated transit lanes, or pedestrian walkways along California's coastline in already developed areas. The bill does two things. First, it states that a new traffic study, which can be costly and time consuming, is not necessary for a local coastal program, or LCP amendment, when a local government is converting an existing motorized vehicle lane into a dedicated bicycle lane, transit lane, or pedestrian walkway.

Secondly, it allows for the amendment to the LCP to be processed under a De minimis standard in certain circumstances. During my time as the Mayor of the City of Encinitas, we built several protected bike lane projects, which were time consuming and expensive because of additional requirements in the Coastal Zone. Some projects were redesigned specifically to avoid the Coastal Commission process, and we don't want the regulatory process to be driving decision making about what gets built.

That's really the tail wagging the dog. It's important for us as policymakers to ensure good governance and eliminate hurdles that may prevent or prolong the construction of very important active transportation projects. My team and I have had productive conversations with the Coastal Commission, and we are now on the same page, which I'm grateful for, on how to achieve this objective. With me today, I have Sean Drake on behalf of the Coastal Commission and Moira Topp on behalf of the City of San Diego.

Thank you, Senator. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and Members. Sean Drake with the California Coastal Commission. The Coastal Commission supports SB 689, which would add language to the Coastal Act streamlining the process for local governments to create dedicated bike, pedestrian, or transit lanes on roadways in the Coastal Zone. And it would do this in two ways. I'll be brief.

First, the bill would specify that if a local coastal program amendment is needed as part of converting part of a roadway into a bike, pedestrian, or transit lane, the Commission will approve that amendment ministerially upon a finding that the project would provide public access benefits without significantly reducing public access opportunities.

The process the Commission would use is an existing process for ministerial approval of LCP amendments. SB 689 would expand the utility of that process by providing the Commission with greater flexibility to find that amendments for bike, pedestrian, and transit lanes qualify as De minimis.

The other piece is to establish that, when a local government applies to the Commission for a permit or for a local coastal program amendment to convert a vehicle lane into a bike, pedestrian, or transit lane, a traffic study is not required. This provides the Commission and local governments with greater flexibility to think about coastal access beyond circulation and to think about what else is important as part of providing the public with equitable and meaningful access to our coast.

To conclude, we want to recognize that many bike, pedestrian, and transit lane projects in the Coastal Zone currently don't require a coastal development permit or a local coastal program amendment. But there are some circumstances where, due to the specific language of a community's LCP or the features of a project, they may be necessary. So this bill would streamline the approval of those projects in particular and really help to further promote public coastal access, minimize vehicle miles traveled, and mitigate the impacts of climate change on the coast. We respectfully request an aye vote.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and Members. Moira Topp here on behalf of the City of San Diego. We are a sponsor of the measure. We do, we know that this bill will maintain coastal protections, ensure broad coastal access, but again, it's intended cut down on the time consuming and burdensome process that exists today, and then replace it with one that is streamlined and purposeful.

And just to give you a kind of a hint into kind of what brought us here. Over the last several years, the Coastal Commission has begun to mandate that local jurisdictions amend their local coastal programs for projects that merely restripe the road for congestion reduction purposes.

An LCP amendment process can take 18 months or two years to complete, and of course, it costs our city resources. These restriping projects do not extend beyond the current right of way or have any impact on surrounding flora or fauna. Improving our bike lane, pedestrian, and transit networks, especially along the curved coastal roads, will also lead to better bike and pedestrian safety and likely result in fewer fatalities on our coastal roads.

So again, SB 689 is intended to reduce costly, unnecessary, and time consuming bureaucratic hurdles, which have prevented local jurisdictions like the City of San Diego to pursue common sense traffic improvements. The measure will improve safety for all modes of traffic and assist us in meeting our climate and traffic safety goals. On behalf of the City of San Diego and Mayor Todd Gloria, we respectfully ask for your aye vote.

Are there any persons in this hearing room who would like to register their support for this measure?

Clifton Wilson on behalf of the City and County of San Francisco in support. Thank you.

Mr. Chair and Members, Amy Brown on behalf of the City of Long Beach in support.

Good afternoon. Sharon Gonsalves on behalf of the City of Carlsbad in support.

Mr. Chair and Members, Jean Hurst here today on behalf of the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors in support.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. Kyra Ross on behalf of the City of Solana Beach in support.

Good afternoon. Waleed Hojeij with the League of California Cities in support. Thank you.

Erin Gilbert for the City of Encinitas in support.

Good afternoon. Silvia Solis Shaw here on behalf of the City of Santa Monica, CaCTI, the California City Transportation Initiative, and on behalf of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, all in support. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Are there any persons in the hearing room who would like to register their opposition to this measure? Seeing none, we'll turn it back to Committee Members. Questions, comments, concerns? Is that a motion by Ms. Friedman or Ms. Pellerin earlier? Motion by Ms. Friedman and a second by Mr. Kalra. Would you like to close?

I respectfully ask for your aye vote. Thank you.

You know, it's a really outstanding day when you are finding something in the Coastal Commission that is blocking progress from happening as quickly as it can, and you come to the table, and we come to a solution that works for all parties. It makes my job significantly easier. Madam Secretary, can we call the roll?

The motion is do pass to Transportation Committee. [Roll Call]

Thank you.

Thank you, Senator. Can we... Madam Secretary, can we lift the call for absent authors? And I believe Ms. Wicks is on her way up right now. She's on her way. So we can either wait for her, or we can go ahead and knock out Mr. Kalra. Perfect.

Thank you, Senator. Can we? Madam Secretary, can we lift the call for absent authors? And I believe Miss Wicks is on her way up right now. She's on her way. So, we can either wait for her or we can go ahead and knock out Mister Kalra. Perfect.

I'm going to lift the call on the consent calendar. [Roll call] It has 10 votes. That's out.

Lifting the call on SB 689, Blakespear. [Roll call] It has 10 votes. Lifting the call on SB 768, Caballero. Motion is do pass to Appropriations. [Roll call] It has 10 votes. Final item, SB 1175, Ochoa Bogh. Motion is do pass to Appropriations. [Roll call] 10 votes.

This concludes the Assembly Natural Resources Committee.