Blog

CalCIMA Legislative Update

By Erik Turner, Director of Legislative Affairs
 
Post–House-of-Origin Recap
 
It has already been a productive legislative year thus far as the Legislature hit its halfway mark of the first year of the 2025-26 session.

Last week marked the House-of-Origin deadline when any bill not passed by its originating chamber is now a two-year measure. The Legislature's Appropriations Committees acted on hundreds of bills on the suspense files on May 23. The Assembly Appropriations Committee considered 666 bills and held 35% on suspense, while the Senate considered 432 measures and held 29%. Since the start of the year, CalCIMA's targeted lobbying efforts—rooted in persistent outreach, strategic coalition-building, and reliable expertise—have translated into concrete legislative victories for our members.
By working closely with Assemblymember Juan Carrillo's office, the Department of Conservation, and addressing potential opposition early, our sponsored legislation passed the first house with near-unanimous support. Simultaneously, our early efforts opposing legislation targeting aggregate facilities prompted the author to agree to hold the bill in the Assembly. CalCIMA's coalition with our transportation partners also helped protect the integrity of last year's $11.5 billion multiyear transportation package in the Governor's May Revision, ensuring continued funding for highways and bridges that depend on locally sourced materials. Finally, our advocacy against overly prescriptive measures like AB 1425, which targeted a specific mining project in the Central Valley, saw that bill die in its first policy committee. Please see additional details on legislative outcomes and our continued efforts below.   

 

Key CalCIMA Top Priorities

 

Two major bills we are supporting or sponsoring have passed the first house while two bills targeting our industry are effectively dead for the year.


 

  • AB 982 (Carrillo) – CalCIMA-sponsored bill to extend the life of idle mines sailed through the Assembly (78–1) on June 2. It is now in the Senate awaiting referral to committee.
  • SB 526 (Menjivar) – A bill targeting aggregate facilities with unfeasible dust mitigation mandates by revising South Coast Air Quality Management District's Rule 1157, this problematic piece of legislation is a top priority for CalCIMA due to concerns of its impact to our industry. After extensive work in the Capitol and leading an opposition coalition – which included our labor partners – the author agreed to park the bill in the Assembly while she continues to work with South Coast Air Quality Management District to address the dust issue in her community. The bill passed the Senate with a number of democrats staying off or voting no following CalCIMA's initial lobbying. 
  • AB 978 (Hoover) – Supported by CalCIMA and sponsored by Granite Construction, this bill faced early hurdles with concerns voiced by local governments but, after taking amendments, the bill passed the Assembly easily and with no opposition. This week the bill also passed a policy committee hearing in the Senate unanimously. CalCIMA continues to work closely with the sponsor and met repeatedly with the Senate Transportation Committee to support its recent passage. 
  • AB 1425 (Arambula) – This bill sought to prohibit “pit dewatering” anywhere the San Joaquin River Parkway's groundwater lay within 50 feet of the surface—an overly restrictive carve-out that would have effectively shut down responsible water management at several key aggregate operations along the San Joaquin River. CalCIMA's early and vocal opposition—emphasizing that existing CEQA mitigations under the San Joaquin River Parkway Master Plan already strike the proper balance between resource protection and infrastructure needs—was instrumental in this bill's failure to pass its first policy committee..


 

More bills:

Outside of the industry-specific bills above, CalCIMA has continued to broaden its scope of engagement in order to increase legislative reach and presence. Below are some of the bills we're actively working on or worked to stop in the first house. 

  • Wildfires: Following the LA fires in January, CalCIMA began taking a more active role in wildfire policy, and began working with our industry partners to launch BuildingWithResilience.com. CalCIMA is also supporting key wildfire legislation, namely AB 1 (Connolly) and SB 616 (Rubio). AB 1 Requires the California Department of Insurance (CDI) to consider whether to update the Safer from Wildfires regulations to include certain building hardening measures by 2030 and every 5 years thereafter. SB 616 creates an independent Community Hardening Commission within the Department of Insurance, with the goals of developing a unified and centralized fire mitigation standard for all levels of government across the state, as well as generating guidelines to enable the creation of a wildfire data sharing Platform. Both bills passed unanimously and are currently in the second house awaiting referral.
  • Transportation: Working closely with our partners at Transportation California (TC), we've been at the table with Assemblymember Lori Wilson and Senate leadership to explore alternative transportation-funding models. While legislation is not moving this year, our efforts continue and Assemblymember Wilson – as Chair of Assembly Transportation Committee – continues to be our champion and is planning to hold informational hearings in the summer. At the top of the state budget agenda is leveraging the Administration's desire to create a statewide vehicle miles traveled (VMT) mitigation bank to fund transit-oriented development for prudent reforms to how the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) implements VMT analysis and mitigation (pursuant to SB 743, 2013). TC is also advocating for high-speed rail and transit capital and operations funding as part of the state budget process as the Governor submitted a partial plan for the extension of, and expenditure of funds from, the state's Cap-and-Trade program. TC and CalCIMA are also supporting AB 697 (Wilson) which would facilitate cost-effective and environmentally beneficial improvements along the State Route 37 corridor by allowing projects to proceed under the California Endangered Species Act permitting process, and AB 289 (Haney) which would authorize Caltrans to establish a five-year work zone speed safety pilot program to enforce speeding violations in highway maintenance and construction work zones using speed safety systems. CalCIMA CEO Robert Dugan joined Assemblymember Haney at a press conference to promote AB 289. 
  • Private right of action: CalCIMA joined the CalChamber-led coalition in opposing SB 310 (Wiener), which aimed to create a new private right of action for wage and hour penalties, undermining last year's PAGA reforms. The coalition was able to prevent the bill from coming up for a vote and it was moved to the inactive file. The author of AB 1331 (Elhawary), an overly broad bill limiting workplace surveillance in off-duty areas that would have created a new private right of action, ultimately agreed to remove the private right of action in order to pass the bill off the Assembly floor. 
  • Environment: Despite the ostensible focus on affordability pronounced by legislators at the start of the year, legislation on water and the environment that would increase costs in California were introduced. A bill opposed by CalCIMA and AGC, SB 755 (Stern) would have required state contractors to annually report their emissions and climate-related financial risk. This bill was held in Senate Appropriations. AB 1313 (Papan) would have created an entirely new stormwater permitting process for all commercial, industrial, and institutional (CII) facilities, which the costs to comply with would have likely ranged from tens of thousands to millions of dollars for each property owner. CalCIMA joined a coalition in opposition and were able to prevent this bill from coming up for a vote on the floor after it was moved to the inactive file.


 

Budget Update
With the budget deadline of June 15 just around the corner and no budget deal announced, the Legislature is expected to pass a budget framework while negotiations between leadership and the administration continue. If the Legislature approves the legislative budget bill and then presents it to the Governor on Sunday, June 15, 2025, the Governor's deadline to sign, veto, or line-item veto the bill will be Friday, June 27, 2025, although budget negotiations will continue in the meantime. More budget legislation likely will be considered in August and September 2025 during the closing weeks of this year's legislative session, which concludes on or before Friday, September 12. The Governor's May Revise was announced on May 14 and it proposed to address a $12 billion budget shortfall through $5 billion in reductions, $5.3 billion in borrowing, and $1.7 billion in fund shifts—primarily from cap-and-trade auction revenues. This week the Senate and Assembly announced a legislative budget agreement that largely aligns with the Governor's May Revise save for a few areas, rejecting cuts to transit, health care, and social services, among other changes. Although rumors swirled of a proposed corporate tax increase coming from the Legislature to avoid budget cuts, no tax increase materialized. However, the Senate has promised to begin working on developing a large employer contribution requirement for employers with employees enrolled in Medi-Cal, beginning as early as 2027-28. Governor Newsom's May Revise maintained last year's $11.5 billion multiyear transportation package and added a one-time $17.6 million transfer for 2028 Olympic planning. The governor's proposal also cut transit operations by $1.1 billion (primarily cap-and-trade revenue and previous budget year allocations), although the legislative budget agreement rejects these cuts. The legislative budget agreement also rejects the Governor's proposed Delta Conveyance Project streamlining proposal, which is likely to be a part of the budget negotiations in the weeks ahead. Both the Governor and Legislature proposals adopt placeholder trailer bill language to streamline housing development by implementing changes to the CEQA process related to infill housing and other infrastructure included in AB 609 (Wicks) and SB 609. The extension of California's cap-and-trade program (renamed “cap-and-invest”) through 2045 remains intact, yet the legislative budget limits fund shifts from GF to GGRF to CalFire included in the May Revise. The legislative budget plan leaves cap and trade reauthorization to the Legislature's “policy bill” process. The May Revise also stated Governor Newsom's intent to work with the Legislature to design an expenditure plan while also signaling at least one additional cap-and-invest priority of his own – raising the annual funding amount for the High-Speed Rail (HSR) project. Currently, the HSR project receives 25% of GGRF revenue which fluctuates each year. The May Revise proposes a floor for GGRF allocations to HSR of $1 billion annually, regardless of overall auction proceeds. 

 

New Senate Leadership
After weeks of speculation about challenges to Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire's leadership, Senate Democrats elected Senator Monique Limon to become the next Senate President Pro Tem. She will take over from McGuire next year (although no transition date has been announced). The labor-backed Santa Barbara Democrat Senator Limon is known for her progressive record on the environment and has not always supported high-profile housing bills aimed at accelerating development.

 

Stay Connected on Legislation

If you're interested in receiving updates on legislative and regulatory issues from CalCIMA's Legislation Team, CalCIMA members are welcome to reach out to the Director of Legislative Affairs at eturner@calcima.org.