On December 26, 2025, the California Chamber of Commerce (“CalChamber”) received title and summary for a statewide CEQA initiative titled “Building an Affordable California” (“BACA”), which would shorten lead agency review and permitting timelines, substantially narrow the scope of judicial review, and expedite litigation schedules for specific “essential projects.” If passed by a majority of voters in the fall of 2026, BACA would mark the most significant CEQA overhaul since its inception in 1970.
BACA would introduce substantial changes to CEQA review and litigation for a wide range of projects. To accomplish this, the initiative proposes the following series of key procedural and substantive reforms.
What counts as an “essential project”?
BACA broadly defines an “essential project” as one related to broadband, clean energy, housing, education, public health and safety, transportation, and water supply. The initiative further defines each category of “essential project,” ranging from residential and mixed-use developments to renewable energy generation and transmission infrastructure, medical facilities, wildfire risk-reduction projects, transit and roadway improvements, and water system upgrades.
BACA subjects all “essential projects” to labor standards. Essential housing projects must comply with AB 130’s labor requirements. In contrast, all other “essential projects” must adhere to the labor requirements applicable to environmental leadership development projects under Public Resources Code section 21183.5.
The initiative also allows an applicant with a pending application for a covered project to withdraw the application and resubmit it to avail itself of BACA’s streamlined framework. Essential housing projects receive additional protection: applications for qualifying “essential projects” may be withdrawn and resubmitted without losing vested rights under California housing laws, including the Subdivision Map Act and the Housing Accountability Act.
Strict deadlines for determination of application completeness
Agencies must issue a written determination of application completeness within 30 days of receipt; otherwise, the application is deemed complete by default. If an application is found incomplete, the lead agency must provide an exhaustive list of deficiencies. The applicant has 90 days to resubmit, and the agency may rely only on that original deficiency list when evaluating the resubmittal. Applicants may extend the 90-day resubmittal period by notifying the agency of the additional time needed and the reasons for the extension. An applicant may challenge a determination of application incompleteness, and any appeal must be decided within 60 days; if not, the application is deemed complete by default. The initiative would provide applicants with a 90-day window to seek judicial review following a final adverse written determination.
Enhanced tribal consultation requirements
BACA would establish a two-step tribal consultation framework consisting of early initial screening followed by formal consultation. Initial screening would begin before an application is deemed complete and would require early record searches and information sharing with affiliated, federally recognized tribes, with opportunities for the tribe, lead agency, and the applicant to meet and identify resources and potential treatment measures.
Formal consultation then proceeds largely under existing CEQA law, but with enhanced requirements for early disclosure of studies and draft environmental documents, and with agreed-upon mitigation measures becoming enforceable conditions of project approval. In this way, BACA retains AB 52’s core consultation principles but moves tribal consultation earlier and includes defined timelines and outcomes directly tied to project approval.
Environmental review for “essential projects”
Once an application is deemed complete, the agency has 30 days to determine the required level of environmental review—and that review must be completed within 365 days for an EIR, 180 days for a negative declaration or MND, or 90 days for an exemption. An applicant can request an extension of these deadlines. Notably, “days” in this context expressly excludes weekends and state holidays; all other deadlines in BACA are measured in calendar days.
If, however, an agency fails to meet the mandated deadlines, an applicant may require the agency to hold a public hearing on the project. Within 60 days of an applicant’s request for a hearing, the agency must either complete the environmental document, and the “highest-ranking decision-making body” must then hold a hearing at which the project must be approved or denied. If a recommendation from the planning commission or the planning director is needed, the initiative requires that it occur within 30 days of the applicant’s request for a hearing.
BACA also mandates public comment periods of 20 days for a negative declaration or MND and 45 days for EIRs, with extensions allowed only by court order.
Additionally, the initiative narrows the way agencies evaluate environmental impacts for “essential projects” and gives applicants greater control over the standards that apply. Agencies would be required to identify, assess, determine significance, and mitigate the project’s impacts based on compliance with “existing law,” in effect when the project application is submitted, with limited carve-outs for life-safety and building code updates. Applicants may “vest into” significance thresholds the agency published, adopted, or routinely used before the application was filed, and the agency must use those thresholds in its analysis.
Finally, after the lead agency completes CEQA review, BACA requires the lead agency to issue a final decision on any permit or approval concurrently with its final CEQA determination for the project, subject to a narrow exception for certain state agencies with evidentiary hearing requirements. Any non-lead agency with permitting jurisdiction over the project, e.g., responsible or trustee agencies, must issue a final decision 90 days from a determination of application completeness for the approval it is considering or within one day of the lead agency’s approval of the environmental document, whichever is later. If an agency fails to meet these permitting or approval deadlines, the applicant may demand that the agency approve or deny the permit or approval at a hearing that must occur within 45 days of the applicant’s demand.
Preliminary scoping and streamlined alternatives analysis process
BACA would create a voluntary preliminary scoping process paired with a streamlined alternatives analysis. Applicants who choose this path must provide advance written notice, which includes a high-level project description, to the lead agency. The lead agency and applicant must meet during this period to discuss the project, potential alternatives, and affected resources. Public input may be submitted by email, but the applicant is not required to respond. The preliminary scoping process must be completed within 60 days of the applicant’s written notice.
After which, the applicant must generate a single project alternative informed by the input received during the scoping process. The alternative must be consistent with the project’s fundamental purpose, should align with local zoning and land use policies where practicable, and should not need to be located on a different site. The alternative may include on- or off-site improvements and operational parameters designed to reduce environmental impacts.
Within 15 days following completion of the preliminary scoping process, the applicant must share a description of the project, the single proposed alternative, and the no project alternative, which must consider the reasonably foreseeable impacts in the absence of the project, including alternative uses and foregone project benefits. The lead agency then has 15 days to determine whether the applicant has complied with the streamlined scoping and alternatives requirements. If the agency does not act within that period, compliance is deemed certified by default. Any certification may be administratively appealed within 5 days, after which it becomes final.
If an applicant does not opt into this process, the standard CEQA alternatives analysis requirements would apply.
Streamlined judicial review of “essential project” approvals
BACA would require CEQA challenges to “essential projects” to be filed within 30 days of the notice of determination or exemption, and the entire case—including any appeal—must be completed within 270 days. A court may extend that deadline by up to 90 days, but otherwise extensions are permitted only with the mutual written consent of the petitioner, the public agency, and the applicant.
The initiative would also significantly restructure judicial review of “essential projects” by narrowing the scope of claims, altering standards of review, and limiting both the evidentiary record and available remedies.
- Standard of Review: In actions challenging approval of an “essential project” for CEQA noncompliance, judicial review is confined to whether the approval complies with objective, pre-existing legal requirements, and the court may only determine whether the project approval is supported by substantial evidence in light of the whole record. Challenges based on alleged public-participation defects are further constrained to whether the error was arbitrary and capricious and resulted in prejudicial harm.
- Administrative Record: Under BACA, the administrative record for an “essential project” is limited to materials that were publicly disclosed during the CEQA process. The record consists only of notices, studies, and other documents that the lead agency was required to distribute to the public, make available at a public repository, or post on its website; and public comments submitted during the comment period (and a narrow category of late comments), along with the agency’s responses to those comments. Materials outside this universe are excluded from the record.
- Remedies: If a court finds that an approval is not supported by substantial evidence, it must issue a writ of mandate identifying the specific legal deficiency and the particular part, phase, or activity affected. The remedy is limited to temporarily halting only the noncompliant portion of the project until the deficiency is corrected. Courts are expressly prohibited from rescinding project approvals, and unaffected portions of the project may proceed and are insulated from further CEQA challenge once compliance is achieved.
- Subsequent Approvals: Once a project approval is either not challenged, upheld in court, or brought into compliance through a court-approved return to the writ, no further CEQA actions may be filed to challenge later phases, construction, or subsequent approvals of the project. In addition, minor project modifications that do not create new significant impacts or substantially worsen previously identified impacts are expressly insulated from further CEQA challenge.
- Injunctive Relief: A court may grant injunctive relief only upon a showing of clear and convincing evidence of an unmitigable adverse impact on public safety, and any such relief is limited to a temporary injunction.
The Building an Affordable California Initiative is available online at: https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/initiatives/pdfs/25-0023A1%20%28%26quot%3BEssential%20Projects%26quot%3B%29.pdf
For additional information or questions, please contact Christina L. Berglund (cberglund@rmmenvirolaw.com) or Blaine R. Dyas (bdyas@rmmenvirolaw.com)