Climate Action California and the Sierra Club have been working for months in a broad coalition opposing AB 306, a wrong-headed and unnecessary bill that will freeze nearly all updates to building codes—at the state AND local levels—until the early 2030s. The bill's authors, Assembly Member Nick Schultz and Speaker of the Assembly Robert Rivas, claim that the bill will make rebuilding Los Angeles faster and cheaper. We and many others strongly disagree. Read our opposition letter to AB 306.

The bill passed the Assembly (largely, we think, because it is "the Speaker's bill")—but instead of being scheduled for Senate committee review, it turned up in twin Budget Trailer Bills, AB 130 and SB 130. These are the "housing trailers" that spell out all sorts of new housing rules and programs. They are 218 pages long.

Explainer: Budget trailer bills provide detail on implementation of budget lines or sections. They are normally authored by a budget committee and are not bound by the "regular order" rules that other bills must follow, and are not evaluated in policy committees. Trailer bills can be adopted any time, but normally they are amended into other bills ("gut and amend") after the budget has passed.

Click on Start Writing to tell your representatives: NOT SO FAST!

Both the Assembly and the Senate budget committees held hearings on these bills on Wednesday. A LOT of groups registered their extreme objection to the AB 306 provisions in AB 130: municipalities and climate groups want building codes to continue to innovate; labor unions strongly oppose minimum wage "floors" that undercut wages currently paid to skilled workers. Legislators are not happy that major policy initiatives have been jammed into these huge measures at the last minute——Senators noted that they had only seen the bills in print on Tuesday night and thus their staffs stayed up all night to review and prepare briefings.

Worse, the agreement between the budget chairs and the Governor requires that both AB/SB 130 and another bill that isn't in print yet, AB/SB 131 (expected to contain major modifications to CEQA presently in SB 607) be adopted by the legislature before the budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1 can go into effect. That's next Tuesday!

So—how are we countering this anti-democratic power play?

We're piling on with the legislators who argue that the provisions from AB 306 (now included in trailer bill AB/SB 130) should be de-coupled from budget enactment and returned to policy committees for the scrutiny they need and we deserve. Two ways you can add your voice:

• Call the offices of your Senator and Assembly member, and simply ask them to VOTE NO on AB or SB 130 when it comes before them. Click here to find your representatives and follow the links to their Sacramento office phone numbers.

• Click on "start writing" and send them quick emails.

Our calls and letters matter! Constituent support gives our elected representatives courage to stand up to the leadership and special interests, and stand up FOR their constituents and all the Californians whose lives will not be better if these bills pass without oversight.

Thanks in advance,
Janet Cox for Climate Action California
Gabriela Facio for Sierra Club California