Summer Recess Ends: Sprint to End of Legislative Session Begins

The Legislature enters its final stretch this month, and the decisions made over the next several days will determine which of this year’s biggest bills survive — and which won’t.

For counties, the stakes are high. Lawmakers will decide whether to advance proposals that would impose new costs and administrative responsibilities, reshape local land use authority, affect public employee and workforce policies, modify behavioral health and criminal justice programs, and change how counties deliver essential public services. Other measures would provide counties with new tools and resources to meet growing demands.

Those decisions begin in the Assembly and Senate Appropriations Committees, where lawmakers weigh the fiscal impacts of legislation before sending bills to the floor for final votes. For a refresher on the appropriations process and the August suspense file hearings, see our legislative update from last week.

Below is a snapshot of the priority bills CSAC is tracking and advocating on before the Legislature adjourns on August 31.

Follow legislative activity and CSAC advocacy on our Legislative Tracking page. Questions? Contact CSAC legislative staff.

CSAC’s End-of-Session Legislative Update: Notable Bills, by Policy Area

Administration of Justice

AB 690 (Schultz) Criminal procedure: indigent defense compensation – SENATE APPROPRIATIONS SUSPENSE FILE
CSAC Position: Oppose.
This two-year measure would make several significant changes to the contracts utilized by counties for the administration and provision of public defense contracts. The current language of this measure would explicitly prohibit the use of flat fees and require compliance with newly established contractual standards.

Questions? Contact Ryan Morimune, Senior Legislative Advocate (rmorimune@counties.org) and Michaela Stone, Legislative Analyst (mstone@counties.org)

Agriculture, Environment, and Natural Resources

AB 28 (Schiavo) Solid waste landfills: subsurface temperatures. – SENATE FLOOR
CSAC Position: Oppose Unless Amended
As amended June 11, 2026, this two-year measure would establish a duplicative and conflicting regulatory process for responding to subsurface elevated temperature (SET) events at landfills, creating overlapping requirements with the California Air Resources Board’s recently updated Landfill Methane Regulation (LMR). The bill would also impose fines of up to $100,000 per day for failing to notify several state and local environmental, public health, and regulatory agencies of a SET event or for failing to develop a corrective action plan. Furthermore, the bill does not provide reimbursement for county health department implementation costs, among other concerns.

AB 1754 (Pacheco) State general obligation bonds: requirements. – SENATE APPROPRIATIONS SUSPENSE FILE
CSAC Position: Oppose Unless Amended
This bill would impose substantial new reporting requirements on all future state general obligation bonds, which have become even more essential in the face of federal funding cuts to pursue projects in housing, transportation, water, climate resilience, public safety, health, and all other major policy areas. These new requirements will create multiple new avenues of legal exposure for both state agencies and funding recipients (including counties), and will delay the administration of bond-funded projects at a time when municipalities can ill-afford it.

AB 1881 (Ramos) California Indian Freedom Act of 2026. – SENATE APPROPRIATIONS and AB 2218 (Karla) Water policy: California Native American tribes. – SENATE APPROPRIATIONS SUSPENSE FILE
CSAC Position: Oppose Unless Amended and Oppose
CSAC and a wide coalition of local government and water agencies, including League of Cities, ACWA, CMUA and others, have an oppose unless amended position on these measures. While we support efforts to include tribal governments as part of land use and water decision making, these bills would result in substantial legal exposure to counties and create delays and barriers across almost all relevant permitting programs, while also creating uncertainty in existing permits such as established water rights.

SB 1305 (Richardson) Wildlife: bears – ASSEMBLY APPROPRIATIONS SUSPENSE FILE
CSAC Position: Oppose
Together with other local government associations and agricultural organizations, CSAC is opposing this measure which would direct the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to study the prospect of reintroducing grizzly bears to California landscapes. CSAC is already working to mitigate the impacts to rural communities of gray wolves, mountain lions, and other apex predators which are not properly managed by state authorities. We oppose the expenditure of resources at CDFW, already underfunded and unable to carry out critical permitting work in a timely manner, to add another species without the means to properly manage it.

Questions? Contact Jordan Wells, Legislative Advocate (jwells@counties.org), Charles Delgado, Legislative Advocate (cdelgado@counties.org), and Caitlin Loventhal (cloventhal@counties.org)  

Government Finance and Administration

AB 1383 (McKinnor) Public employees’ retirement benefits – SENATE APPROPRIATIONS SUSPENSE FILE
CSAC Position: Oppose
This bill would reduce the retirement age for public safety employees (police and firefighters), establish new benefit tiers that can be bargained, and increase the creditable compensation limit. The bill is estimated to raise pension costs by several billion dollars over the next twenty years.

AB 2656 (Petrie-Norris) Public employees: notice: artificial intelligence performing service within scope of work. – SENATE APPROPRIATIONS SUSPENSE FILE
CSAC Position: Oppose
This bill would require public agencies to notify employees within 45 days of developing, purchasing, or requiring the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to perform a service within an employee’s scope of work. This bill would regulate tools counties use to streamline routine activities when existing law already provides a robust framework for determining when particular uses of generative AI may have a significant and adverse effect on the employment relationship.

SB 947 (McNerney)Employment: automated decision systems. – ASSEMBLY APPROPRIATIONS SUSPENSE FILE
CSAC Position: Oppose
This bill would complicate the routine work of local governments by regulating the use of automated decision systems (ADS), which include artificial intelligence and other routine tools used for every day work, when making employment related decisions. Specifically, it would restrict when ADS may be used, require post use notices to affected workers when ADS are used in discipline, termination, or deactivation decisions; and establish enforcement mechanisms and penalties for violations. These new requirements would increase compliance obligations and place additional burdens on counties.

Questions? Contact Emma Jungwirth, Senior Legislative Advocate (ejungwirth@counties.org), Eric Lawyer, Senior Legislative Advocate (elawyer@counties.org), and Julissa Ceja Cardenas (jcejacardenas@counties.org)

Health and Human Services

SB 28 (Umberg) Community Assistance, Recovery, and Empowerment (CARE)          court program – ASSEMBLY APPROPRIATIONS SUSPENSE FILE
CSAC Position: Oppose
This bill proposes a large number of changes to the CARE Act, including expanding the scope of evidence that can be considered as part of a CARE petition, requiring the development of a model exit plan for individuals that may need a higher level of care than available through the CARE process, allowing courts to adopt CARE agreements as CARE plans under specified circumstances, and establishing a CARE Court ombudsperson to oversee complaints regarding the program, among other things.

SB 1016 (Blakespear) Community Assistance, Recovery, and Empowerment (CARE) Court Program and court-ordered evaluations – ASSEMBLY APPRORPIATIONS SUSPENSE FILE
CSAC Position: Oppose
This bill makes changes to the CARE Act and the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act (LPS Act), such as authorizing a court to order a county to conduct a prepetition screening for conservatorship under the LPS Act, before dismissing a CARE Act petition.

SB 1054 (Cabaldon) Unemployment insurance: reporting requirements – ASSEMBLY APPROPRIATIONS SUSPENSE FILE
CSAC Position: Support
This measure directs the Employment Development Department (EDD) to collect additional information from employers about wages, including number of hours worked, to support streamlined eligibility determinations for health and nutrition programs. Importantly, this measure will help mitigate some of the new workload impacts on counties resulting from H.R. 1 by improving the employment information available to support Medi-Cal and CalFresh work requirement verifications.

Questions? Contact Justin Garrett, Senior Legislative Advocate (jgarrett@counties.org), Brendan McCarthy, Senior Legislative Advocate (bmccarthy@counties.org), and Danielle Bradley, Senior Legislative Analyst (dbradley@counties.org)

Housing, Land Use, and Transportation

AB 1198 (Haney): Public works: prevailing wages. – SENATE APPROPRIATIONS SUSPENSE FILE
CSAC Position: Oppose
This bill requires public works projects in the construction phase to use updated prevailing wage rates adopted by the Department of Industrial Relations (DIR). The bill exempts contracts for specific types of affordable housing development projects from it’s requirements. Under current law public works projects are not required to       increase wages during the construction phase to provide cost certainty and decrease the potential for cost-driven change orders.

AB 1457 (Bryan)  General plan: environmental justice element: disadvantaged communities. – SENATE FLOOR
CSAC Position: Oppose Unless Amended
This bill imposes prescriptive new requirements for the development of environmental justice elements or related policies in local general plans. The bill would also require costly general plan updates, even for cities and counties that have recently completed comprehensive general plan updates and complied in good faith with environmental justice element requirements.

AB 1621 (Wilson) Planning and Zoning Law: postentitlement phase permits: Housing Accountability Act. – SENATE APPROPRIATIONS SUSPENSE FILE
CSAC Position: Oppose
This bill would eliminate the ability of local governments to require more than two plan checks on a building permit application unless the local agency can make a written finding based on substantial evidence that additional review is necessary to address a specific, adverse impact on public health and safety. Also prohibits a local or state agency from requiring remediation of any non-compliant conditions if it is a deviation from a previously approved building plan, even if that condition adversely impacts public health and safety.

AB 1859 (Ortega) Public Works – SENATE APPROPRIATIONS SUSPENSE FILE
CSAC Position: Oppose Unless Amended
This bill creates a new mandate on local agencies to allow representatives of a joint labor-management committee (JLMC) to access active public works job sites for the purpose of ensuring compliance with existing prevailing wage and apprenticeship requirements. Additionally, this bill would grant third-party JLMCs the authority to file a private right of action, civil penalties, and attorney fees against public agencies for alleged denial of access.

AB 2002 (Solache) Local government assistance: Regional Early Action Planning Fund. – SENATE APPROPRIATIONS SUSPENSE FILE
CSAC Position: Support
This measure would create a permanent funding source for Regional Early Action Planning (REAP) grants, The grants would support county planning activities to help meet the 7^th and future RHNA cycles.

SB 1117 (Cervantes) Accessory dwelling units and junior accessory dwelling units. – ASSEMBLY FLOOR
CSAC Position: Oppose
This bill would limit the amount of impact fees a local government could charge on an Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) more than 750 square feet. In the long term this bill would limit a county’s ability to ensure that the fees associated with new development will generate sufficient funding to construct the facilities required to support that development within a reasonable timeframe; making it difficult for counties to rely on these fee mechanisms as mitigation for the impacts associated with population growth.

SB 1272 (Menjivar) Local ordinances: administrative fines or penalties. – ASSEMBLY FLOOR
CSAC Position: Oppose
This bill would mandate a six-month to one-year moratorium on administrative fines while delaying corrective action for certain building, plumbing, electrical, and structural or zoning violations — including conditions that, while not immediately dangerous, can deteriorate into fire hazards, contaminated drinking water, and life-safety emergencies before the grace period expires. This bill would layer an additional state-mandated delay of up to 12 months on top of those existing protection to existing state law that requires counties to provide property owners a reasonable period to remedy violations before fines are imposed.

            Questions? Contact Mark Neuburger, Legislative Advocate (mneuburger@counties.org)

Snapshot of Upcoming Legislative Deadlines

The Legislature returned from summer recess this week and began the full sprint towards the end of the 2025-2026 Legislative Session. There are several important legislative deadlines before the Legislative Session ends at midnight on Monday, August 31: