Cal Cities secures major revisions to warehouse law

The bills, which address many of Cal Cities' concerns, can be taken up as early as Friday morning

By Melissa Sparks-Kranz, legislative advocate (environmental quality)

After over a year of advocacy from Cal Cities, lawmakers are advancing long-promised changes to last year's problematic warehouse law. The clean-up legislation addresses a significant number of concerns raised by Cal Cities, counties, and planners.

AB 98 (Carillo and Reyes) emerged at the end of the session in 2024 after months of closed-door negotiations. It created restrictions on new or expanding warehouses and a sweeping, costly statewide mandate that requires all cities to update their circulation elements to account for these changes - including truck movement.

The bill's authors agreed to revisit the law's language this year, in the form of AB 735 (Carrillo) and SB 415 (Reyes), to get AB 98 through the Senate. Cal Cities secured the following amendments to those measures:

• Allow local governments outside of the warehouse concentration region to develop an ordinance rather than mandating a truck traffic update in the circulation element by Jan. 1, 2028.
• Give cities with 50,000 or fewer residents and counties with 100,000 or fewer residents until Jan. 1, 2030, to complete the ordinance adoption. This would benefit smaller jurisdictions with fewer resources.
• Remove the double planning mandate for the jurisdictions adopting ordinances, since they will not have to update their circulation elements with proactive measures for bicyclists and pedestrians on the same strict timeline in the bill.
• Completely exempt a city or county from the circulation element update if it is not approving new or expanded logistics use projects in its community. If that changes, the city or county would need to adopt an ordinance within two years.
• Prevent the Attorney General from imposing penalties on local governments that are working in good faith to follow the law.
• Revise the bill's definition of local roads to prevent warehouse development near sensitive receptors.

The changes address some of the Senate's concerns from last year, as well as those raised by Cal Cities. The Senate and Assembly local government committees will meet today to hear each bill. Both houses can take the measures up on the floor as early as Friday evening for a full vote.