January 29, 2025 State Legislation Committee Meeting

Discussion and possible action to approve the minutes from the meeting on October 23, 2024.

The City’s state lobbyist will present to the Committee an update on State legislative matters.

Discussion and possible action item: the Committee will review and discuss state legislation affecting the City and County of San Francisco. Items are listed by Department, then by bill number.

New Business

San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency

Presenter: Kathryn Angotti

SB 71 (Wiener): California Environmental Quality Act: exemptions: transit projects..

Recommended Position: Support

SB 922 expanded statutory exemptions in the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) for “climate-friendly transportation features,” such as specified transit, bicycle, and pedestrian projects and extended these exemptions from 2023 to 2030. This would namely be exempting such eligible projects from the CEQA requirement of completing an environmental impact report (EIR) and/or mitigated negative declaration.

Building off that, this bill, SB 71, would remove the sunset on the original legislation so specified projects receive CEQA exemptions indefinitely, include transit route readjustments or modifications to the list of exempt projects, and also allow CEQA exempt projects whose costs surpass the cost ceiling following the project engineer’s cost estimate to be able to remain eligible for the exemption.

This bill additionally includes ferries among the original list of facilities that have transportation-related projects eligible to receive these CEQA exemptions.

Members of the public may address the Committee on items of interest that are within the Committee’s subject matter jurisdiction and that do not appear on the agenda.