SB937 is also actively progressing through the state senate and would prohibit certain types of fees from requiring to be paid ahead of permit issuance for qualifying residential projects. These fees would instead be conditioned for approval ahead of final inspections or issuance of a Certificate of Occupancy.  

Gas bans in other cities around the country are similarly coming under fire in cities like Seattle and New York City. 

The issue has made it to the national stage as well. The Department of Energy had to settle for tighter efficiency standards for both electric and gas stoves and ovens that were far less stringent than originally proposed, due to resistance in Congress. The DOE estimates the efficiency standards will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 0.06 metric tons through 2030, the equivalent of the annual emissions from 11,000 homes.



As future building code updates are widely expected to eliminate natural gas service in most new construction, it will be interesting to see if the Federal Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA) is amended to accommodate those more environmentally friendly standards.  

In Hilltop Group, Inc. v. County of San Diego, the County won at the trial court level, where the court affirmed the County’s argument that Hilltop’s project may have non-mitigable impacts on the environment that are “peculiar” to the project, which justified the County’s requirement that Hilltop perform additional environmental analyses even though the project was deemed exempt under CEQA.

The appellate court reversed the ruling on the basis that the County could not impose additional conditions for environmental analysis on the project because it was compatible with the industrial zone the County created in its General Plan, which was the underlying qualification for Hilltop’s CEQA exemption under CEQA Guidelines Section 15183.

If the ruling withstands further scrutiny in a potential appeal to the Supreme Court, it would provide a rare win for lead agencies and developers who have seen more than their share of CEQA litigation delay or stop CEQA-exempt projects. For a more detailed review see Reed Smith’s write-up. 

This Insight post delves through the daunting ‘layer cake’ of zoning and land use regulations and outlines their hierarchy and some lesser known details about the various ways the zoning laws in CA can impact a project. The full post can be found here: “AGENCY MANAGEMENT 101 – THE ZONING AND LAND USE HIERARCHY”