SACRAMENTO – AT THE HALF

The information in this newsletter is being distributed among allied associations that form the California Alliance for Golf (CAG), the organization that speaks with one voice in the Capitol regarding legislative and regulatory issues of statewide scope.

Bills that failed to pass final floor votes in their respective house of origin are dead for the year. Those that passed off their respective floors now move to the other house to undergo the same process of reference to a policy committee, and if successful there, on to Appropriations, followed by those that pass both hearings successfully to the floor for vote. Those that make it through in a reconciled form move to Governor Newsom for his signature and enrollment into law, or his veto.

While these bills ruminate for the period required before they can be heard before a policy committee, the legislature and Governor get down to the business of crafting a state budget, that while technically due by June 15, is de facto a work in progress for a period of time much longer than that – how much longer depending on how wide the gap is between the two branches of government. Spoiler alert: The gap is a wide one that includes a gubernatorial budget trailer bill that is as controversial and divisive as it is substantive – “substance” that is of visceral interest to the California golf community.

Here is how the Golf community’s legislative agenda fares at halftime – fare in terms of the bills CAG supported, the bill (there was only one) CAG opposed, and the bills CAG tracked for what their fate might inform us about the direction of politics and opinion in the state.

OPPOSE

• SB 51  (Permanent Standard Time)  (Niello; R-Roseville)

  • If you are reading this, you know that the single bill CAG opposed in the 2025 session, a bill that would have put the state on permanent standard time, died in the Senate Appropriations Committee. You also know that we believe that whether 2026 or 2027, the supporters of SB 51 are likely to run another version of it. They are organized, funded, and true believers in their cause. Expect to hear much more about the whole subject of the virtues of permanent standard versus permanent daylight-saving time in the interim.

SUPPORT

As for the bills CAG supported, here is the report card:

• SB 72  (California Water Plan: Long Term Supply Targets)  (Caballero; D-Merced)
  
  
  • For the first time in California history sets a water supply target that would add 9 million-acre-feet of additional supply by 2050 to replace the amount estimated to be lost to the state by aridification and other factors.
  • Passed Senate and has moved to the Assembly.
    
    
• SB 31  (Recycled Water: Facilitation)  (McNerny; D-Stockton)
  
  
  • Passed Senate and has moved to the Assembly.
    
    
• SB 224  (Water Supply Forecasting)  (Hurtado; D-Bakersfield)
  
  
  • Requires the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) to adopt a new water supply forecasting model with procedures that better address the effects of climate change and implement a formal policy with procedures for documenting the department’s operational plans as well as the department’s rationale for its operating procedures, including the department’s rationale for water releases from reservoirs.
  • Passed Senate and has moved to the Assembly.
    
    
• AB 310  (Amendment to Nevaeh Youth Sports Safety Act)  (Alanis; R-Modesto)
  
  
  • Current law requires by 2027 that youth sports organizations have “certified medical professionals” on hand to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation and operate AED’s. This bill modifies the requirement to require youth sports organizations “to ensure that its coaches are certified to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation and to operate an AED.”
  • Passed Assembly and has moved to the Senate.

WATCH/TRACK

As for the bills CAG has tracked for the purpose of informing us where the political winds are blowing in California, here is what the tracking has thus far informed us:

• SB 89  (Restrict Use of Pesticides Containing Glyphosate)  (Weber Pierson; D-San Diego)
  

  • This bill would prohibit, on and after January 1, 2028, the sale of a product that contains glyphosate in this state, except to a person or business that holds a valid license or certificate issued by the Department of Pesticide Regulation. If the language is construed as most interpret it, there is nothing in the language that would affect the way the golf community deploys Glyphosate-based products, and CAG is “tracking/watching” the bill to ensure that nothing about that changes.

  • The author made the bill a 2-year bill, which means that it will be heard in January per the expedited processes that attach to 2-year bills (they must pass out of policy committees, Appropriations, and floor votes by January 31).

  • California’s Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) and Environmental Protection Agency (CAL EPA) have rejected the claims made against the safety of Glyphosate-based products when used as prescribed, making it difficult to sustain the same kind of statewide prohibition other states have entertained – something that bears “watching” moving forward.

• SB 601  (Water; waste discharge)  (Allen; D-Santa Monica)
  
  
  • Boiled down to its essence, this extremely complicated and detailed bill would have everything in California related to discharge protocols revert to the protocols established by the 1972 Clean Water Act as most recently codified by the Biden Administration as opposed to the codification issued by the Trump Administration, leaving California hewing to a much stricter definition that would have the effect of bringing under the jurisdiction of the state, bodies of water insufficiently connected to other bodies of water to trigger federal oversight/regulation.
  • California has long deviated from the federal standard; so long as the bill merely returns California to the status quo ante, CAG has no objection. But there has been some question as to whether the bill does more than that; thus, the reason for continuing to watch/track.
  • Passed with 23 votes with 2 Democrats voting no and other Democrats simply not voting, presaging trouble in the Assembly, perhaps “trouble” that may be cured by amending some of what many have claimed exceeds a mere return to the status quo ante.  

• AB 609 (CEQA exemptions for certain infill housing projects)  (Wicks; D-Oakland)
  
  
  • Creates a broad CEQA exemption for environmentally friendly infill housing projects that meet local zoning, density, and objective standards. The bill removes duplicative environmental review for projects in areas already planned and approved for housing — streamlining the process for homes in walkable, transit-accessible, and “climate-smart” locations.
  • Passed overwhelmingly and is now before the Senate, notwithstanding significant environmental opposition.

• SB 607  (Operational Efficiencies / CEQA)  (Weiner; D-San Francisco)
  
  
  • Three (3) operational reforms:
    • For projects falling short of meeting eligibility for a categorical or statutory exemption by a lead agency, SB 607 focuses the scope of the subsequent environmental review to the disqualifying reason and the facts the action or proceeding relied upon that disqualified the project from the exemption. 
    • Aligns the standard of review for a lead agency’s determination to adopt a Negative Declaration (ND) or a Mitigated Negative Declaration (MND) to parity with the existing standard of review for Environmental Impact Reports (EIRs). 
    • Focuses CEQA review on the most germane administrative records by excluding communications of persons tangential or far removed from project decision-making, with specified exemptions. 
  • Withdrawn by author – dead for 2025.

If we had to suggest a reason that the Wicks CEQA reform bill passed with flying colors and the Weiner CEQA reform bill did not have enough votes to fly, we would suggest that the successful bill was laser focused on a narrow exception that aligns with environmentalists’ generally favorable view of “infill” development, while the unsuccessful reform measure entailed a broad exception that applied to projects not aligned with the preferences of the environmental community. The lesson to be learned from the juxtaposition: While the politics increasingly favor chipping away at what the critics of CEQA claim are aspects of its review processes that unduly delay and thus often defeat environmentally meritorious projects, those politics fall far short of the kind of massive reform of CEQA that Governor Jerry Brown called “God’s work.” However, as “abundance” becomes the new watchword of many on the left side of the political aisle and as more and more on that same side of the aisle lament that California just can’t seem to build anything anymore, the “chips” off the CEQA rock could start looking more like chunks. Caveat: You just read an opinion, we hope an evidence based opinion, but an opinion, nonetheless.

So, what does all this tell us about where the political winds may be blowing?

Armed with the knowledge every golfer has about the fickleness of nature’s winds, let us dare to venture that SB 89’s stall and SB 601’s struggle suggests the same limits on California’s longstanding exuberance for all things “environmental” that AB 609’s success does – nothing dramatic, but something most definite to note and consider.

Let us also dare to suggest that all this represents a bit of a double edged sword. On one hand, expediting regulatory and permitting processes offers hope of reducing onerous capital project/construction costs. On the other hand – that ever present and troublesome other hand – the fact is that most if not all of the efforts to expedite those processes are focused on expediting the construction of urban housing, which is reminiscent of the 2021 and 2022 “Public Golf Endangerment Acts” that would have created financial incentives to repurpose municipal golf courses as affordable housing tracts. That should send a few chills down the spine of the golf community. Two hackneyed sayings come to mind: The devil is in the details and be careful what you ask for.     

CALIFORNIA’S 2025-2026 BUDGET

Governors and legislatures are rarely in sync when it comes to crafting budgets, particularly when deficits are central to the crafting project. It’s the nature of their constituencies.

The usual suspects of their differences this year are not golf-specific and thus not of specific concern to an alliance of interests the common ground of which is golf. But there is one aspect of this year’s difference that involves a subject that is germane to golf – the Delta Conveyance Project (DCP), the latest iteration of what was originally called the Peripheral Canal back in the late 1970’s when first proposed by Jerry Brown in his first incarnation as California Governor. In a nutshell, if that is possible for something with such a long history, here is how the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office defines the “Project:”

The Delta Conveyance Project (DCP) is the latest proposal to bypass the central Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta (Delta) to convey water from the northern Delta to pumps south of the Delta as part of the State Water Project (SWP). (Both the state-managed SWP and the federally managed Central Valley Project export water from the Delta and deliver it via a system of aqueducts and canals to Southern California cities and Central Valley farms.) The DCP would consist of two new intakes on the Sacramento River in the North Delta, a single underground tunnel about 45 miles long, and a new pumping facility south of the Delta.

The Project’s proponents, which very much includes Governor Newsom, predicate their support on the need to protect the conveyance system that provides water to 27 million Californians from those things like earthquakes, floods, fires, and excessive aridification that could interrupt that provision. The project’s opponents, which includes virtually all environmental groups, predicate their opposition on the ability to avoid the environmental damage to the Sacramento Delta ecosystem they claim the Project would cause by continuing to employ other means like conservation, aquifer recharge/replenishment, storm water capture, recycling, potable reuse, and desalination to lessen reliance on water imports from the Delta (really from the Northern Sierra Nevada which is the source of the Delta water).

The California golf community’s position on the whole matter of long-term water resiliency/reliability hews to what has come to be called the “one water” approach – an all of the above strategy that includes all the cutting edge approaches to water supply suggested by the environmental community AND continued, albeit lessened, use of the State Water Project.

The construction of some form of a Delta Conveyance Project is a part of that “one water” approach to long-term sustainability on the merits of that policy discussion. However, according to the report put out by the LAO, approval of the Governor’s DCP budget trailer bill would amount to a de facto approval of certain merits of the project by dint of what purport to be procedural shortcuts – policy decisions masquerading as budget issues as it were, compelling the LAO to recommend that the normal order of policy deliberation be employed to make these policy decisions.

And that is how the many lining up to oppose the Governor on this are characterizing their opposition – a “many” that in addition to a large tranche of environmental organizations includes a bipartisan collection of 15 legislators whose districts in some way involve or abut the Sacramento Delta. Of course, the Governor and the large coalition of water retailers/wholesalers, business organizations, and labor unions that support the Governor’s trailer bill describe their support as a “common-sense step to break through years of bureaucratic gridlock and costly delays, allowing informed decisions to be made about future construction investment.”  

So far, the proponents of the “normal order,” or if you prefer the opponents of the Governor’s trailer bill, are winning the battle. But the Governor appears resolved to keep battling. And so do the major water wholesalers and retailers that depend on the State Water Project to supply 27 million Californians.

This will play out in the coming weeks. Much longer term than that, the policy aspects will be joined per the “normal order” suggested by the LAO, whether in part short-circuited by a successful gubernatorial trailer bill or not, at which time the California Alliance for Golf and the myriad constituencies that make up the Alliance will decide whether to get into the fray.

# # # # # # # # # # #

June’s Volume II of this newsletter will highlight some examples from New York and other states that offer avenues of relief for golf courses looking to maintain better control over their reservation policies along with some disturbing news about the continued decline of the Colorado Basin watershed and the impact of that decline on the 40 million souls whose water needs are in part met thereby.

# # # # # # # # # # #

Join us for the California Community Golf Summit on Tuesday, July 8, 2025 at Lakewood Golf Course!

This full-day event brings together industry leaders, course operators and community advocates for discussions on growing markets, existential challenges, inclusive programming, course sustainability and more. With insights from golf’s leadership organizations, this summit is a must-attend for anyone committed to the future of the game!

A limited number of SCGA members get complimentary registration with code: SCGA2025!

[Click here to register]