CEQA Reform Qualifies For The Ballot: What To Know About The Building An Affordable California Act

On June 25, 2026, the Building an Affordable California Act (“BACA”), a statewide measure sponsored by the California Chamber of Commerce, officially qualified for the November 2026 General Election ballot. The initiative will appear on California ballots this November as Prop 45. If passed by voters, BACA would reform the California Environmental Quality Act (“CEQA”) to create a broad category of “essential projects” that are entitled to a narrower environmental review process, the option to engage in a streamlined project alternatives analysis and more limited judicial review in the event of a project challenge.

BACA Streamlines Environmental Review for Essential Projects

BACA applies only to developments that qualify as “essential projects.” Specifically included are “essential housing projects,” which the law defines as housing projects including residential units only, residential mixed-use projects, commercial-to-residential conversions, subdivisions consisting of residential units or unimproved residential lots, and a number of specific housing categories including transitional housing, student housing, and senior housing. Other types of essential projects include qualifying water, clean energy, public health, public safety, broadband Internet access, education facility, and transportation projects. Essential projects utilizing BACA’s CEQA review provisions, except for housing projects under 85 feet above grade, must pay prevailing wages to all construction workers.

BACA would modify certain procedures and time limits for environmental review of essential projects. First, agencies will have 30 days to determine whether an essential project application is complete. If the agency fails to meet the completeness deadline, then the essential project application will automatically be deemed complete.

Once an agency has determined whether the project will require an Environmental Impact Report (“EIR”), Mitigated Negative Declaration (“MND”) or negative declaration, or than an exemption applies, the measure imposes various deadlines for the agency to make a final determination, which run from the date the application is deemed complete: 365 business days to certify an EIR, 180 business days to adopt a negative declaration, and 90 business days to make a final exemption determination. If the agency fails to meet these deadlines in making a final determination, the applicant has the option of requesting a meeting or hearing, which the agency would be required to hold within 60 days and either approve or deny the project at the meeting, and thereafter maintains an express right to challenge the agency’s failure in court. The measure also converts the existing minimum public comment periods for CEQA documents into fixed maximums that can only be extended by court order – 20 days for an MND or negative declaration and 45 days for an EIR.

Many of these deadlines are not entirely new. Existing law already generally requires agencies to determine application completeness within 30 days and complete EIRs and MNDs within certain timelines. What BACA changes is that its deadlines run in business days rather than calendar days, apply to all essential project approvals — including legislative approvals such as general plan amendments and zone changes, which current deadlines do not reach — and, most significantly, are enforceable in court.

BACA Allows for a Streamlined Alternatives Analysis and Mandates Narrower Review of Project Impacts

In addition to the new deadlines, BACA allows essential project applicants to opt-in to a preliminary scoping process that once completed allows for a simplified project alternatives analysis. In place of CEQA’s standard requirement to study a “reasonable range” of project alternatives, the streamlined analysis need only address three options: the proposed project itself, a no-project alternative, and single on-site project alternative.

Notably, BACA requires public agencies to evaluate a project’s environmental impacts – including the significance of the impacts and potential ways to mitigate them – based on the project’s compliance with “existing laws.” Under BACA’s definition of existing laws, this restricts the agency in evaluating the project’s compliance with formally adopted written standards that existed and were in effect when the project application was submitted. This appears to be a significant change, because under CEQA as it exists today, an agency has substantial discretion to determine whether a project’s impacts are significant and may resort to many different sources of information in making those determinations, some of which might qualify as “existing laws” but many of which likely don’t. For example, currently, agencies can develop thresholds to determine whether a project’s impacts are significant on a project-by-project basis; and even if no written legal standards exist concerning a particular type of impact, agencies often rely on new scientific studies, new information raised in public comments, and agency standards developed after the project was submitted in defining project impacts. Under BACA, an agency’s discretion to formulate project-specific thresholds or to rely on non-objective or post-submittal information appears to be sharply curtailed, which may reduce the number of project impacts an agency may determine as significant in the course of the review process.

BACA Limits Judicial Review of Essential Projects

BACA also limits the scope of judicial review of essential project approvals. Opponents who challenge an approval of an essential project under BACA would be limited to challenging the approval on the grounds that the lead agency did not comply with existing laws and objective standards in place at the time the application was submitted. And regardless of the level of environmental review undertaken on an essential project – e.g., whether an EIR versus an MND was prepared – a court reviewing a challenge to a project approval is required to determine “only” whether the approval is supported by substantial evidence. This appears aimed at displacing the more petitioner-friendly “fair argument” standard that currently governs challenges to MNDs and negative declarations.

Finally, even if a court finds that an agency’s approval of an essential project was defective, the court may not rescind the entire approval. Instead, the court is limited to enjoining only the part of the development impacted by the agency’s non-compliance until it is corrected.

Looking Ahead to November

BACA will head to the November ballot with a significant financial and organizational head start. Some of its notable supporters include the California Building Industry Association, the California Hospital Association, NAACP California and Pacific Gas & Electric, and of course its sponsor, the California Chamber of Commerce. The measure has also attracted a notable Democratic endorsement from Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, the author of the Legislature’s landmark 2025 infill housing CEQA exemption. The Committee to Build an Affordable California, the CalChamber-led campaign committee, reported nearly $13.8 million in contributions through the first quarter of 2026 — including $10 million from Building a Better California, a committee funded largely by Silicon Valley donors, and $2 million from Edison International.

However, opposition is beginning to organize. The State Building and Construction Trades Council and the Sierra Club of California have announced their opposition. The lead opposition committee, One Voice for California, has raised over $4 million from the Trades Council and environmental advocacy organizations since the committee was opened last month. Notably, while several other initiatives were withdrawn from the November ballot in eleventh-hour deals with the Legislature and rival interest groups, no such compromise emerged on BACA. No independent public polling has been released to date.