California’s AB 168 Adds Requirements to Approval Process
Assembly Bill 168, now in effect, adds new requirements to the streamlined ministerial approval process for multi-family housing mandated in Senate Bill 35, which passed in 2017. SB 168 requires developers to submit a notice of intent to local agencies via a preliminary application before they may be able to proceed under SB 35. Next, AB 168 requires local agencies receiving preliminary applications to invite California Native American Tribes to consult with them regarding a proposed development’s potential effects on any tribal cultural resources. Significantly, AB 168 provides that this tribal consultation process is
not subject to the California Environmental Quality Act.
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As we rapidly approach the end of a year of COVID-related challenges and uncertainties, CEQA practitioners may want to review the year’s key legislation impacting CEQA and its application, which was contained in the handful of bills summarized below.
AB 168 (Aguilar-Curry). This urgency legislation became effective with the Governor’s signature on September 25, 2020. It amends Government Code §§ 65400, 65913.4 and 65941.1 to correct an “oversight” in SB 35 (Weiner), namely, that 2017 law’s failure to consider potential destruction of tribal cultural resources as a result of the streamlined, ministerial (and thus CEQA-exempt) approval process it authorized for multifamily housing development projects satisfying specified objective planning standards. (SB 35 is summarized in detail in my 12/7/17 blog post, which can be found