Against a backdrop of decades of incremental legislative reform, California Environmental Quality Act modernization advocates are proposing a bold fix: the Building an Affordable California Act, or BACA, a voter initiative that will appear on the November 2026 statewide ballot as Proposition 45, the “Expedited Environmental Review Process for Certain Projects Initiative.” This California Chamber of Commerce–sponsored initiative would add a new chapter to the CEQA Statute (Chapter 1.5 of the Public Resources Code) that creates a separate compliance track for what it defines as “essential projects.”

What Proposition 45 Does and Doesn’t Do

As proposed, Prop. 45 applies to a class of projects referred to as “essential projects,” which would be subject to expedited procedural timelines and specific substantive review requirements. The initiative defines eight project category types that qualify as essential: housing, clean energy, water, public health, safety, broadband, education facilities, and transportation. The proposition gives eligible project applicants the option of using the new procedures or relying on existing procedures.

Unlike most other past streamlining mechanisms, projects meeting the definition of essential would not be subject to exclusion based on the size, location, or physical characteristics of a project site. Importantly, while essential projects could benefit from Prop. 45’s expedited timelines and other review process changes, the initiative does not provide a new CEQA exemption. Nor does Prop. 45 apply to certain classes of projects including nuclear power, new oil and gas facilities, Delta conveyance, detention facilities, dial-up internet, and high-speed rail.

Application Review and Completeness Determination

While Prop. 45 doesn’t exempt projects from CEQA, it does restructure how they move through the CEQA compliance process, starting with newly established procedures and timelines for application review:

• Application completeness determined within 30 days (1)
• Application deemed complete if deadline is missed
• If incomplete, applicant has 90 days to respond to detailed agency request for additional information
• Additional information cannot be requested by lead agency unless included in “exhaustive list of written corrections”

Once an application is filed, the project’s rights “vest,” meaning that only those zoning, regulatory, and environmental rules in effect at the time of the application filing apply. Additionally, agencies must determine the CEQA document type within 30 days of application completeness.

Documentation Timelines

Once an application is deemed complete, firm document preparation deadlines apply. Lead agencies have 365 business days for EIR preparation, 180 days for a negative declaration, and 90 days for an exemption or addendum, with the same timelines applying to final decisions. If these deadlines are missed, the applicant can force a hearing. Prop. 45 would also standardize comment periods to 20 days for an ND/MND and 45 days for an EIR. Relatedly, the proposition would exclude from the administrative record comments received outside of established comment periods; for CEQA determinations with no set comment period, only comments received at least 48 hours prior to a public hearing or noticed decision would be included.

Tribal Consultation

BACA also would establish a new tribal consultation framework consisting of initial screening followed by formal consultation. Initial screening would begin before an application is deemed complete and would require early record searches by the lead agency and information sharing with “Consulting Tribes,” with opportunities for the tribe, lead agency, and applicant to meet and identify potential resources and potential treatment. Initiation of consultation must begin withing 14 days of a tribe’s acceptance of an invitation to consult and must conclude prior to project approval. Importantly, BACA’s tribal consultation process for essential projects would override requirements used elsewhere in CEQA to consult with “California Native American Tribes.”

Substantive Review Changes

Significance Determination: Impact significance for essential projects would be determined based on violation of existing laws consisting of “formally adopted legal requirements contained in statutes, regulations, rules, standards, or ordinances that existed and were in effect on the date an application for an essential project was submitted to a public agency.” Except for changes in life-safety standards, which can be applied after an essential project application is submitted, agencies cannot later impose updated legal requirements. In addition, only adopted thresholds based on objective standards and tied to legal requirements can be applied to determine the significance of impacts caused by essential projects.

Standard of Review: Relatedly, legal claims and judicial review of such claims would be limited under Prop. 45 to “[a] public agency’s non-compliance with objective existing laws, and the scope of the court’s review shall be limited to whether the approval or authorization complies objective existing laws.” Thus, in effect, only impacts tied to formally adopted objective standards, as defined in the initiative, are clearly enforceable. Prop. 45 also imposes the substantial evidence standard on judicial review of all essential projects—abandoning the long-standing fair argument standard of review for negative declarations and mitigated negative declarations.

Alternatives Analysis: Prop. 45 also alters the alternatives analysis required for EIRs. For essential projects, an applicant may use a “preliminary scoping process,” which includes submittal of a publicly available project notice generating comments submitted only to the applicant and allows the EIR’s alternatives analysis to be limited to a single applicant-proposed alternative (plus the No Project Alternative). The single alternative must “take into consideration” the public input provided and “may” include on- or off-site physical improvements or alternative/additional operational parameters/programs designed to lessen impacts.

What’s Next?

The proposition would take effect immediately upon certification of the general election vote and can only be amended by a two-thirds legislative vote. Because Prop. 45 is a ballot initiative rather than a proposed bill, there won’t be any further changes to its language prior to the election. Until then, we will continue to review the language and consider its implications and will share our thoughts on implementation in a subsequent AscentShare.

For an additional summary of the initiative, as well as information about who supports and who opposes it, see Ballotpedia.

For additional information on Prop. 45’s fiscal effects, see the following summary from the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office.

(1) All references to “days” in the initiative text are to calendar days, with the exception of the reference in Section 21034, which states that bills seeking to amend the new Public Resources Code chapter must be distributed to members of the legislature and published on the internet for at least 12 business days prior to passage in either house.