This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

###

Just months after lawmakers enacted major reforms to speed up home and apartment building, a new proposal seeks to force even more cities to allow housing near major transit hubs. It has reignited divisions among Democratic lawmakers who are wary of the state telling cities how and where to build.

San Francisco Democratic Sen. Scott Wiener’s Senate Bill 677 seeks to close a loophole that backers of the bill say some cities are using to get out of last year’s reforms intended to allow more apartments to be built near major bus and train stations.

A small group of Democrats who opposed last year’s law refused to support Wiener’s new bill seeking to force cities to comply with the new transit-related building requirements. The bill widens the definition of what a passenger rail is. It passed and advanced to the Assembly despite their objections.

The pocket of Democratic resistance contrasts with the Democratic-controlled Legislature’s appetite for sweeping housing reform it embraced last year. Last summer, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation that repealed longstanding environmental protections allowing many developments to bypass environmental reviews, which can result in long delays and costly litigation.

Legislators last year also enacted the transit-oriented housing reforms, but some cities such as Solano Beach have been trying to find a way out of the new requirements by claiming they don’t have a major transit station, even though critics maintain they do. Wiener’s bill seeks to expand the definition of what counts as a transit station and close the loophole.

That didn’t sit well with some Senate Democrats.

Last week, seven of them joined Republicans to oppose Weiner’s proposal, including Catherine Blakespear and Lola Smallwood-Cuevas, of Los Angeles. The pair voted ‘no’ in a rare and forceful show of public opposition toward a fellow Democrat’s bill.

“I come from local government, and it’s hard for me to support that,” Blakespear said in an interview. She represents the San Diego County beach town of Encinitas, where she used to be mayor.

Local officials worry that building more apartments around transit centers could change the character of their communities with the potential for more traffic and less parking, she said.

“A community like Solano Beach is a low-density community with residents who have chosen it for that reason,” Blakespear said, referring to a city in her district that opposes the legislation.

Los Angeles and suburban cities in San Diego County have said the new transit-focused building requirements are vague and confusing, and they need clarity about which cities it applies to.

“We just worry that the definition change could be an expansion of where SB 79 applies,” League of California Cities lobbyist Brady Guertin said at a January committee hearing, referring to the bill Newsom signed into law last year.

Wiener, who also authored last year’s bill, said he plans to introduce more follow-up legislation to address how cities should implement the far-reaching statute, which will affect parts of Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco counties.

Wiener’s office did not return CalMatters’ interview requests.

A reversal of typical voting patterns

Blakespear’s decision to vote ‘no’ goes against her normal voting behavior.

Her votes have historically aligned with pro-housing group California YIMBY on bills 96% of the time from 2023 to 2025, according to the CalMatters Digital Democracy database.

California YIMBY is one of the bill’s sponsors, and the city of Encinitas, which has previously been sued by the state for ignoring state housing laws, opposes it. Many residents also still attribute the city’s biggest issues such as homelessness to Blakespear’s tenure as mayor more than four years ago.

And, similar to most Democrats, Blakespear also almost never vote

A reversal of typical voting patterns

s against the bills pushed by the Legislature’s supermajority.

Out of 2,161 opportunities last year, Blakespear voted “no” just 14 times — less than 1% of the time.

Smallwood-Cuevas also did not support last year’s transit-focused housing bill. Smallwood-Cuevas also did not support last year’s transit-focused housing bill. She represents Los Angeles, where Mayor Karen Bass has expressed concerns about the state dictating housing policy.

“We must streamline the production of housing for all Angelenos. However, we must do so in a way that does not erode local control,” Bass said in a letter urging Newsom to veto last year’s measure.

A spokesperson for Smallwood-Cuevas said she was not available for an interview.

Five Democratic senators also declined to vote on Weiner’s latest housing measure last week. Not voting counts the same as voting “no,” and is a tactic lawmakers regularly use to avoid angering colleagues or influential lobbying groups.

The tensions over this latest proposal come as lawmakers continue to debate measures this year to tackle the state’s housing crisis.

Democrats have already advanced a bill for a $10 billion affordable housing bond measure they want placed on the November ballot.

Meanwhile, one other housing-related bill faced even stronger resistance from Democrats. Democrats on the Assembly Judiciary Committee spiked a proposal to cap rent increases last month amid opposition from landlord groups and lawmakers who were leery of interfering with the rental-housing market.

###

Digital Democracy’s Foaad Khosmood, Forbes professor of computer engineering at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, contributed to this story.