By Jorge Casuso

June 26, 2026 -- A trailer bill Gov. Gavin Newsom could attach to the State budget would open up Santa Monica's coast to a burst of multi-family development by undoing an amended version of AB 1740.

The amended version allows the Coastal Commission to retain control over permitting while the City negotiates a Local Coastal Program (LCP) that gives Santa Monica greater authority over projects along the coast.

The trailer bill goes much further than the original version of AB 1740, which exempted Santa Monica from most Coastal Commission permits, including housing, and was amended on June 15 after stiff opposition from local organizations and statewide environmental groups.

The proposed trailer bill, according to its findings, applies only to housing development in Santa Monica and is necessary because the City, like almost all others along the coast, lacks a certified Coastal Plan and needs to "accelerate housing to meet its housing needs."

The trailer bill, which would take effect on January 1, covers the entire Coastal zone, which stretches inland to Fourth Street north of Pico Boulevard and to Lincoln Avenue south of Pico, instead of the area around the Downtown covered in the amended bill.

And unlike the amended version, the trailer bill streamlines the review process and sets no deadline for the City and Coastal Commission to negotiate a Coastal Plan.

Under the bill, a preliminary application for a housing or mixed-use project filed before a Coastal Plan is certified would be exempt from the Coastal Act if it meets the bill's requirements.

The Commission has 30 days to determine in writing that the application is complete, 30 days to review and provide feedback, and 30 days to approve or deny the project. If it fails to meet the deadlines, "the project shall be deemed approved."

The trailer bill must be attached to the budget no later than Saturday to give the required 72-hour notice before the-legislature approves the final budget that must be signed into law by midnight June 30.

Santa Monica political and neighborhood groups, along with numerous statewide environmental and coastal advocacy groups have been scrambling to mount a last-ditch effort to stop the trailer bill, which they claim is worse than the original bill they opposed.

In a letter to Gov. Newsom Thursday, Santa Monicans for Renters' Rights (SMRR) expressed its "strongest possible opposition to budget trailer bill language exempting any developments in Santa Monica from Coastal Commission authority."

"Both the process and substance of this proposal is very concerning," wrote former Mayor Denny Zane and Mike Soloff, the group's co-chairs..

"Any legislative maneuvers of such significance should certainly be subject to the standard legislative process with full oversight and the opportunities for discussion such a process provides."

Those are precisely the safeguards trailer bills are meant to circumvent, according to Dan Waters, California's preeminent political columnist who authors a column for CalMatters.

Trailer bills stem from Proposition 25, a ballot measure approved by State voters in 2010 that was "sponsored by Democratic politicians and public employee unions to change the required vote on the budget from two-thirds of both legislative houses to simple majorities," Walters wrote in a February 2024 column.

"The measure eliminated the ability of Republican legislators to influence the budget. It also gave budget trailer bills legal standing, declaring that they, too, could be enacted with simple majority votes and -- like the budget -- would take effect immediately upon being signed by the governor.

"Thereafter, Democratic governors and legislators would often draft last-minute bills containing sweeping policy changes, insert token $1,000 appropriations to tie them to the budget and pass them with little or no opportunity for the public or affected interests to know what was happening," Walters wrote.

"The misuse of the trailer bill loophole finally became so blatant that voters passed another initiative in 2016, Proposition 54, requiring bills to be in print for 72 hours before final passage, although legislative leaders, who opposed the measure, often use parliamentary tricks to minimize opportunities to see the contents of trailer bills."

The constitutional deadline for the Senate and Assembly to pass a budget bill is June 15, while the deadline for the Governor to sign the State budget into law is June 30.

By June 15, the legislature reported it had approved five trailer bills. The Santa Monica Coastal bill was not among them.

However, trailer bills have been approved on the final day the governor is required to sign the budget.

That happened last year, when California lawmakers approved what CalMatters reported was "one of the most substantial rollbacks of the state’s signature environmental review law in decades."

The trailer bill exempted nine types of projects from environmental review, "including a controversial exemption that would allow high-tech manufacturing plants to be built in industrial zones with no environmental review."

"The changes to the California Environmental Quality Act were embedded in a last-minute budget bill that sailed through the Senate and the Assembly," CalMatters reported.