May 29 Oppose AB 306 - Building Standards Moratorium

May 29, 2025

The Honorable Assemblymember Robert Rivas
Speaker of the California Assembly
1021 O Street, Suite 8330
Sacramento, CA 95814

The Honorable Assemblymember Nick Schultz
1021 O Street Ste. 5150
Sacramento, CA 95814

RE: AB 306 (Schutz & Rivas): Building Standards Moratorium – Oppose 

Dear Assemblymember Schutz and Assemblymember Rivas,

On behalf of the Marin County Board of Supervisors, we respectfully write to express our opposition to Assembly Bill 306 (Building regulations: state building standards). We appreciate and share your goal of reducing barriers to housing production, and we applaud the urgency of your efforts in response to California’s severe housing crisis—one that we experience acutely in Marin. However, we are concerned that this bill will undermine local and statewide efforts to not only achieve critical environmental, climate resilience, and sustainability goals, but also to do our own streamlining of local regulations.

Marin County has demonstrated its deep commitment to housing production. Our Board has adopted a state-certified Housing Element that plans for more than 3,500 new units in unincorporated Marin, and our Board has committed over $49 million in General Fund funding to support local construction of affordable housing units in Marin. In our FY 2025-2026 Budget, our Board renewed this commitment – continuing a $5 million/year ongoing allocation to the Affordable Housing trust to support local projects. These dollars are critical to helping affordable housing developers leverage state and federal funds and advance projects throughout the county.

We are also actively reviewing our codes and permitting procedures to identify areas where streamlining and simplification can reduce project delays and uncertainty. However, that work often requires not fewer words on paper, but clearer and more functional regulations added. For example, revising outdated definitions (like what qualifies as a habitable floor or a multifamily structure), removing parking mandates, and updating fire egress standards to allow safe, single-stair multifamily designs. These changes reduce cost and complexity but would be frozen under AB 306, even when they make housing more feasible.

AB 306’s proposed six-year moratorium on state and local building code changes affecting residential units, even with limited exceptions, is overly broad. While the bill provides exemptions for health and safety emergencies, fire hardening, and certain water reuse standards, it explicitly excludes green building updates. This would severely constrain local governments’ ability to implement common-sense upgrades that support energy-efficient design, electric vehicle readiness, air quality protections, and climate adaptation. We share these concerns raised by a broad coalition of environmental organizations.

Marin County, like many local governments, has adopted forward-thinking standards that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, promote cleaner indoor air, and advance our climate action plans. These standards are a cornerstone of our long-term climate mitigation strategy and have been adopted with community input, rigorous analysis, and practical implementation timelines. Halting this progress risks not only our local targets but the State’s broader climate goals.

We urge you to work with local governments to craft a more balanced approach. A collaborative path forward could maintain the bill's core aim of regulatory predictability while preserving essential flexibility for local innovation and streamlining and environmental stewardship.

Thank you for your consideration of our input.

Sincerely, 

Mary Sackett, President
Marin County Board of Supervisors

CC:      Marin County Board of Supervisors
            Senator Mike McGuire
            Assemblymember Damon Connolly