September 24, 2026
Topic
By Bernadette Austin
As summer comes to a close, I look forward to an exciting and action-packed fall conference season. In October, the Governor’s Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation (LCI) will roll out the Fifth Climate Assessment at the Resilient California Summit in Sacramento. As administrators for the California Climate and Energy Collaborative, the CivicWell team has joined with state agencies, nonprofit organizations, and academic partners to support several regional Catalyst Convenings across the state which highlighted how elements of the Fifth Climate Assessment apply to local regions featuring local experts and co-authors. For example, two of the regional convenings held in August highlighted substantial climate impacts unique to their regional economies—agriculture in the Sacramento Valley and tourism in the Sierra Nevada. These presentations also included sobering data about the shared challenges of extreme weather across the state, including how higher temperatures will lead to earlier snowmelt and increased flood risk challenges.
This fall also heralds a particularly consequential Midterm Election season, with voters selecting their future Governor, Insurance Commissioner, Congressional representatives for newly redrawn districts, and much more. Gatherings like these Catalyst Convenings and the myriad of fall conferences provide valuable opportunities for folks to convene across sectors and jurisdictions to share ideas that can be elevated and amplified during this critical period of leadership transition.
CivicWell is a programmatic and promotional partner for many of these events. CivicWell is supporting the Clean Mobility Equity Alliance (CMEA) for the annual Clean Mobility Forum to advance the state’s shared mobility and equitable clean transportation goals. At the Resilient California Summit, CivicWell will participate in a session on economic and workforce opportunities in the clean energy industry. At the Annual Conference for the California Association of Local Agency Formation Commissions (CALAFCO), I will join a panel exploring how shifting demographics and aging infrastructure are reshaping how we plan for growth and land use in the years ahead. In the coming days, CivicWell will be announcing even more networking events and listening sessions at these and other conferences aimed at cultivating new partnerships, mobilizing coalitions, and guiding incoming leadership. Follow us on social media and check future newsletters for more details.
What Comes Next for California?
By Steve Hansen, Managing Partner, Lighthouse Public Affairs
Sacramento is approaching the end of another political season dominated by deadlines. The Legislature has adjourned, Governor Newsom has until September 30 to act on the remaining bills on his desk, and attention will soon turn fully toward November. After the ballots are counted will come transition teams, new legislative leadership and swearing- in ceremonies.
But this transition feels more consequential than the normal turn of the political calendar. After eight years of the Newsom administration, California is approaching a new governing era at a moment when some long held assumptions about how we grow, build and prepare for the future are already being reconsidered.
Housing may be the clearest example.
The strange end-of-session death of Assemblymember Buffy Wicks’ condominium construction-defect reform illustrates both the progress and the unfinished work. The bill passed both houses without an opposing vote, only to die when the Senate failed to transmit its amended version back to the Assembly before the midnight deadline for concurrence.
That procedural ending obscures a larger shift, legislators are putting more options on the table. California policymakers increasingly agree that decades of underproduction have contributed to extraordinary housing costs and that solving the problem requires more than zoning reform. Financing, infrastructure, permitting, environmental review, construction costs and liability all affect whether projects ultimately get built. Although Assemblymember Wicks’; bill died, it has set the tone for next session and the creativity of the different solutions we could see.
Voters will weigh several pieces of that debate in November. Proposition 1 would authorize $11.25 billion in bonds for housing programs, while Proposition 37 proposes a financing program for eligible purchasers of newly constructed homes. Proposition 45 would change environmental review and litigation procedures for specified housing and infrastructure projects. The measures take different approaches and present different tradeoffs, but collectively they demonstrate how much the policy conversation around building in California has changed. The same evolution is occurring around climate policy. California has spent decades leading on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Increasingly, however, climate policy also has to address adaptation: preparing communities and infrastructure for conditions that are already changing.
Governor Newsom’s statewide emergency declaration this week in anticipation of a potentially historic El Niño is an interesting example. Rather than waiting for damaging storms, the proclamation directs agencies to stage flood-fighting equipment, identify vulnerable infrastructure, coordinate with local governments and expedite permitting for levee repairs, debris removal and other preventive work. It also directs state water agencies to help use flood flows for groundwater recharge, simultaneously reducing flood impacts and strengthening local water supplies.
That approach points toward one of the central governing challenges of the next decade. California increasingly understands many of the problems it faces. The harder task is building public institutions capable of responding at the necessary speed and scale.
Housing and climate resilience may seem like separate issues, but both raise similar questions. Can we build infrastructure before systems fail? Can we reduce wildfire risk before communities burn? Can we capture water during wet years for the dry years that inevitably follow? And can we produce enough housing before another generation concludes that homeownership in California is simply beyond reach?
The next governor and Legislature will inherit significant progress, unresolved problems and policy experiments already underway. They will also inherit a state-local relationship that will be central to almost every major challenge they confront. Housing, transportation, homelessness, water, infrastructure and climate adaptation cannot realistically be solved exclusively in Sacramento or exclusively at the local level.
That is why the months after the election may ultimately be more important than the campaign itself. Beyond who occupies which office will be a larger question about what California chooses to do with this unusual policy opening.
September will finish the work of this legislative session. November will determine who governs and decide several consequential ballot measures. Then California will begin the harder work of defining what comes next.
The opportunity for the next slate of state and local leaders is not simply to manage California’s challenges, but to build the systems needed to get ahead of them.
The 35th annual CivicWell Policymakers Conference will take place on March 11 – 14th 2027. The Conference gathers local elected officials from across California in an inspiring and collaborative environment. Registration will open in November of 2026. If you would like to learn more, click below.
The Policymakers Conference is open only to elected officials, strategic partners, and sponsors of this event. To learn more about sponsorship, click here.
Other Upcoming Events
As we gear up for the fall conference season, we wanted to share some of the upcoming events hosted by our friends and collaborators.
The Clean Mobility Forum
September 30th – October 1st
The Clean Mobility Forum is hosted by the Clean Mobility Equity Alliance (CMEA) Team and funded by the California Air Resources Board and the California Energy Commission. This year, the event will be held at the Tsakopoulos Library Galleria in Sacramento, CA, Wednesday, September 30, and Thursday, October 1, 2026.
The Forum is a two-day hybrid event focused on clean transportation. It brings together diverse attendees, including clean mobility project awardees, state representatives, local and tribal governments, mobility operators, community-based organizations, and nonprofits, who are committed to advancing innovative, equitable and affordable solutions to achieve zero emissions transportation, especially for under-resourced communities in California. The Forum is designed to provide participants with tools and partnership opportunities that support the implementation of innovative solutions and address the roadblocks and challenges to achieving transportation equity and clean mobility for all.
The Resilient California Summit
October 20-22
The inaugural Resilient California Summit, taking place October 20-22, 2026, at the SAFE Credit Union Convention Center in Sacramento, will convene people from across the state to make progress on the policies, partnerships, and practices needed to build resilience as climate change accelerates.
The Summit will feature a diversity of interactive sessions aimed at fostering conversation, sparking new ideas, and giving attendees the resources and tools they need to be successful in their work and communities. Participants will explore key insights from California’s Fifth Climate Change Assessment, imagine the best possible future that remains within reach, and catalyze the actions needed to turn that vision into reality.
CalCOG 2027 Regional Leadership Forum
March 1-3, 2027
Mark your calendars, CALCOG’s Regional Leadership Forum, our annual statewide convening, returns to Sacramento.
Three days of peer-to-peer learning, candid policy conversation, and partnership across California’s regions. Registration opens soon, watch your inbox for the full program and hotel block.
More information to come.
Thank you to our Strategic Partners!
