SB 1003 obligates any California city, county, or special district with a website to post a set of standardized development-related documents and data online. Required content includes current fee and exaction schedules (presented by parcel and showing water/sewer connection charges), zoning and development standards by parcel, the list compiled under Section 65940, current plus five prior annual fee or financial reports, and an archive of impact-fee nexus and cost-of-service studies dating to January 1, 2018.
The bill also directs local governments to request, at final inspection or certificate of occupancy, the total fees a developer paid and to post those reported totals at least twice a year, while permitting a disclaimer as to accuracy.
The measure is straightforward on one level — more published data — but it matters because it converts previously scattered or hard-to-find fee and study material into a publicly accessible resource. That reduces informational asymmetry for developers and the public, creates new operational obligations for municipal IT and finance teams, and could shift how stakeholders budget and litigate development costs.
The bill also reiterates that it does not change local authorities to impose fees nor create new duties for parties other than cities, counties, and special districts.
At a Glance
What It Does
Requires cities, counties, and special districts with websites to post development-related information (fee schedules, zoning standards, fee reports, and nexus/cost studies) and to update that information within 30 days of changes. It also requires local governments to solicit total project fees from developers at project closeout and publish the reported totals twice per year.
Who It Affects
Local government finance, planning, public works, and IT teams; special districts (including dependent districts); development proponents who may be asked to report final fee totals; housing researchers, affordable housing advocates, and prospective buyers seeking cost transparency.
Why It Matters
Standardized public access to fee and study materials reduces surprises during project budgeting and enables comparative analysis across jurisdictions. It imposes new operational and recordkeeping responsibilities on local agencies and creates data that could drive policy, advocacy, or litigation over development costs.
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What This Bill Actually Does
SB 1003 requires any California city, county, or special district that operates an internet website to assemble and publish a defined package of development-related materials. The bill spells out what to publish: a current schedule of fees, exactions, and affordability requirements applicable to proposed housing projects (with parcel-level identification and explicit identification of fees tied to water and sewer connections); all zoning ordinances and development standards showing what rules apply to each parcel; the list previously required under Section 65940; and the current plus five prior years’ annual fee or financial reports under Sections 66006(b) and 66013(d).
It also requires an archive of impact-fee nexus studies and equivalent cost-of-service studies performed on or after January 1, 2018.
For presentation, the bill requires either a written fee schedule posted directly or a link to it, and it mandates that the information be updated within 30 days after any change. In addition to proactive posting, a city or county must request from a development proponent, when issuing a certificate of occupancy or on final inspection (whichever comes last), the total fees and exactions tied to that completed project.
That request must make clear the developer is not obligated to respond and will not face consequences for not providing information. Any information received is to be posted on the jurisdiction’s website and refreshed at least twice a year.
Local governments may include a disclaimer about the accuracy of developer-provided totals and are not held responsible for their accuracy.The bill defines key terms to frame scope. “Affordability requirement” covers producer obligations to include units affordable to various income levels or alternatives like in-lieu fees or land dedication. “Exaction” lists specific mandatory project conditions (construction excise taxes, public art requirements, parkland dedications, Mello-Roos taxes) while expressly excluding certain fees that are not imposed in connection with approving development per existing case law. “Fee” references the categories in the Mitigation Fee Act. “Housing development project” is limited to stand-alone residential, mixed-use where at least two-thirds of square footage is residential, and transitional or supportive housing.Finally, the bill clarifies two limits: it does not change a local government’s existing authority to adopt or impose fees or exactions, and it imposes obligations only on cities, counties, and special districts — not on developers or other private entities. That declaratory language makes clear this is an information-transparency statute rather than a substantive reform of fee authority or a new charge on private actors.
The Five Things You Need to Know
Local jurisdictions must post a current fee/exaction/affordability schedule presented so fees are identified for each parcel and explicitly for new water and sewer connections.
Jurisdictions must archive impact-fee nexus studies or equivalent cost-of-service studies conducted on or after January 1, 2018, and post either a written fee schedule or a direct link to it.
All required web material must be updated within 30 days after any change; developer-reported total project fees (collected at certificate of occupancy or final inspection) must be requested and posted at least twice per year.
The bill allows a jurisdiction to disclaim accuracy and states the jurisdiction is not responsible for the correctness of developer-submitted fee totals.
Definitions narrow scope: ‘exaction’ lists specific project conditions (e.g.
construction excise tax, park dedications, Mello‑Roos) and excludes certain fees not tied to permit approval per existing case law; ‘fee’ points to the Mitigation Fee Act chapters.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Parcel-level fee schedules and presentation rules
This subsection requires jurisdictions to publish a current schedule of fees, exactions, and affordability requirements and to present that information so it’s clear which charges apply to each parcel and which apply to each new water and sewer connection. Practically, that pushes agencies away from vague, jurisdiction-wide tables and toward parcel-specific mapping or searchable tools that tie fees to property identifiers. Compliance will likely require coordination between planning, finance, and GIS/IT teams to link fee ordinances to parcel data.
Zoning, development standards, and 65940 list online
Jurisdictions must post all zoning ordinances and development standards and the list compiled under Section 65940, with clear indication of what zoning and design standards apply to each parcel. For practitioners, this raises the bar on how zoning information is published: static PDFs may be insufficient if they don’t clearly map standards to parcels. Agencies will have to decide whether to build parcel viewers, searchable databases, or curated guides to meet the statute’s intent.
Fee reports and archive of nexus/cost studies
The bill requires posting the current and five prior annual fee or financial reports and an archive of impact-fee nexus studies and equivalent cost-of-service studies dated on or after January 1, 2018. That brings fee-calculation studies into the public record in an easily accessible way, enabling outside reviewers to track the evidentiary basis for fees. Agencies will need records-management reviews to gather older studies and ensure redactions, if any, comply with other law.
Update timing and developer fee reporting
Jurisdictions must update posted information within 30 days of any change. They must also request, at final inspection or certificate of occupancy, the total fees and exactions a developer paid for the project and post reported totals at least twice per year. The request must explicitly state that responding is voluntary and that no penalty will follow nonresponse. Operationally, this creates recurring publication cycles and a need for procedures to collect, vet (to the extent desired), and post developer-provided summaries.
Definitions that set scope
This subsection defines ‘affordability requirement,’ ‘exaction,’ ‘fee,’ and ‘housing development project,’ tying them to existing Health and Safety Code income bands, the Mitigation Fee Act, and enumerated exaction examples (construction excise taxes, art requirements, park dedications, Mello‑Roos). It also excludes from ‘exaction’ certain fees not imposed in connection with a permit or approval, citing Capistrano Beach Water Dist. v. Taj Development Corp. The definitions limit the statute’s reach and clarify which charges must be published.
No change to fee authority; obligations limited to local agencies
The bill expressly states it does not alter a local government’s authority to adopt or impose fees or exactions and does not impose obligations on entities other than cities, counties, and special districts. That language confirms the measure is an informational requirement rather than a substantive reform and narrows who must comply, though it does not relieve agencies of the operational burden of assembling the required data.
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Who Benefits
- Prospective homebuyers and renters who gain clearer insight into development-related charges that influence housing costs, enabling better comparisons across jurisdictions.
- Developers and builders who can use consolidated, parcel-level fee data to produce more accurate project budgets and reduce unexpected charges during entitlement or closeout.
- Affordable housing advocates and researchers who acquire easier access to fee reports and nexus studies to evaluate how local fees affect housing supply and affordability.
- State and regional planning bodies that can use standardized public materials to identify fee structures that impede housing delivery and target reforms.
Who Bears the Cost
- Cities, counties, and special districts, which must dedicate planning, finance, legal, and IT resources to collect, format, host, and update the specified material — including historical reports and study archives.
- Small or dependent special districts with limited staff and technical capacity, which may need to procure outside help to publish parcel-linked information and older studies.
- Local legal and records teams that will field questions about accuracy, handle potential requests for redaction (e.g., proprietary data in studies), and manage the risk of misinterpreted public data.
- Development proponents who may be asked to disclose total fees at project closeout and incur time costs preparing or authorizing disclosure, even though response is voluntary.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central tension is between the public interest in transparent, comparable information about development costs and the practical burdens and legal risks of producing standardized, parcel-linked data: transparency empowers buyers, advocates, and researchers but forces under-resourced local agencies to assemble, maintain, and potentially defend a new public dataset that may include developer-supplied figures and commercially sensitive material.
The bill’s transparency goal is straightforward, but implementation raises practical tensions. First, the statute relies on developer-provided totals and allows jurisdictions to disclaim accuracy; that preserves flexibility but also creates a dataset of uneven reliability.
Users may treat posted totals as authoritative even when the jurisdiction disclaims responsibility, which could lead to disputes or litigation over reliance. Second, the requirement for parcel-level presentation and archives going back to 2018 creates substantial data-integration work: jurisdictions must map ordinances, fee schedules, and nexus studies to parcel identifiers, a process that may reveal gaps in records, require redactions for proprietary inputs, or demand new GIS and records-management investments.
Another unresolved practical issue is standardization. The bill prescribes what to publish but not how to format or structure data.
Without minimum metadata standards (e.g., fee type codes, parcel ID conventions, study date fields), cross-jurisdiction comparison will be cumbersome and could produce misleading analyses. Finally, while the statute reiterates it does not change fee-setting authority, making nexus studies and fee rationales widely available increases political and legal scrutiny of fee levels and methodologies — an intended transparency effect that could prompt challenges to established fees or press jurisdictions to revise revenue strategies under short timelines.
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