The tech billionaire-backed plan to build a Bay Area city from scratch has found a new route around local opposition — hiring the architects of California's landmark environmental law to help gut it.

California Forever, which secretly purchased 62,000 acres of Solano County farmland before being unmasked in 2023, is now lobbying Sacramento for legislation that would short-circuit environmental review, cap legal challenges at 270 days, and allow a neighboring city to absorb the land — bypassing the same voters who forced the group to pull its 2024 ballot measure. The pressure tactic involves dangling a defense contractor as the project's anchor tenant. That contractor's largest backer also happens to invest in California Forever.

The group has retained two of the most recognizable names in California Democratic politics: former Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg and former Senate Majority Leader Bob Hertzberg — both central architects of the California Environmental Quality Act enforcement mechanisms the developers now want waived, according to CalMatters.

Their ask is sweeping. California Forever wants state permission to rely on an 18-year-old environmental impact report for the site, limit legal challenges to just 270 days, and allow Suisun City to annex the farmland if needed to sidestep Solano County's 1984 "orderly growth" law — which bars development on unincorporated land without a direct voter mandate.

That voter mandate seemed within reach in 2024. It wasn't. After local organizing and poor polling, California Forever pulled its East Solano Plan ballot measure before it reached voters, with project leader Jan Sramek acknowledging the group had moved too fast. The group has spent at least $330,000 lobbying the governor and legislative leaders as it pivots to a Sacramento strategy, according to CalMatters.

The Texas card

The urgency, supporters say, is real: autonomous vessel manufacturer Saronic Technologies is choosing between California and Texas for a new shipbuilding factory. A joint letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislative leaders, signed by building trades unions, realtors and peace officer associations, warned this week that without legislation this summer, California would "lose billions of dollars in investments and tens of thousands of jobs."

But Saronic's own public profile complicates the binary. The company — which recently closed a $1.75 billion Series D at a $9.25 billion valuation and won selection for the U.S. Navy's MUSV Marketplace — brands itself as "Built in Texas" from its Austin headquarters. It has simultaneously expanded to Louisiana ($300 million shipyard investment), New Orleans, and San Diego, where the city declared "Saronic Day" to mark the opening of a West Coast facility. Saronic already operates in California.

More striking is who connects the two sides of the deal. Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, holds investments in both California Forever and Saronic, CalMatters reported. Andreessen's firm was also the last entity listed to publicly recognize Saronic on its "American Dynamism 50: AI Edition" roster. Andreessen Horowitz did not respond to CalMatters' request for comment.

"Under cover of darkness"

Local opposition isn't softening. State Sen. Christopher Cabaldon, the Napa Democrat whose district includes Solano County, questioned whether the project serves residents at all.

"A central question for the people of Solano County is: Is this going to be for the community or is this a conversion project that leaves them behind?" Cabaldon said. "For a project this scale in this location, it is what the [law] was designed for."

Critics aren't just objecting to the project — they're objecting to the method. Rather than face another public vote, California Forever is pressing state leaders to hand them what voters weren't given the chance to weigh in on.

"I think they know that the only way this actually happens is under cover of darkness, by trying to essentially get the governor to work this plan for them," said Jordan Grimes, legislative director at the Greenbelt Alliance, which has pushed for streamlined environmental review of housing projects but not for this one.

The group's subsidiary, Flannery Associates, began buying agricultural land in 2018, routinely deflecting questions about its backers. Some farmers later alleged strong-arm tactics. The backers were unmasked in 2023 as a cohort of wealthy venture capitalists including LinkedIn and Netscape co-founders.

After nearly a decade of secret land purchases, a pulled ballot measure, and now a Sacramento lobbying campaign, California Forever's bid to become a city comes down to whether the governor and legislature are willing to do what Solano County voters haven't been asked to do — yet.