> AB2656 made it through the Assembly and the policy committees of the Senate, only to be killed without a vote by the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

This is a common fate for laws in CA; they don't like voting down things when they can silently kill them. In this case it'd be popular, as all YIMBY laws are, but was killed by building trade unions. Unions and activists alike rely on a lot of "trolling" features in state law where they just annoy developers to death with process and fake lawsuits until they agree to negotiate with whatever their demand is today. It's probably not a good way to do things.