California Attorney General Rob Bonta is sponsoring a bill by Assembly Member Buffy Wicks that would set clear standards for the types of projects allowed under the builder’s remedy.

Top California officials have announced their newest plan to build more housing in areas that have lost local control over development. But it’s not the draconian slap to the face many NIMBY cities were likely expecting.

Instead, on Tuesday, Assembly Member Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, introduced a bill sponsored by Attorney General Rob Bonta that extends an olive branch of sorts to local governments that have complained the state is threatening to unfairly punish them for not building enough housing.

The bill, AB1893, doubles down on the controversial “builder’s remedy” — a long-untested provision of California law that allows developers to bypass local zoning and design restrictions in jurisdictions without state-approved housing plans, as long as their projects contain a certain percentage of affordable units. This has led to some eye-catching and headline-grabbing proposals, such as a 50-story skyscraper in San Francisco’s Sunset neighborhood just a few blocks from the ocean.

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The fear provoked by such extravagantly excessive proposals was arguably the point of the builder’s remedy: to avoid opening themselves up to these extreme projects, even local governments notoriously averse to building new housing would be incentivized to do their part to plan for their share of the 2.5 million new homes California needs by 2031.

In this context, a bill to improve the........

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