The end is near for the Mayor’s Tolling Order.
As a reminder, back on March 21, 2020, then-Mayor Garcetti declared a citywide State of Emergency at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. His order included a tolling of City Planning and LADBS deadlines, stating that any project which would normally have an entitlement, plan-check and/or permit expire while the State of Emergency was in effect would be paused until after the State of Emergency was rescinded.
That State of Emergency continued to the end of Garcetti’s term. In December, Garcetti recommended – and the City Council voted – to rescind the State of Emergency, effective Jan. 31, 2023. But Mayor Bass, in her first act as LA’s new mayor, declared a housing State of Emergency that included an extension of the LADBS/DCP tolling order to Feb. 27. You can read her Executive Order #1 here (see item #8).
Without further action, the tolling ends on Feb. 28 but it is still possible that Mayor Bass could recommend a further extension of the tolling order. There’s been no public indication of an extension, but there are still nearly two weeks for an extension to be proposed and granted.
So what happens to deadlines when the tolling order ends?
LADBS has issued an Information Bulletin which states that any time remaining on a permit, plan check application and/or slight modification will be banked and credited to the project once the local emergency is lifted. For example, a plan check that was submitted on Dec. 21, 2019, would have 15 months left on the application as of March 21, 2020, since plan-check applications are valid for 18 months. Therefore, the application will be valid for 15 months after the local emergency is lifted.
City Planning has not issued any direction on how it will treat the end of the tolling order, but it is believed that DCP will grant a blanket extension that could add significant time to entitlements that would have expired during the pandemic. A department memo is expected to be released prior to the end of the Tolling Order.
