Records Show California Forever Gave Solano County One Day to Back Its Shipyard Bill

A Sept. 1, 2025 email from the developer's director of partnerships told county staff to decide that day, CalMatters reports — and Gov. Gavin Newsom's office is now circulating a new fast-track proposal for the same shipyard.

California Forever, the tech billionaire-backed development group planning a new city in Solano County, pressed county officials to decide in a single day whether to support state legislation speeding environmental review for a proposed shipyard, according to records reported by CalMatters on August 19, 2026. The email came on September 1, 2025, in the closing weeks of that year's legislative session.

The message was sent by Michael Fortney, California Forever's director of partnerships, to Solano County staff, CalMatters reported. It told them they had to decide that very day whether to support the proposal. When the county administrator replied that there was no bill language to evaluate, Fortney accused county staff of slowing the process.

“We don’t understand why this is complicated for you … unless you don’t want these jobs in Solano?” Fortney wrote, in the exchange obtained by CalMatters.

Fortney defended the pressure at the time, telling CalMatters the group was “tireless” because the economic opportunity “could have been transformative for the county, and for California.”

What the shipyard is attached to

The legislation at issue would have sped up environmental review for a shipyard that California Forever says could yield thousands of new jobs, according to CalMatters. The shipyard is one piece of the company's broader plan to build a new city and manufacturing hub in the Bay Area, on land it has assembled in Solano County, northeast of San Francisco.

CalMatters reporters Yue Stella Yu and Kate Wolffe documented the exchange in a special report published August 19, 2026, on how the real estate development group leverages the prospect of economic growth to pressure local officials, often against a tight timeline.

Critics quoted in that reporting tie the urgency to the project's origins, which were kept secret while land was acquired.

“For something of this size, it’s absurd to push in front of anybody and say, ‘We need your yes vote or your no vote right now.’ You wouldn’t buy a used car with that kind of timeframe.” — Duane Kromm, a former Solano County supervisor, to CalMatters

The calendar is repeating

The same squeeze is forming again. In the closing weeks of the current legislative year, Gov. Gavin Newsom's office recently began circulating a new proposal to fast-track environmental review of the shipyard proposal, CalMatters reported. That places the question in front of state lawmakers a second time, again on a compressed end-of-session schedule, and again attached to a jobs figure the company supplies.

Desk note: what is not yet on the record

The CalMatters newsletter summary does not name the legislators who were asked to carry the 2025 language, does not identify the bill number, and does not state how much California Forever reported spending on lobbying in any quarter. It does not say whether Solano County ever took a position, or what the new proposal circulating from the governor's office would actually change about environmental review.

Those are the checkable pieces — the disclosure filings, the bill history, the amendment record — that turn a pressure campaign into a documented one. This desk has read the newsletter account; the underlying documents are the next thing to read.