The State Lands Commission manages and protects California's sovereign public trust lands, which the state received upon admission into the Union, as well as other lands subsequently conveyed by the federal government. Sovereign lands include the beds of all navigable waterways, including non-tidal rivers, streams and lakes, and tide and submerged lands within rivers, sloughs, bays and the Pacific Ocean extending from the mean high tide line seaward to the three-mile offshore limit. Other lands acquired from the United States include swamp and overflow lands and state school lands. These lands and reserved mineral interests total more than four and one-half million acres. The three-member commission consists of the Lieutenant Governor, the State Controller, and the Director of Finance.

The commission's budget no longer contains capital outlay expenditures, as the relocation of the Huntington Beach Field Office has been put on hold. Because of site constraints and regulatory requirements, this project has become unfeasible to pursue at this time. In an effort to address the immediate deficiencies of this facility, the Commission has made several modest repairs and improvements to the current Huntington Beach Field Office to keep this facility functional until a longer-term solution can be implemented. The Commission has indicated that although the building's most pressing deficiencies have been remediated, the facility will eventually need to be replaced or relocated.