Assembly Standing Committee on Privacy and Consumer Protection

Good afternoon. Welcome everybody to the Assembly Privacy and Consumer Protection Committee hearing. Thank you all for joining us. We have a very full hearing today and it is an exceptionally busy day in the Capitol. So to effectively manage our time, we will be limiting testimony to two witnesses for support and two witnesses in opposition to each Bill. Each witness will be allowed 3 minutes to present their testimony. After the support witnesses conclude their testimony, the Committee will call up additional supporters.

Additional supporters may only state their name, affiliation and position for the record. No further testimony will be permitted. The same process will be followed after the opposition witnesses conclude their testimony. At that time, additional opposition will be called. They may only state their name, affiliation and position for the record. For this hearing and until further notice, the Committee will be returning to in-person testimony only as reflected in the file notice.

I'd also like to note that we are accepting written testimony through the position letter portal on the Committee's website so Members of the public can make their opinions known that way. We have 26 bills on the agenda today and the following bills have been approved for consent: AB 364 Bryan, do pass to the Appropriations Committee; AB 947 Gabriel, do pass to the Appropriations Committee; AB 1276 McKinnor, do pass as amended to the Appropriations Committee; AB 1282 Lowenthal, do pass to the Appropriations Committee; AB 1667 Irwin, do pass to the Appropriations Committee; AB 1697 Schiavo, do pass as amended; AB 1712 Irwin, do pass as amended to the Appropriations Committee. I will entertain a motion for the consent calendar as soon as we establish a quorum. We do not have a quorum yet, but we can, thanks to Mr. Essayli, begin and operate as a Subcommitee so we can get started.

Dr. Weber, before you begin, I think we're going to take this opportunity to establish Quorum since I know we have folks coming in and out, so. Madam Secretary, please call the roll.

[Roll Call].

Quorum has been established, and since I know it may be fleeting, at this point I'd entertain a motion on the consent calendar. We have a motion from Assemblymember Wicks, a second from Assembly Member Lowenthal. Madam Secretary, can you call the roll?

Motion on the consent calendar is do pass to this consent calendar. [Roll Call].

[Roll Call]

So those bills are all out. The consent calendar has been approved. We will leave the roll open for absent Members. At this time, we are going to turn to file item 17, AB 1011. Dr. Weber, you may begin. Thank you.

Thank you, Chair. Good afternoon, Committee. I'd like to thank you for allowing me to lay out AB 1011, which is the first step in addressing a critical new frontier of privacy policy. I would like to thank the Chair and the Committee staff for all of their hard work on this bill, and I am accepting the proposed Committee amendments and plan to address those today.

I would also like to thank the numerous stakeholders with whom we've had significant conversations about the importance of consent for consumers whose data is housed in a closed loop referral system. The Committee amendments today remove the elements which require further deliberation, and I intend to continue talks with stakeholders to make sure that we get it right in further legislation. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in addressing health related social needs as a strategy for improving overall health and well being of our constituents.

As a part of this movement, social care networks have become an important part of delivering the services that address these needs. These are groups of publicly and privately funded organizations that share data and make referrals to each other to help provide care across a range of social needs. Social care information is information about the most vulnerable moments in a person's life. People who are experiencing homelessness, food insecurity, or threats to their physical safety often want to keep this information private.

This bill addresses social care privacy by defining a closed loop referral system. Closed loop referral systems have become the place where many social care providers create and transmit data, and therefore an appropriate place to start regulating privacy in this space. This also allows us to regulate this data without putting undue burdens directly on the social care providers and nonprofits that were exempted from the CCPA.

Most importantly, this bill takes a giant step towards protecting consumers by putting strict do not sell standards in place for the sensitive personal information housed within closed loop referral systems. In closing, I want to be clear. This bill does not require any organization to utilize a closed loop referral system or require any burdens on existing structures. It simply defines a new technology and law, prevents any organization or company from selling private, sensitive consumer data. With me today in support is Jaffer Traish, COO of Find Help, and I also have a representative from 211 who is a tweener, Bill York. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Chair Gabriel, Members of the Assembly Committee on Privacy and Consumer Protection. Thank you for having me here today. My name is Jaffer Traish. I'm the Chief Operating Officer with Find Help, the sponsor of AB 1011. Find Help is the nation's leading social care referral technology platform and network. To date, we have helped connect over 24 million people with free and reduced cost programs that they are eligible for. Our technology operates one of these closed loop referral systems of which we're discussing today.

At Find Help, our mission is to connect all people in need to the programs that serve them with dignity and ease, and we believe privacy is a critical part of preserving that dignity. I would like to thank Assembly Member Weber for her commitment to this issue and her leadership on AB 1011. We recognize the amendments that have been put forth in Committee, and we support the need to formally define a closed loop referral system and protect the information within these systems by prohibiting the sale of data.

We believe people deserve transparency into which organizations have access to their private information. We believe people should be able to connect to services without a vendor conditioning their service delivery on having to share information with every organization in a network. Privacy and consent within these referral systems will need to be comprehensively addressed in the future. These conversations take time, and we believe this is the first incremental step in this important process.

To date, there are no such federal or state protections for this type of consumer data housed within systems such as ours. When the data is created outside of HIPAA regulation, consumers can be in control of this personal information, and without guardrails around consent, many are left vulnerable to the whims of this unregulated, regulated industry. We also support the efforts to bring in further stakeholder discussions to discuss best practices in this sector.

We encourage California to adopt a consumer directed privacy model that allows individuals to have transparency into organizations having access to this data. I also want to address nonprofits and community based organizations who directly provide social care services to those in need. We know that trust is a critical part of this relationship building and service delivery, and Find Help is committed to ensuring CBOs are able to protect this information.

Dr. Weber's leadership has encouraged essential conversation with our colleagues at San Diego 211 about social care data privacy. Bill York of San Diego 211 and his team are pioneering leaders and opened the doors for those of us committed to modernizing social care. We commend and appreciate his commitment to this conversation to protect the privacy and dignity of those we all serve. We owe it to our constituents to create uniform standards and protect their dignity and ensure their trust.

So when someone seeks out substance abuse counseling, domestic violence protection, or is facing homelessness or mental health crisis, they know their information is being treated with care and protection and not being sold to bad actors. I thank the State of California for leading on this important topic. I look forward to future conversations with Dr. Weber and the stakeholder organizations here today to work together to create best practices for privacy, consent, and data sharing in social care networks. Thank you.

Good afternoon Chair Gabriel and Members of the Committee. My name is Bill York and I am the President and CEO of 211 San Diego and the Community Information Exchange. First, I want to assure you that 211 San Diego and all of our community based agency partners take information privacy seriously. Client and data privacy are the utmost priorities in our region. State and national collaboratives working in care coordination in the social determinants of health.

In fact, just last week I attended a national conference where consumer privacy, data consent were discussed at length from multisectors of government healthcare, social care and other nonprofits, including Find Help. The first objective in legislating in this area must be to first do no harm, both to the ability of community based agencies to provide services and the ability or willingness of those seeking those services.

This is why I want to extend my appreciation to the Chair and the Committee staff for listening to the concerns of the nonprofit community and to Assembly Member Weber for agreeing to narrow the proposal. 211 San Diego and CIE is only but one agency impacted. In San Diego alone, there are 130 agencies across multiple social and health sectors that work together through a shared network that will need to evaluate language to ensure that we can work with their standards and client services approach.

Defining a closed loop referral system is not easy and there are many models and as noted above, there are numerous community agencies that have a legitimate purpose for sharing information to fully assist those in need, especially the most vulnerable and in crisis. 211 San Diego is committed to outreaching to our local, our regional partners, and stakeholders so we can provide meaningful feedback as the measure moves forward.

Again, we appreciate assemblymember Weber's commitment and Find Help's to work with us as we address the concern of stakeholders and the time the Committee Members and their staff have taken. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Is there anyone else in the hearing room wishing to express support for this measure?

Good afternoon. Anna Hasselblad with United Ways of California and on behalf of the 12 United Ways that also operate and run 211, we echo the position expressed by Mr. York as a tweener, and we appreciate the author and the sponsors for the conversation. Thank you.

Thank you. We will now turn to witnesses in opposition.

Thank you, Chair and Members of the Privacy and Consumer Protection Committee for your time today. My name is Paul Fassbender. I work for Unite Us, a social care coordination company like Find Help. Our company was founded 10 years ago and by two veterans who had a mission to help veterans with non-medical care that they needed. It has since expanded to all of our communities and here in California, we work with 25,000 different organizations in helping gain the net medical non-medical support they need.

We strongly support advancing privacy and dignity of individuals seeking care, in advancing those. And we appreciate Dr. Weber, the Chair, Jith, and Trent staffers who we worked with. It was great and was very open. We appreciate the work and look forward to continue doing work. But we must oppose AB 1011 currently in its current form, because we believe it will unintentionally hamper coordination across healthcare, government, and community partners and ultimately make it harder for people to access care.

We applaud the goals of the bill, but believe that its provisions will set back important existing policy efforts in California, like CalAIM, which seeks to offer Californians more equitable, coordinated and person-centric approach to maximizing their health in the California Data Exchange framework. These state level initiatives also taking place at the federal level, where HHS, Office of Civil Rights, and other agencies are seeking to advance secure information exchange across sectors to improve access to care.

We support quality, coordinated care networks that ease the burden on individuals and streamline delivery of services for organizations in accordance with each individual's express consent and provide people with the help that they need. As written, we believe that this bill can get there, but that we have work and we appreciate Dr. Weber and the Chair's willingness. And 211, Find Help's willingness to work with all the stakeholders in doing so. I appreciate the Committee's time, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you very much. Do we have any additional witnesses in opposition in the hearing room? Seeing none, we will bring it back to the Committee. Assembly Member Bauer-Kahan.

I'm sorry, I don't recall the name of your organization.

Unite Us.

Unite Us? Does Unite Us sell the data in the closed loop system?

No, we do not.

Do they make money off of the transfer of said data?

No, we do not. We run a platform.

Okay. And you may sell the platform as would be licenses, right? Yeah.

No, we do not sell that.

Okay. So I have to say that I want to give kudos to the author. I had concerns about it in its an original form because I was worried that affirmative consent could slow down the care that people so desperately need that 211 and other organizations in our communities are providing. I think we often put in well intentioned privacy protections that block really critical care.

And so I think that the way she's amended the bill ensures that that care can happen seamlessly, which is so critical right now, especially with our homelessness crisis, our mental health crisis, the other ways in which this continuum of care works. But I think that there is, without question, this data should not be sold or transferred for monetary benefit by any entity. And I think that it should remain used only for the purpose for which it is received, which is the care that these networks provide.

So I think the bill has been amended in a way that protects the interests of folks, and I will be supporting it today, but I would urge the author not to amend it any further. I think you've done a very good job, and I think that narrowing that exception down would water the bill down and take privacy protections away from the individuals that deserve them.

No matter who you are, what your condition is, in our community, privacy is of the utmost interest and this data should not be sold, and I think you've done a good job of ensuring that.

Thank you.

Thank you. Additional comments or questions from Members of the Committee? Assembly Member Bennett?

Yes, United Way and 211, I have a great respect for what they're doing, and so I certainly appreciate their support and want to continue to work with you as you move forward, and I'll look forward to that as it goes forward in terms of your ability to work with them and their support as this move.

Thank you.

Assembly Member Essayli.

Yes, thank you. Question for opposition. So the amendments look pretty substantial, substantive. You're still opposed with the amendments?

Two areas that I would say is, first, it defines closed loop referral system. I think that should be broadened and that should be a social care information processor. I do know that there was some concern about individuals in this, and that doesn't bring in necessarily the individual that brings in the entire ecosystem. Instead of just worrying about a closed loop referral system, which there's a handful of organizations that could fall under that don't leave loophole, broaden it and bring all of it in.

And the second part, too is some of these paragraphs are over-broad, which I worry about because our system is HIPAA compliant. So you look at it, we comply with HIPAA, we comply with a number of different federal regulations and other organizations that handle social care also do. So, this would layer on.

But as amended, is it going to hinder your ability to provide? Look, my sister is a social worker, so she uses the system herself. And I think it's striking a balance. We want to obviously protect privacy interest, but we don't want to make it so cumbersome or difficult that social workers can't get the need. So I was pleased with the amendments and so if there's still more conversations to have, please continue to have those. But I think for today I'll be supporting it and just encourage.

Yes, I would say the amendments from our side are a lot better and they make the bill a lot better. I think there's just fine legal detail to work out and just to understand that there are other frameworks in place that do cover different organizations and not to leave a hole where organizations can slip by, because they should be covered under this bill too, if they're handling this kind of information.

Thank you to the author.

Appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Any additional comments or questions? All right, at this point I would entertain a motion. We have a motion by Assembly Member Wilson. A second by Assembly Member Bauer-Kahan. I will just say, I just want to thank you, Dr. Weber, for your leadership in this area. I want to thank you for your thoughtful approach here. I want to thank you and your staff and Committee staff and opposition for getting together. I think, as you've heard, I appreciate the amendments.

I think a lot of folks on this Committee appreciate the amendments. You're heading in a very positive direction now and have a lot of confidence as you, as an author to continue to maybe have conversations and fine tune as appropriate where you feel necessary. But with the amendments, I'm happy to support the bill today and have an aye recommendation. And so with that, Madam Secretary, please call the roll.

File item number 17, AB 1011 by Assembly Member Weber. The motion is do pass as amended to the Appropriations Committee. [Roll Call]

Your bill is out 8-0. We'll leave the roll open for absent Members. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

All right, I think we are going to go next to Assemblymember Carrillo, AB 1194. That is File Item 3.

Thank you. Sorry. May I present? Thank you, Mr. Chair and Members, I am proud to present Assembly Bill 1194, which will protect California's right to privacy when it comes to reproductive health care decisions and ensure the companies cannot circumvent California's strongest protections in the nation related to this critical space. Since the fatal Dobbs decision last summer, there has been a renewed need to ensure that access to accurate and authoritative information, above all of one's options when it comes to reproductive health care, are available.

However, it's not just enough to be able to find that information. One should also be able to access it without the threat of being shared or sold to third parties, or if it's just a subject to a data breach. The California Privacy Rights Act gives individuals agency over how their online activity is stored and used.

Californians have come to expect that their privacy will be protected, and this Bill closes a potential loophole that would allow for flawed conclusions and misinformation about the safety of reproductive care to also make access to good information harder. Closing this loophole will ensure that privacy is upheld in one of the situations when it is needed. And most critical. No one should be wary of using the resources available them to access reproductive comprehensive health care.

Here to talk more about the need for this Bill is Yadi Younse, Privacy Rights Fellow at Oakland Privacy.

Good afternoon, chairs and Members. Good afternoon, chairs and Members. My name is Yadi Younse and I am with Oakland Privacy, a citizens' coalition that advocates for the regulation of surveillance technologies with respect to privacy, civil rights and community consent. Last year, the US Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade and unleashed a wave of abortion restrictions across the country. These restrictive laws turned once normal practices, such as tracking periods and pregnancies, into a precarious endeavor.

While digital reproductive health tools are empowering, using these tools should not come at the expense of giving up privacy and bodily autonomy, nor allow one to be subject to harassment, discrimination or prosecution. Because digital reproductive tools collect a lot of sensitive information, oftentimes use misleading privacy claims and predatory advertising practices, without giving consumers the ability to control their data. Consumers are left with a false sense of security that their data is private, safe and secure.

Reproductive apps are some of the most popular health monitoring apps used by adults and females under 18 years old. A fertility app study found that on average, 3.8 trackers were activated at the moment of installation. Apps such as Sprout, Pregnancy Flow, Glow, and Premom have been caught abusing and violating consumers privacy, collecting extensive amounts of data and sharing it with countless third parties.

Once sensitive data reaches Google, Facebook and others, it can then be sold to data aggregators, who can in turn sell it to law enforcement or bounty hunters. Moreover, subpoenas may force personal data to be turned over directly. In an active peak, slackivism, despite commitments to protecting consumers privacy, Google is still collecting and retaining abortion-related data. No more lip service. AB 1194 will compel the protection and privacy of sensitive reproductive information under the CPRA.

We thank Assemblymember Carrillo and the California Legislator's continued leadership on reproductive freedom, and we respectfully ask for your support.

Thank you very much. Are there any additional witnesses in support of this Bill in the hearing room?

Bryan Sapp, on behalf of the California Nurses Midwives Association in support and behalf of California NARAL in support. Thank you.

Lisa Matsubara, on behalf of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California in support.

Chao Jun Liu with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in support.

All right, at this time, we will turn to witnesses in opposition. Are there any witnesses in opposition to this Bill? Seeing none, we will bring it back to the Committee. Any questions? Comments? Assemblymember Bauer-Kahan.

I just want to thank the author for her continued leadership in the reproductive rights space. This is such critical work. This seems like an obvious change, so I'm glad there's no opposition here. I want to thank you and move the Bill.

We have a motion by Assemblymember Bauer-Kahan, a second by Assemblymember Papan. To our Vice Chair.

Yes, thank you. Can you give me an example of how this information could be misused under current law if this Bill does not become law? And are there any current examples of this actually happening?

Yes. So, for example, in Nebraska, there's a case where a mom and a daughter were using information, talking about information, regardless to abortion-related services on Facebook, and law enforcement went and got that information from Facebook, and right now they're facing criminal charges.

But in California, do you have an example?

The, if I can answer the question that's at hand here, is that anyone who uses these tech tools, it's not bound like within California.

So if there are people from other states that are coming to California to seek reproductive care or they're communicating via any of these platforms that collect information, whether it's reproductive or other related data, law enforcement from any state in the country can get that information, whether it's from Californians or for people out of state that are coming to California to get reproductive care.

Okay, but California companies here still have to comply with our privacy laws in California. And if a company from, a law enforcement from Nebraska comes to California company and says, "hey, give us this information," then therefore, the California company would be breaking existing California law by providing that information.

So, in theory, there are protections for people's private information. But as I said in my statement, for example, Google had stated last year that it specifically would not track data related to abortion clinics and people traveling to these centers, and they are still doing that. So the thing is that the information is still being collected and there's opportunity for law enforcement to be able to access that data just simply by the fact that it's being tracked and collected.

Yes, there are supposed to be protections under the CCPA right now, but it's not really being enforced by tech companies.

Thanks.

Other questions? Comments from the Committee? All right, seeing none, we do have a motion and a second. I just want to thank you, Assemblymember, for bringing forward this important Bill. It's almost unimaginable to me that we're in this place, right? And I think a few years ago none of us imagined that we'd be here. But after Dobbs, I think it's incumbent upon this state to step up and do everything that we can to protect the fundamental right to privacy, the fundamental right to reproductive freedom.

And I know that this is an important piece of the puzzle, actually one of three bills that this Committee will be hearing today on this topic. So I want to thank you for your leadership. I want to thank Assemblymember Bauer-Kahan, who's been a tremendous leader in this area as well. It has been a priority for this Committee. I don't think California should wait to take these steps. And certainly there are private companies here that could release information absent this change in the law.

So I think it's an important and obvious step. I'm proud to support the Bill today. It has an aye recommendation, and Madam Secretary, please call the roll. Oh, I'm so sorry. You may close.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I want to thank you and the other Members that are presenting in this Committee for allowing me to present ahead of them so that we can get back to budgets of four. AB 1194 will clarify that businesses must comply with consumer requests to delete contraception, pregnancy care, prenatal care, and including abortion services information, and may not share that information under the exception of the California Privacy Rights Act.

I would like to also thank the Future of Abortion Council and the Legislative Women's Caucus for making this a priority. And with that, I respectfully request and aye vote. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Assemblymember. Madam Secretary, please call the roll.

Item number three, AB 1194 by Assemblymember Wendy Carrillo. Motion is do pass to the Appropriations Committee. [Roll Call].

The vote is five to two. We'll leave that Bill on call. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Sorry, five eyes to not voting, but we will leave that Bill on call. Thank you very much. We are now going to go next to Assembly Member Friedman.

Please. Thank.

Which one would you like to do first?

We'll start with AB 8.

All right, we will go with AB 8. This is File Item Number Four.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and Members. First of all, we're going to accept the suggested Committee amendment on page ten, section seven of the analysis, eliminating the very controversial Section 22505 of the bill. I want to thank the Committee and the Committee staff for their work on the bill and the analysis. In the past, if you wanted to buy a ticket to an event, you'd go to a box office at a venue or a ballpark.

The box office would tell you where your seats were, they'd give you a seating chart, and then you'd buy the ticket, you'd know exactly what the price was, and you'd be handed a ticket. You'd then use that to enter the venue, or in many cases, you'd give the ticket away or you would sell it to someone as you saw fit, as this someone who owned that ticket. It was thought that the Internet would make ticket selling even easier and promote greater transparency.

However, the opposite has actually happened. These days, it's very common that you will not be able to see the final price or the cost of the ticket until you've been online, sometimes for hours, and have finally been able to snag a ticket and put it in your shopping cart. You may then watch that ticket's cost increase, with more fees added on as you click past web page after web page until you find the final place to pay.

That ticket, often purchased several months in advance, may come with a variety of restrictions on transfer. Even if you bought the ticket a year or two in advance, if you find out that for some reason you can't attend, maybe you're sick, maybe your nephew is getting married, you may find out at that point that you have no way to give that ticket to a friend or to sell it to someone else who might want to attend.

And you certainly are not entitled to return that ticket for a refund. Meanwhile, average ticket prices have more than tripled since the mid 1990s, and the fees that are tacked onto each ticket can be as high as 78 percent of the ticket price. While consumers are certainly feeling the pinch, ticket resellers--sorry--retailers, are doing just fine. Last month, Ticketmaster Live Nation announced record profits, reporting a 2022 operating income up 125 percent from pre-pandemic levels to 732 million dollars, and revenue up 44 percent to 16.7 billion dollars.

The laws governing ticket retailers were passed before the Internet even existed, a fact that's become increasingly clear as mega ticket sellers and resellers have used those rules to rip off consumers eager to see their favorite artists. We need to update the law for how tickets are sold today to make sure artists, performers, and venues can still reach fans and sell tickets in an easier and more transparent way, but that consumers are protected. AB 8 adds new, important consumer protections.

It would apply to all primary and secondary ticket sellers, whereas current law only regulates secondary ticket brokers but exempt primary ticket brokers, and doesn't include secondary ticket sellers or resale platforms. AB 8 will require that the full price of a ticket, including all fees, should be shown to the consumer when they select the tickets they wish to purchase and that the price will not increase during the purchase process.

It will also require platforms to disclose an exact location of the tickets so that you know where you're going to be sitting. Finally, under AB 8, consumers will be protected from discriminatory, anticompetitive, and deceptive practices that make it harder to buy, resell, and use tickets. Members, I represent the heart of the entertainment industry. I represent many large venues. I represent the content creators and the artists who perform at these venues.

The last thing I would want to do is disrupt the economy in my own district, but I can tell you that we know that this will not have that effect. In fact, there are similar laws around the country and we have not seen a decrease in the profits for the industry or a decrease in venues hosting events. In fact, just the opposite is true. My joint author is Jackie Irwin. She is in another Committee. She hopefully will be able to come and give her testimony, but in the meanwhile, we will allow our witnesses, with your permission, to continue.

Hello. My name is Sandra Cushion. I am the Consumer Advocate with CALPIRG. We are the statewide consumer watchdog and advocacy group working to protect Californians and ensure a fair marketplace, and we are a proud cosponsor of AB 8. One of the most basic tenets of consumer protection is transparency. Complete pricing information specifically is really critical to help inform consumer purchases, allow just basic comparison shopping, and generally ensure a fair marketplace.

But more and more ticket sellers are violating this principle by blindsided consumers with hidden fees and other unfair tactics that make it very difficult to find the true price of a ticket. AB 8 addresses this by ensuring the ticket's advertised price is the actual price and ensures that a seat location information and refund policies are available to the consumer at the time of purchase. In addition to proper transparency, AB 8 gives consumers control over their ticket after they purchase it. Currently, ticket sellers can prevent ticket owners from reselling tickets through any site besides their own.

We believe once someone purchases a ticket, it should be theirs to do with as they please. Additionally, AB 8 would better protect the data of consumers who buy tickets. Broad public support for ticket reform has been brewing for the last several years, and these reforms offered by AB 8 are long overdue.

As we emerge from the worst days of the Covid Pandemic, Californians are looking for more and more opportunities to enjoy live events. And as people rush to buy tickets for these events, the broken nature of the ticket selling system is becoming more and more clear. AB 8 offers common sense solutions to this broken system. Consumers should know the true price of a ticket and have control over what they do with that ticket after they purchase it. Thank you, and I respectfully ask for your aye vote.

My name is Brian Hess. I'm the Executive Director of Sports Fans Coalition, and thank you for the opportunity to testify today. Founded in 2009, SFC is the national nonprofit advocacy group devoted to representing fans wherever public policy impacts the games we love. We've worked in the states and at the federal level to pass equal pay for women olympians, youth athlete health and safety reforms, and sports betting consumer protections.

AB 8 will positively impact the fan experience, which is why SFC enthusiastically supports. In the wake of a disturbing trend of poor fan experiences during the ticket buying process, SFC, the National Consumers League, Consumer Federation of America, Fan Freedom, Consumer Action, Public Knowledge, and the National Association of Consumer Advocates developed a set of principles to protect fans in the ticket-buying process. We call this the Ticket Buyer Bill of Rights.

AB 8 has many of the principles important in the Bill of Rights, but I'd like to focus on two: the right to transferability and the right to a fair marketplace. A customer's right to transferability is the most important component of any pro-fan ticketing marketplace, and AB 8 upholds this right as it does not currently exist in California, despite many other states, including New York, Colorado, and Illinois doing so.

Those who oppose this legislation, including California's sports teams, will say that restrictive tickets protect consumers by eliminating bad actors in the secondary marketplace and that this bill will lead to higher prices. Both of these are false. In actuality, this bill is about empowering fans, and transferability empowers these fans in the ticket purchase process by providing them access to tickets, many of which below face value. Ticket buyers should decide how to use the tickets they purchase, not ticket sellers. Fans don't just buy tickets, they sell tickets.

Season ticket holders, for example, want the freedom to sell their tickets if they can't make a game due to illness or work obligations or any other reason. The ease of resale encourages fans to invest more in California's home teams and allows consumers to purchase season tickets they otherwise would not be able to afford. The ability to freely transfer tickets gives fans, who must often buy events months in advance, confidence their ticket purchase will be protected if they cannot attend.

What the opposition won't tell you is that they actually do support resale, but only if it's through one of their own affiliated or operated resellers, which Ticketmasters made 4.5 billion dollars last year. So they support resale so long as they don't have to compete. Ultimately, ticket transfer rights are consumer rights. We also support banning bots. Fans shouldn't have to compete with computer software designed to scoop up tickets ahead of fans.

Thankfully, federal law already prohibits the use of bots, and the Attorney General has the authority to enforce. However, the law has only been enforced once. I believe this is because law enforcement is not provided the necessary information by ticket sellers to actually pursue these crimes. They are the only ones that are able to tell when a bot attacks--

I'm going to ask you to wrap up soon. You're over the limit. Thank you.

Sorry about that. I would just like to say, with bot reporting, the primary operators are the ones that are victims of crimes, yet they refuse to report to law enforcement, and you should ask why. Why would you not report to law enforcement when you got attacked by a criminal act, federal and state? So I urge an aye vote. Thank you.

Thank you very much. We are now going to turn to any other witnesses in the hearing room in support.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and Members. Robert Herrell, Executive Director of the Consumer Federation of California, proud cosponsor of this measure. Thank you.

Jaime Minor, on behalf of StubHub, headquartered here in LA and New York, in support. Thank you.

Timothy Burr, on behalf of Vivid Seats, in support.

Courtney Jensen, on behalf of SeatGeek and TickPick, in support.

And Mr. Chair, Erin Witte of the Consumer Federation of America. As asked, I express her support on her behalf.

Great. Thank you very much. We'll now turn to witnesses in oppositions. Anyone in the hearing room in opposition?

Members of the Committee Chair Gabriel my name is Andrew Govenar. I'm here today representing the San Francisco 49 ers, the Los Angeles Dodgers, the San Francisco Giants, the Oakland A's, the Los Angeles Angels, the San Diego Padres, and the Morongo Band of Mission Indians who are all opposed to this measure.

On behalf of our clients, we respectfully must oppose the measure because there are still a host of issues that must be addressed if we are to change our position, including mandatory paper, tickets, marketing, resale and transferability to other platform issues. These are all found in Section 22507, which we recommend should be removed from the Bill.

Having said that, we appreciate the authors, Friedman and Irwin, and their staff for taking the time to meet with us this last week and for removing one of our most objectionable sections in the measure 225 which was also removed in the arts Committee and was now removed in privacy as well. And while that is much appreciated and thank you, the remaining issues must be addressed before the sports teams and venues can remove their opposition.

Our teams and California venue operators contribute millions of dollars in state and local taxes. We provide millions of dollars in charitable support to nonprofits and charitable causes. We employ thousands of people across the state, both directly and indirectly, who work at our stadium and also supply our stadium with supplies. We try to ensure that our fans get the best access at the best price to enjoy our games.

We remain opposed because we believe the measure simply rearranges the current system to the benefit of the secondary market and does nothing to help the consumers get cheaper tickets, but rather would lead to increased prices as a result of the secondary market. We believe restructuring California's ticketing market, especially for sports, doesn't make sense to help our teams or our fans. Our teams and venues span the state, contributing the economic and social fabric of our communities, bringing fans of sports and entertainment together.

We believe AB 8 is unnecessary at this time and simply benefits a secondary market. We would ask that if you look at the opposition and our issues, most of them are located in 22507. We believe that section should be removed and to answer to the proponents. Actually, my clients allow for resale, they allow for transferability. But when you enter a venue that is a private venue, we require to load it up on a trusted app that is known either in case of the giants.

It would be the Giants app or a Ticketmaster app, but you can resell that ticket however you want. So what we believe, though, is that we would like to control who can get into our facility as a matter of security and protection for our fans. We don't require a price to sign up for the app because of CCPA, and this is privacy.

We allowed you to opt out of marketing, but we have to have a way to get into our venue that we can know as a trusted and secure ticket. And if there are a thousand apps out there that you can upload any app and any ticket to, how would we know and confirm that that's actually valid? When you look at a ticket nowadays, it does the instantaneous scanning, which is why we've gone away from paper tickets.

Paper tickets and the reduction in using computers has eliminated 70% of fraud. So we would ask, in the spirit of moving along and to help California sports semen venues in this issue, that we remove 2257 and then the teams will work on the transparency because transparency was such a significant part of the testimony. But yet that is not our issue. We would work with you on fine tuning transparency. So thank you. We ask for your opposition.

Thanks for having me. My name is Jordan Bromley and I'm here on behalf of the Music Artists Coalition. We go by Mac as well. Mac is a coalition comprised of all music creators. Mac is dedicated to protecting and advocating for artist rights without conflict or compromise. We work closely with other advocacy groups, including the Black Music Action Coalition, Songwriters of North America, Future of Music Coalition, Sagaftra, and the Recording Academy. All of us are in opposition to AB 8.

So when you hear about the opposition and you hear about ticketing companies and promoters, you can count the artist advocacy groups in opposition as well, for one reason, and it's 22507. While we understand that the authors of ABA do not intend for this Bill to be bad for creators, as experts in the industry, there's a devastating consequence of the Bill because it would strip artists of their right to protect their fans. Artists are working hard to find innovative ways to protect their fans from price gouging.

To do that, artists need to be able to attach terms and conditions to their tickets. These conditions do not hurt the fan who gets sick and can't make a show. They do prevent scalpers from manipulating the process to drive up prices. Nobody cares about their fans more than an artist. Artists want their fans to be able to afford coming to their shows. The transferability part of AB eight would take that away.

And this is just on the cusp of a bright future with new technology where artists can protect their fans and they can enforce these terms and conditions in a fair way that allows them to come to the shows that they want to see. Bands such as Pearl Jam, the Cure, Queen, Paramore, Mumford and Sons have set up fan to fan face value exchanges where tickets can only be resold for the original purchase price, ensuring tickets prices remain Low for fans.

AB 8 kills this ability for artists as well. We finally see a future where an artist can truly protect their fans from an inflated secondary market. It is just around the corner. In conclusion, I want to say that fans are best served when artists are in control. When artists think of pricing, they have the fan in mind. When resellers and scalpers think of pricing, they only have profits in mind. Without artists, there is no music. But without fans, there is no music business.

And no one cares more about the fan, the concert going concert goer, than the artist. And the artists today are telling you that the problem is the unregulated scalpers and the secondary platforms who benefit from exorbitant prices. As it stands today, AB 8 is objectively anti artist. This Bill will harm both fans and artists. It will strip artists of yet another right without their knowledge or approval. It will embolden and enable scalpers. For these reasons, Max strongly opposes this Bill and hopes the Committee will too. Thank you.

Thank you very much. We will now ask for any additional opposition in the hearing room to come forward.

For the San Jose Sharks in opposition.

Mr. Chair and Members here today on couple different groups, Alex Torres with the Bay Area Council, in opposition. Also here as a board Member of the Capital Venues coalition, a coalition of independent venues in the Sacramento region, as well as Julia Heath, the President of the National Independent Venue Association of, California, in all opposition. Thank you.

Victoria Von Feliski, on behalf of access tickets and our many venue and promoter clients, including AEG presents, Coachella festivals and many others.

Tim lynch, on behalf of the Golden State Warriors, remaining in opposition to the Bill.

Okay with that, we will bring it back to the Committee. Any questions? Comments? Assemblymember Bennett.

I think the trade off between transferability and stopping scalping is the fundamental issue here. That still remains to be addressed. But I want to, and I recognize that's a challenge. But I want to go back to an issue that the Arts Committee has already done with the amendment taking out the requirement that a fair market requires people to understand how many tickets are out there, what are the possibilities to bid, et cetera.

So my question for the industry representatives is, are you aware, do you believe what is happening is in fact, are tickets being released in batches, so that's a small percentage of the tickets are released. That drives the price up, creates a frenzy so that when the next wave of tickets are released, the prices go up even higher. That doesn't feel like a fair marketplace to the consumers. That's been removed from the Bill already.

But that doesn't mean that I wouldn't be encouraging the author to try to get that back into the Bill with the permission of the Arts Committee and the Arts Committee chair, because that doesn't feel like a fair marketplace. But is that in fact what's happening? And is that something that you would be opposed to and that is some kind of legislation that says you can't hold back the tickets at the beginning to create this frenzy? Certainly some small percentage, but you can't hold anything but a small percentage back to getting. So can you help with that please?

Yeah, I can. Go ahead. The issue of holdback disclosures or ticket allocation is one that sports fans call you.

Pull the mic much closer to you.

Thank you. And a lot of the other consumer groups that we work with on the ticket buyer Bill of Rights advocate for I would love to see that amendment added back in. It is an important consumer data point when they are deciding whether or not they want to wait in the queue for 10 hours on a computer or not if they know more tickets will come available.

What we saw with Taylor Swift was that the Wall Street Journal estimates more than 90% of her tickets were held back at that primary on sale. More than 90%. And no fan knew that. I have lots of friends who suffered through that queue. I suffered through that queue with my fiance and it was tough. Had we known that only 10% or less of those tickets were available, we probably wouldn't have done it. So I do think that the holdback disclosures are vital consumer protection and it does happen rampantly throughout the marketplace.

So did the industry support the removal, or did the industry oppose the removal of that?

I'm not sure who specifically supported the removal. That would be a question for the Assembly Member, but I would not support removing that amendment.

We have been in conversations with industry and with the opponents trying to reach a compromise on this Bill, and we were willing to sacrifice some consumer protections by removing the amendment in hopes of getting the opposition to the Bill dropped. Clearly, the opposition is still there. So as we move forward, we'll either come to terms and hopefully move groups to neutral, or maybe we think about what the final form of the Bill will look like.

Industry representatives, I will say for us, our main issue from an artist perspective is their ability to protect fans through controlling how their tickets are resold. What we have found on numerous occasions is without the artist's permission or control these tickets going for 1020 x what they offered it for, and they can't do anything.

I understand that, but that's not the question in front. How about the ability of the industry, the initial sellers of the tickets, to hold back the number of tickets? Hold back a large percentage. The Taylor Swift situation?

Well, I don't think that 90% is verified. In fact, I think the reason Taylor Swift's the on sale broke is because they offered too many tickets and too many bots.

Bottom line is, is the industry supportive of this Bill potentially being amended so that there is no ability to hold back the vast majority of the tickets? Would you be comfortable with that legislation? With that amendment?

I mean, first off, I would say that we're talking about entertainment, and I represent the sports. And this further proves our point that we're restructuring the entire sports ticketing market for an issue that has to do with Taylor Swift. And we believe that's unfair. But we asked for that provision to be removed. There were many other provisions in there, dynamic pricing bans and other things that the industry does not support. For the most part, sports does not do holdbacks that you talk about.

There might be an instance where maybe you're closing off a section of seats up above because you might only get 10,000 fans. But to your point, we did ask for it to be removed, and we're appreciative of the author removing that amendment. You asked for it to be removed and therefore, there is no restriction on how many tickets can be held back. It just reverts to current law, whatever it is. But we ask that that amendment be removed.

Yes. So current law would allow that. And do you see that as a problem in terms of the ability to drive pricing, drive the frenzy up?

No, we still believe that this Bill will cause the secondary market to profit. And, for instance, when we were an arts Committee, they were talking about the clicks, and I can see, excuse me. We believe it will lead to higher prices on the secondary market.

Yeah, my question is not the whole Bill, this one provision, you think that withholding tickets would lead to higher prices on the secondary market?

It wanted to put a dynamic pricing ban of seven days, which mean you had to put a price out seven days advance. It wasn't just that issue. And so what you would have are the secondary market taking advantage of a set price that was seven days out, and then they would Jack up the price after the fact because there was a seven day gap where if the Giants were playing the Dodgers, the Dodger tickets would go up if you're playing not as good a team.

For instance, you can get a giant ticket for $10 for this Thursday's game against the Cardinals. And that's what dynamic pricing, it allows for that fluctuation. That was also in that section, which is what we asked to be removed. 225.

It sounds like there's still a willingness to. So potentially, there's still the willingness to support not having the majority of the tickets withheld from the initial sale. But I'll let the author. Thank you very much.

If I may also respond to that, we do see holdbacks in the sports context, especially around playoff games. I can't speak to the teams he represents, but the Eagles.

Okay, thank you. The chair. I know we're all trying to move out of here, and then how about the conversation about reporting on the bots so that we can giving the information to law enforcement so that we can start to enforce the bots sweeping in? Is the industry willing to do that?

My clients would support anything that cracks down on bots taking advantage of our fans. We would support anything that lowers the price from the secondary market and release.

The information to public safety investigators.

That wasn't our issue in our letter.

Not willing to commit to releasing the information to public safety?

No. Our issues that we had in our letter noted that we would like 22507 removed because of all of the issues we had. We didn't discuss the bots issue in our letter. We're focused on 22507 which we believe will impede our ability to provide our fans with the best possible experience and the best possible price with.

The permission of the chair. The role of committees are to take a Bill and try to investigate all the issues about that Bill to make sure that it's a good Bill. And if one of the issues we all have a concern with is we don't want bots out there driving, creating industrial scale scalping, then it's legitimate for us, when a Bill is here dealing with ticketing, to ask questions about whether the industry is supportive or not supportive of helping law enforcement enforce a law that is currently on the books and industry can choose not to answer the question, which is what you're doing, that's fine.

But just because you're saying that our letter didn't deal with that doesn't mean that it's not appropriate for us to try to find that out from you today in this hearing, because it could help us make better legislation if we know that answer. So hopefully, the industry would be willing to answer that at some point in time. So that'd be my request that you try to get that answer if you're not willing to answer that question at this point in time. Thank you very much, chair. Sorry for taking the time.

No problem. Thank you very much. Similar, I think. Assembly Member Essayli.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a couple of questions. I appreciate having subject matter experts here. I'm having a hard time conceptually with this Bill because we're talking about regulating the transfer of bills, which would be the secondary market. When they sell a ticket, they have a face value on the ticket. So we talk about things like holding back. How does holding back benefit the industry?

It creates a false sense of scarcity. It makes you think that you'll see reports of tickets being sold out within minutes. A lot of that is because not all 30,000 seats may have been for sale, but the other way it does it is a lot of these holdbacks are diverted to secondary brokers as a way to offset risk for the show. So they will say, here's 10,000 tickets.

I'm going to sell it to these couple secondary brokers, who will then take that risk and then resell those tickets at whatever they can resell them for. But they don't disclose that. And then they like to have the brokers as a red herring.

But the tickets are sold at the face value. They're not sold at some marked up. Because you're talking about creating huge value. Make it sound like they're driving the price.

Right. In the age of dynamic pricing, face value is changed.

With dynamic pricing, they do change the price of the ticket based on the demand. So if you're holding it back and then you're using dynamic pricing, then because there's less tickets, the price can go up and people will pay that. Not really. There's another 10,000 tickets that are going to be released.

I just want to say that we're talking about 10,20,30,000 tickets. Most of the artists that are playing venues across the country aren't selling that number of tickets, aren't doing holdbacks. They just want to fill a room and they want their fans to be able to show up at an adequate price.

Okay, question about the bots. I think we all hate bots. Does this Bill, we can stipulate to that. Does this Bill ban speculative ticket sales?

It's already illegal, right? Yeah, go ahead.

It requires disclosure.

Why not ban it, though? Why should someone be able to sell a ticket they don't even possess or own at some huge price?

So there are some services, such as? Like in the old days before we had online ticket sales, I could give you $20 to go stand in line for me and buy a ticket in this area. And so there is some service to that, but it's not a service if the consumer is not made well aware. We also find straight bans like that to be more difficult to enforce than requiring clear and conspicuous disclosures.

The language that's in the Bill, just to be clear, is current law. Okay, so we're not changing the law that exists right now. There is law on speculative sales. We're not changing that.

Well, my point is, I mean, if we're concerned about protecting consumers, that seems to be an issue. Because what I see know if I'm going to pay you to buy me a, I won't say Taylor Swift. I'll say, and you could charge whatever you want. And I'm thinking that you have the ticket or you're going to get me the ticket. I mean, it drives up the market price because you're selling tickets that don't.

Exist or you don't have sometimes. I mean, there's risk to it. Sometimes you'll lose your money. It's not always a guarantee, like they said, maybe for Taylor Swift, but the majority of shows that are out there are not in that level. So there are times when you can buy tickets on a secondary market for less money than they would have been at face value. That's just a fact. Okay.

Would the industry support banning speculative ticket sales?

Yes.

Okay.

It's a good Bill idea for you.

What percentage of tickets are non transferable that you sell? Do you know?

Let's be clear. I think Mr. Govenar is representing the sports industry, which is going to be very different than some of them, than entertainment.

Is it a big number or a small number?

Generally it largely depends on the artist.

Okay.

So the artist controls whether they're transferred.

The artist who is owned mostly by Ticketmaster, Live nation or AEG access. Most of these artists that create this are owned or managed by various talent companies that are within the same vertical monopoly.

And also, sometimes you can transfer the ticket or resell it, but only through Ticketmaster. So it's not that they're necessarily against the ability to do it. They don't want other groups doing it. They don't want you doing it yourself.

I think that goes back to your comment about trusting that the platform where the ticket transfer is made is legitimate. When our artists do face value ticket exchanges, yes. There needs to be a place for it to be done. That's controlled, but it's been done very successfully.

Okay, question.

As a Member, we allow you to transfer the ticket. Again, you can resell the ticket on any platform. You can sell a ticket on Craigslist, but when you want to enter our private venue and facility, we require you to upload it on one of our trusted apps at no cost, no marketing whatsoever. So we have some idea and semblance of who's using our ticket and who's coming into our stadium. And based on this conversation, this is further evidence that this isn't a sports issue.

And look, we're willing to have that conversation. I do want to point out that not everybody owns a smartphone still, so I just want to make that clear. But we're willing to have this conversation as we've been having conversations, very fruitful conversations. And this is not necessarily the meat of this, but we also want to make sure that if someone really wants to use a paper ticket, I'll give you an example. There are venues.

You can't bring a cell phone in because they don't want you filming the artist, and yet you have to bring the phone. You have to bring the phone to show the ticket. They won't let you use a paper ticket. So then you have to check your phone, which a lot of people aren't comfortable doing at a private venue. So I think there's more to this story.

Yeah, I think that you guys can work that out. That doesn't seem to be that big of a deal. And so our last question here is, since we're protecting consumers, would you support a provision that prevents the resellers from selling the tickets above face value? Since you said the resell drives prices down or benefits consumers? So should we cap what they can resell the tickets at so they don't get to make unlimited profits and profit off the high demand for Taylor Swift or whoever?

So a core principle of the ticket buyer Bill of rights is the right to set the price. That's a prohibition on all price controls. We don't see price controls in any way helping consumers. And if a consumer can sell a ticket to a rivalry game, if fan can control, enforce, or help afford their season tickets, they can go to all the other games. We don't see that as a significant.

You don't see putting a cap on how much you can resell a ticket for as helping consumers.

That's one of those options where you have free market and fair market principles that let supply and demand.

Free market for me, but not for thee. Okay.

Wait, let me just say, if I buy a product at the store, if I go and I buy a car, it may very well be that my car is going to decrease in value over time. That's the case. But occasionally cars go up in value. This would be akin to the car manufacturer saying that when you buy that car, you can only sell it to them for a pre prescribed price, that if it goes up in value, they get to capture that value. We're talking.

So you have to look, why would this be different than any other product that you buy? So I think that it's a little more complicated than that.

And I think that the example of a season ticket holder who's going to pay for going to all those games, knowing that, that, what do you call it, a final, I don't know, whatever the last game is, playoffs, that's like the big game that maybe you'll sell that for a little bit extra money because you want to go to the rest, but you're not going to the finals.

I thank you. I appreciate the vigorous debate. I love it. But I'll just say that I do think it's different because a car is a property and you own it. Here we're talking about a license, a license to a venue, a license to listen to a music or to watch a game. You don't own that. And a ticket does not give you ownership. You don't own the team. You own a license to go into the facility to watch it.

I'd say for that 2 hours I own that seat.

Okay. I do want to just move us along here. Thank you. And I know that assuming Assembly Bauer Cahan and Assembly Member Wilson have some thoughts and questions to share. So let's go. Bauer-Kahan, Papan Wilson.

Okay. First of all, as a sports fan, I never knew there was someone who represented me. So thank you. But I'm struggling here because as the for now Oakland A's do on occasion.

I wasn't aware that they sold tickets.

You know what? Wow. Privilege of the chair, I guess. But dig them all you want, right now, they don't sell a lot of tickets. Right.

So prices go down significantly. They sell tickets for, you know, as it gets closer and all those seats are sitting empty, you get dollar dog night and a $10 ticket and you can go have a whole evening for $15. Right. And I think that benefits consumers. Right. That ability. So I really appreciate you addressing that piece because I think that came out right. The dynamic pricing is now available.

But what I'm struggling with here is that the Bill appears to be really focused on what happens to a ticket buyer at the initial purchase point, right. When I'm buying from the team or the artist in that first instance. But I have to say, as someone who buys tickets, you have a lot of support from the secondary market where consumers get screwed all the time. Those prices are very high. Right. And they're not all people like me who bought a ticket and are transferring.

Let's be real about that, right. I would guess, I don't know if we know the percentage of that, but my guess would be when I go on Stubhub and they're trying to charge me for x, the face value, most of those tickets are not individuals who bought the ticket and are reselling them. It is bots. It is people trying to make money off of this.

And it is a little bit confusing to me why we have a Bill here that feels very heavily weighted towards benefiting that market at the expense of the initial market. And what I think, I hope the author can get to, and I'll be supporting the Bill today because I think she's really getting at something, as the mom who is still in trouble for not having Taylor swift tickets, that there needs to be a transparent and fair marketplace.

But I think that needs to be true at the initial point of purchase and in the secondary market. And I don't think we can have a piece of legislation that so heavily benefits the secondary market at the expense of the initial point of purchase. And I think that the support today really showed us that. I think that's where we may be on this Bill right now.

Well, if you also look for the Bill, it's the consumer Federation of California, it's Cal perk, it's the consumer Federation of America. The consumer groups are behind this Bill. So while you're right that a lot of consumers may feel ripped off by some tickets on secondary marketplaces, in General, the consumer groups here endorse this Bill.

And I understand that. And like I said, I appreciated you representing me as a sports fan, so fully appreciate that. But I do think it's really important that we make sure that we're protecting consumers at every point of purchase.

And to be clear, the bots are illegal and there are technologies that can help deal with that. And that's why we're talking about reporting and what the industry is actually doing about that, because there could be a lot more that's done to enforce just current law. And it's also a conversation that we've been having. So the speculative buying part of this is difficult.

And a lot of what the industry says, it's not that it's wrong, but I think if you ask your average consumer, you're buying a ticket a year and a half out. Here's all this reason for one type of policy. But would you rather be able to sell that ticket or transfer that ticket in way that you choose should you not be able to use it? I think most people would say yes.

And by the way, I bought a theater ticket, just a regular theater ticket that I couldn't use and found out that it wasn't transferable at all. So this is something that comes up, and I'll tell you how much it comes up. When I was walking to this hearing, I had two staffers, different staffers, stop me and say, I really hope you get that through because I've been ripped off when I've been buying tickets. We did another Bill in this space, like a year ago.

We had an intern screenshotting a certain seller's website of all the complaints they were getting from people, consumers who had bought from them, who felt ripped off, a big, let's say a very big company. And we were screenshotting them because by the end of the day, they would delete them. This is an area that we're hearing talked about at the national level, the amount of junk fees that are in this. And they use behavior modification people, behavior scientists to design these platforms.

They know if they showed you a $600 ticket, you're not buying it. But they know if they say it's 250 and you spend an hour trying to purchase it, by the time it's up to 600, you're invested and you'll then pay. That's why they designed their websites this way. And that's what this Bill stops.

Yeah. And I think that transparency is really key, and I appreciate that. And like I said, I'll be supporting it today because I think it's important. But I also want to highlight, and this is not something the state can do, but we have real antitrust issues here, and that's part of what we're struggling with. And I think we should continue to urge the Federal Government to get their stuff together to actually ensure we have a free and fair marketplace.

Because what we're dealing with here is we don't have a free and fair marketplace. Right. Which is why you're trying to put in controls to make it fair. But at the end of the day, I think that it should treat all sellers no matter the point of purchase. But I do think one should be able to transfer their ticket. And I bet technology is smart enough to ensure that they're not doing it at the hundreds of tickets level.

Thank you very much. Assembly Member Papan.

So I just want to pick up on what the author was saying because I'm married to someone who buys a whole lot of tickets and doesn't end up going to smaller venues and smaller artists. And it is very frustrating to not be able to sell. So I agree there's an upside and God bless the secondary market. I'm sure they're making a ton of money when they can do it.

But when we're talking about consumers, consumers get burned a lot in trying to sell these tickets to the original sale price and fairly compensating folks for those original sale price. I'm quite certain that there are factors that go into setting the original sale price so you might get burned because the ticket can get more expensive later on down the line. There are also lesser known artists that thank goodness they've been able to sell at x price.

And there are people like my husband trying to get $15 because he couldn't make it to the marine in the Sweetwater. You know what I mean? So if there's an up and a down and as a consumer, I'd like the opportunity to be able to resell with greater ease. So I know that comes with a price perhaps, and a favoritism maybe to the secondary, but I'm a, it's as most people are here. Did you want to say something? I don't have a question.

I appreciate that. Thank you, Assembly Member. I'm going to move us along to Assembly Member Wilson.

Thank you. Just to follow up on two things to make sure I'm clear that for the consumer benefit, you believe that the ability to end the restrictions on transfers of all tickets, no matter what type, that's a solely beneficial item to the consumer. Right? Is that what part of the purpose of the Bill is that? The restrictions for transferring tickets is entirely removed.

I'm sorry, I don't think I understand the question.

So as part of consumer protections, you're saying it's to the sole benefit of the consumer that you can now transfer tickets? Because there was talk earlier in the conversation. And the Bill, I believe, lays out that there's currently a restrict a venue or artist or whomever can restrict the transfer of their tickets. And you're saying it is to the complete benefit that every single venue, artist theater allows for tickets to be transferred and either given or sold on a secondary market.

We believe that when you purchase a ticket, you should be able to sell it or transfer it, that you should have that right, just like with the ticket buyer's Bill of right, that it shouldn't be up to a venue to say, like, hey, even though you paid for that, if you can't make it, you're just tough luck, as some venues do. Or that if I can't go and Jackie wants to go, that she says, hey, I'll give you the $100, I'll go.

We think that you should have that right, that it shouldn't be up to the venue to say, no. If you were the person who bought it, it has to be you.

Okay.

We don't think that's fair because a lot of things happen. People can't use those tickets. They shouldn't just be out of money.

Okay. And so when I fly an airplane, though, right, I'm the only person that can use that. And there is provisions for some types of refunds, but most of the time, I can't transfer that ticket to someone. If I decide not to go, I'm out that money. How is that market different than, would you say, the renting or owning of the seat for 2 hours?

I would say, first of all, that looking at the airline industry gives us the reason why we need better protections. I mean, there's an industry where they have tons of now fees that frustrate consumers. It's impossible, like you said, sometimes, to use that ticket, and people are out thousands of dollars at the end of the day. And I personally would hold them up as a poster child as to why we need better protections for our consumers in California in this particular area.

And then last but not least, in regard to the printed tickets, I think there was a provision that talked about disclosing prices and stuff that you're accepting the amendments on and no longer relevant. But in terms of the printed tickets having to be at the same price and the same fees, my apologies, I missed your intro into the Bill. And so did you address why you thought that was important?

That having printed tickets being the same price as digital tickets and things of that nature in comparison, it's a different cost factor to do those two things.

For us, it's actually a bit of an equity issue. It's true that not everybody owns smartphones and can show a ticket, so we certainly can work with the industry. We understand that they want to make sure that they're using their app to get into the venue. But what if you just don't have a phone or there are concerts, for instance, where you're not allowed to bring your phone. And the idea that you have to bring your phone, show the ticket on your phone and then hand them your phone.

Let me clarify, not the have to have a printed. I believe, and correct me if I'm wrong in the Bill, is that you're saying that one you have to provide tickets, a paper ticket, if somebody requests them, but it also has to be the same price. We don't think you should.

If you don't have a phone, I don't think you should be penalized and have to pay more for a printed ticket. But you wouldn't agree that the cost now for a printed ticket, getting that to you, mailing it is more labor intensive than a digital ticket, that that cost is different.

Now we're certainly open to saying if they have to FedEx to you or something, that you cover that. But I'm not sure that it's necessarily connected to any real world.

Same price and same fees. So I was just taking exception with the same fees part the same price of the ticket. Of course, I believe if the ticket is $10, the ticket is $10. But it seemed like your fee might be different. The total cost you might pay for that ticket would be different on a printed ticket nowadays. Not in comparison to before. But I'm telling you now, when you have a reduction in staffing because of the whole point of.

Not the whole point, but one part of technology is it does reduce your administrative burden. However, using a printed paper is old technology, which old technology costs more in comparison to new technology.

These are real venues that have ticket offices. I don't think any of these theaters or any of these or very many of these venues don't have some physical presence where maybe to get it, you have to actually go there. I'd want to see what it's actually really costing them to print a ticket. It's hard to imagine that if they're charging $1020 that they're actually paying, that they're probably making money off of it.

So the language in the Bill that says same fees, you're open to changing that language in regard to whether it's actual cost or something to that effect. Because you're saying, I'd like to see if this is real, because every venue has a physical place, and maybe you have to go there, which could be an equity issue in terms of transportation. If I go there right before the venue, maybe.

But if it's on the other side of town, I mean, there's all these issues and I have a hard time with equity issues when it comes to doing something that is purely optional. Right. And not a requirement. I do believe that people have to have a high quality of life, and part of having a high quality of life is be able to take advantage of recreation things. But still it is an option, and not everybody has.

We can't say that if you're Low income or in a disadvantaged part, that you should have the same right to go to, let's say we're in Northern California, so 49 ers, as someone who can afford to buy that ticket. So I think the equity argument, I don't want to cheapen the equity argument when talking about optional recreational activities in comparison to things that are a necessity of life, so to speak. No other questions. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Are there any Assembly Member Bennett, round two very quickly.

I'll follow up. These aren't questions. I just want to try to frame what I see. As the Assembly Member pointed out, there was an issue of two sides of it. Are you empowering the secondary market versus the. There's no question if you increase transferability, you increase the potential for scalping by increasing transferability. And almost everybody, there's bipartisan support in this country to end industrial scalping, and that's why we have all the legislation against bots and all of that out there.

But if you have to ask yourself a question, and that is, is the solution to ending industrial scalping, increasing the market power of the original sellers who are going through mostly just people that have a huge control over the market. And I think that if I have to rank things, I would say my first goal is to say people should have the right to not be stuck with a ticket that they can't then transfer.

It shouldn't be up to the big market power on this side to say if Assembly Member Irwin buys a ticket that she can't sell it to Assembly Member Friedman. Just a private, private. We all want to get rid of the industrial bot side of it. So the criticism that I'm hearing one Assembly Member saying, hey, you haven't solved the problem of somebody being able to sell the ticket for a higher price. I'm saying if you have a solution to that, come up with it.

But nobody seemed to be able to come up with a solution except what we've done with bots. We have come up with that for bots, but that's not being enforced at this point in time for a variety of reasons. But this Bill shouldn't be opposed because it can't solve something that nobody's been able to solve yet.

And I would be really surprised if the Members of the other aisle, the other side, would be saying we want price controls on anything, particularly the price of selling the tickets. That would be very interesting. But if that's not a good reason to oppose this Bill, and that's what I would like to end with, this is addressing one part of the problem, and we still have other problems that we have to go with. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Assembly Bennett, did you, well, just when we're closing. Okay, wonderful. Thank you. All right. Well, thank you, Committee Members, for the very robust conversation, the insightful questions. Appreciate it. I want to thank the authors also for bringing forward this Bill. I think there's some really important common sense consumer protections in here to make this a more fair and transparent market.

I do think, as you've heard today, there are some fundamental law and economics issues at play here that might merit a little bit more consideration. You heard those from Assembly Member Barrickhan, Assembly Member Bennett. So additional thought in that, I think we also heard from you willingness to continue to have conversations with the opposition about some of these issues, which I think would be appropriate. But I know, Assemblymember, you are a champion for the entertainment industry.

I know those are concerns near and dear to your heart. And you've also been such an important leader in privacy and consumer protection. So I feel very confident with the two of you of authors that there will be opportunities for continued conversation. And these are really important consumer protections, and we have heard about them at the national level, including in the State of the Union Address. So these are things that are getting national attention.

I think it's important that California really catch up to other states that have enacted some of these protections. So look forward to continued conversations. But I'm happy to support the Bill today to continue those conversations to move it forward. Appreciate you both doing it, bringing it forward. So I have an eye recommendation and also would allow you to invite you to close.

Yeah, I will go ahead and close because unfortunately for Assemblymember Friedman, she was here for the majority of the hearing, and I just left you with all the opposition. But I have to say on this Bill, we're trying to thread the needle, and nobody can say that we haven't had robust conversations on trying to figure out these issues for us. One of the number one things is making sure there's transparency for consumers.

But there are a lot of other additional issues that have to be addressed, and we will continue to work with the opposition to get there. And I think Assemblymember Bennett really stated it well. We can't be criticizing a Bill because we can't fix every problem. We are open to any input from this Committee or from the Committee that we presented to this morning.

And I appreciate working with Assembly Member Friedman, because I know that we're going to get to a pragmatic solution that will really benefit all consumers, and we will make sure that it's fair for all the stakeholders, too.

And I have great confidence that you'll do that. And you have an impressive bipartisan list of co authors, including Members of this Committee. So that gives me a lot of confidence as well. So with that, Madam Secretary, please call.

[Roll Call]

71. Your Bill is out. We will leave the roll open for additional Members to add on. You want to go for your second Bill?

Yes, definitely. Thank you. And thank you all for the robust discussion on the last bill. I want to thank Committee staff for working with my office. I'll be accepting the Committee amendments as outlined in the analysis. Members, every year, tens of thousands of Americans die on the roads. In 2021, more than 4,200 Californians lost their life to traffic violence, over 1,000 of which were pedestrians. According to the NTSB, speeding is a factor in 31% of all traffic fatalities.

If we want to tackle traffic fatalities, we must slow down the cars. Speed cameras, which have been around since the 1980s, have been proven effective at slowing drivers down, reducing collisions, and reducing fatalities. New York City saw a 76% reduction in speeding in 2022. Since 2014, 46% of those who received a violation never received a second one, and 19% never received a third. Injuries in camera zones are down 35%.

The effectiveness of speed cameras around the world is by the National Transportation Safety Board, the Centers for Disease Control, and now the United States Department of Transportation, and the US Congress are all advocating their use to save lives. Now, this bill was designed with equity and privacy in mind. It was designed to avoid the unpopular red light camera program and all of the mistakes that that program made.

This bill requires local governments to work with racial equity, privacy protection, and economic justice groups in establishing their programs, including where the cameras will be placed. Cameras are limited to being placed in jurisdictions that have high injury streets only in school zones and areas that have had a high number of incidents for motor vehicle speed contests or sideshows.

Now, unlike a traditional speeding ticket, which carries a minimum fine of $238 and a point on your license and the potential for misdemeanor failure to appear in court, the fines in this bill start at just $50, and you have to be going at least 11 miles an hour over the speed limit. Those living under the poverty line must be offered either an 80% reduction in that fine or community service, as well as a payment plan capped at a maximum of $25 a month.

This would result in a $10 ticket for the $50 violation. And there's no points on your driver's license because in this bill, you're not seen by the camera, just the license plate. So it's like a parking ticket where the car gets the violation, not the driver. So families of four making less than $54,000 a year must be offered a 50% reduction in fines or a $25 ticket.

The bill prohibits the use of any facial recognition technology in the speed cameras, and unlike with automated license plate readers, the information captured can only be used to enforce speed limits. The bill requires any contract with a speed camera company to exclude a revenue sharing agreement per violation and requires all data collected from the cameras to be kept confidential and explicitly prohibits the companies from sharing, repurposing, or monetizing collected data.

The bill protects residents from cameras being placed in areas to generate revenue because it restricts the revenue that's generated from the cameras to be spent only on administering the program and building traffic calming measures. So this is not a cash cow for cities. They can't use it to backfill their general fund. They also can't use it to backfill existing traffic projects and then putting the money elsewhere. It prohibits all of that.

And not only that, but to show that this is not about generating revenue, the bill says that if you don't slow the traffic down, in other words, if you are not issuing less tickets within the first 18 months by 20%, you have to install a traffic feedback sign, a speed feedback sign, and you also have to start immediately planning construction and traffic calming measures to slow down the traffic or you can't use the cameras anymore. So this is not about punitively just generating revenue. We have done everything that we think that we can to make this an equitable bill.

And let's also not forget that there is an incentive these days to reduce interactions between law enforcement and drivers, and this bill does that. So that's another important thing to remember. I am very proud to have with me today as witnesses, Pastor Patricia Strong with Faith for Safe Streets, and Zane Barnes, the San Jose Chief Intergovernmental Relations Office. Thank you. By the way, I want to also add this bill passed out of Committee with bipartisan support.

Again, I'm Pastor Patricia Strong-Fargas from Los Angeles. My church is Mount Salem Baptist Church. I'm also co-chair of Faith for Safer Streets. I'm also part of Streets Are For Everyone. I'm also a VP of Baptist ministers conference.

and I also got the support of Los Angeles Tenth District PTSA, which is the PTA, supports this bill. I came today because we buried enough. We've counseled quite a bit and my members and others have sit at homes where there's a missing individual sitting in their bedrooms.

Enough is enough. We love our family, we love our individuals. We love our students, our elders. And every morning we wake up to a traffic collision, hit and run, street takeover, and most of it is because of speed. So I came to support this bill myself.

I came to support with others who say we support this bill. I look at the equity part in our black and brown communities, in our impoverished community, which I pastor. I think that we need enforcement over there.

We're not getting enforcement at all from any of our LAPD or our sheriffs. We're not getting any enforcement. I think this bill will help enforce, but most of all save lives. I asked and I want to thank you for allowing me to come and sit here and say enough is enough. Please help us save lives with this bill. Thank you.

Good afternoon, honorable chair and Committee Members. My name is Zane Barnes. I am the chief intergovernmental relations officer for the City of San Jose who is a proud co-sponsor of AB 645. In 2022, San Jose experienced its deadliest year on our streets, with 65 deaths, half of whom were pedestrians or bicyclists.

We know that speeding is a major contributor to this death toll and continue to work tirelessly to slow drivers down through traffic calming measures and quick build projects.

However, infrastructure changes are unfortunately not enough. Many of these projects can take between two to five years to implement, from design and outreach to project delivery, not to mention the requisite time to secure ample funding.

Meanwhile, adults and children who are walking, biking, or driving on our streets continue to perish due to excessive speeding. We need more immediate and proven tools to address this epidemic. As a capital of Silicon Valley, we appreciate the strong equity and privacy provisions that Assemblymember Friedman has just outlined.

For the past several years, we have deployed community benefiting technologies under a robust digital privacy program that has safeguarded the general public's data. I cannot emphasize enough that the speed safety systems are not intended to collect fees or revenue, but to change driver behavior so that we can keep both our streets and digital privacy concerns safe. A 2005 review of 14 studies of speed safety systems showed demonstrable decreases in injuries and fatalities.

I'm confident the City of San Jose will implement this life saving technology with the same vigor of protection, transparency and trust that is expected from our residents. Thank you for your time, and I request your aye vote on AB 645.

Thank you very much. We'll now open it to additional folks in the hearing room in support.

Good afternoon. Deputy chair Mark Booksovich.

On behalf of Streets For All, as a sponsor of the bill. On behalf of Walk San Francisco, which is also a sponsor of the bill in terms of supporters. On behalf of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, the Marin County Bicycle Coalition, Norwalk Unides California Bicycle Coalition, Move Santa Barbara County, Active San Gabriel Valley, Santa Monica Spoke, San Diego Bicycle Coalition, Street Racing Kills, the Conor Lynch foundation, Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition, Santa Monica Safe Streets Alliance, Faith for SAFE Streets, SoCal Cycling, Lyft, Bike LA, the Bahati foundation, SoCal Families for Safe Streets, Stop 4 Aidan, West Hollywood Bicycle Coalition, Livable Communities Initiative, Central City Neighborhood Partners, National Japanese American Historical Society, Association of Pedestrians and Bicycle Professionals, Streets for People, Central City Neighborhood Partners, Investing in Place, the League of American Bicyclists, the national Coalition for Safer Roads and Los Angeles walks in support. Thank you.

Thank you.

Mr. Chair and members. Alex Torres, on behalf of the Barrier Council and our transportation policy team, in support. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members. Kira Ross, on behalf of the City of Glendale, proud to sponsor the bill and very thankful for the efforts, the continued efforts of the author on this very important issue.

Good afternoon. Steve Wallach, on behalf of the Alameda Contra Costa Transit District, in support. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman and members Sylvia Felice Shaw here on behalf of the City of Los Angeles, we lost 312 lives to speed on our city streets. We need this tool desperately. I'd also like to testify in support on behalf of City and County of San Francisco Mayor London Breed, a co-sponsor of the measure and also in support on behalf of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency and the City of West Hollywood. Thank you.

Thank you very much. We will now go to opposition, and as a reminder, we have a motion and a second.

Hello. Becca Kramer Mauder. On behalf of ACLU California action in respectful opposition to AB 645, we applaud the author's goal of eliminating traffic fatalities caused by speeding. However, we have concerns with the way AB 645 tries to solve the problem, especially when other effective means of eliminating speed based traffic fatalities exist. That do not have AB 645's privacy and equity problems.

By encouraging the use of surveillance technologies for enforcement of speed limits, AB 645 subjects Californians to increased surveillance and perpetuates the false notion that this surveillance benefits the communities that are surveilled.

Surveillance can be both less effective and far more costly to local agencies and to the community at large than initially imagined, leaving communities saddled with long term bills for surveillance that does not make the community safer.

And while proposed as a pilot program, AB 645 would actually enable a massive rollout of this surveillance, resulting in more speed cameras than red light cameras operating in California. Surveillance can also be easily misused, leading to the erosion of community trust, costly lawsuits, and people discouraged from going about their daily lives and exercising their civil liberties.

The need for reducing speed related traffic collisions does not warrant the creation of a new mechanism for government collection of large amounts of data on Californians.

There are other effective means of reducing speeding violations that do not raise privacy and equity problems, including those highlighted in the bill itself, roundabouts, speed humps or speed tables, traffic circles, and other traffic calming measures.

Yet rather than center these, the bill instead relies on surveillance, automated enforcement and increased ticketing. We recognize that these traffic calming measures cost money. However, AB 645 also has costs. Instead of cities and counties paying the bill, though, AB 645 transfers the burden to vulnerable Californians.

With Chicago issuing a speed camera ticket an average of every 11 seconds. The dramatic increase in ticketing that AB 645 threatens would go against the recent reforms to California's ticketing laws to reduce the welldocumented economic harms caused by mass ticketing. Often, automated enforcement mechanisms disproportionately ticket drivers in communities of color and of lower socioeconomic status.

In Chicago, households in majority black and Latinx zip codes were ticketed two times the rate of predominantly white zip codes between 2015 and 2019 and three times the rate during the pandemic. When ending the City of Rochester's speed camera program, the mayor stated, quote, in this case, this was a program that disproportionately affected the poorest of city residents, end quote.

With black, brown and Asian people disproportionately represented within the high injury network, AB 645's enforcement based solutions will recreate these same problems currently facing disadvantaged communities across the country. On behalf of the foreseeably harmed communities, we respectfully request you pursue traffic calming solutions directly and ask for your vote against AB 645. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Additional witnesses in opposition in the hearing room. All right, bringing it back to the Committee. Ms. Wilson.

Thank you, chair. So I have significant issues with the bill. This is something that was tried. We tried it already, and it was problematic. And it definitely impacted black and brown communities and colors and people of color, especially those in disadvantaged or impoverished neighborhoods. So I'm really confused on why we're saying that we should be bringing this back and that we should be doing this.

In the bill it talks about well, we'll put it in places where there's high incident rates, where people are injured or are being killed because of speeding. And before we do that, we're going to use a community engagement process. Well, most of the communities that this will go in, which we saw previously when this was used not only in California but across the state, across this nation, is they were in impoverished communities, low income communities.

How are they to participate in a community engagement process when getting off work could be the deciding factor of whether they get to pay a bill or eat or do anything else?

Getting a ticket from an automated process is not real time information on you speeding, which data shows that speed feedbacks, where it displays immediately that you're breaking the law, that you're going above the speed limit, works as an immediate calming traffic tool versus getting information via mail way after you did the ticket, you might not even remember even going through the neighborhood or getting a speeding ticket.

So if we're trying to do a traffic comment measure, it seems like a feedback sign would be much better as well. As was noted in your bill, 18 months. It gets to be there for 18 months. And then if it hasn't come down, then you can do all these other aspects. That's where we should start. So if you have an issue in a community, you start with, and most police departments do this, they put the temporary signs out and that usually almost regularly.

I remember being a part of the league of California Cities and they talked about this, that putting out those mobile signs saw immediate reduction in traffic and speed of traffic in a neighborhood. So start there. Start with it takes, I think it was talking about 18 months for the time period. Yes, it was talking about 18 months.

When you have those 18 months, you can easily erect other type of traffic calming situations that you've noted here, like the roundabouts and not roundabouts, but the curb cutouts and the flashing lights and things of those natures. All those things can be done within 18 months.

And yes, they are pricey, costly, but the whole reason why there's not enforcement is typically because the police are overwhelmed with other things, so they're not sending people over spend those resources on the infrastructure.

I think that, like I said, this has been tried in California. It's problematic. It specifically targets black and brown people, black and brown neighborhoods, low income neighborhoods, and that's where these will go. And so with that, I can't support this.

And I'm just concerned that so many people are signing on to support this particular measure, this particular bill, when we know who will impact, and we'll be here two years from now talking about we got to ban these because black and brown people are impacted. Thank you.

Please.

Thank you. Thanks for bringing up the concerns. I'm really appreciative of being able to talk about the issues here incCommittee. First of all, automated speed cameras have never been allowed in California. So we've never allowed them here. We've never tried them. The bill, I very much appreciate the concern about the real time feedback.

And one of the requirements of the bill is that when you're entering a zone that's using a speed camera, you have to clearly warn the drivers because again, the idea is to slow the traffic down. And so the bill does have a warning requirement in the bill so that people know and you're given the chance to slow down. And we're hoping that they do and that they don't get a ticket.

If you're going to get a speeding ticket, you absolutely want to get one through this program because again, no points in the license, a really nominal fee. And in the first several months, it has to be a warning ticket under this Bill. So that you're telling the community this is here, if you're speeding, you better slow down because the next ticket you get you're going to have to pay for. So there's also a warning.

I didn't go through all of the kind of safeguards in here, but we've tried to address a lot of these concerns that have been brought up. And absolutely, I agree that cities should be investing in traffic. I've done quite a bit of work trying to do that, and many of our cities are trying as best they can to roll out traffic calming measures.

But in LA, you have hundreds and hundreds of miles of street, and the idea that they're going to be able to do traffic calming on every street, unfortunately, is impossible. And a lot of the speeding that we're seeing and deaths we're seeing are in residential neighborhoods as well, where this is frequently occurring.

And so what the cities are asking for is that while they're trying to do their vision zero programs, while they're making their investments, and sometimes it takes them years and years to be able to plan, do the SQL process they need, install traffic coming that they use this other tool, particularly in areas where they know that they have speeding. They want to reduce the interactions with police, they want that more gentle touch.

But they want to use a tool that in other cities across the country has been empirically shown to reduce injuries. But we have someone here from one of the very communities that you are concerned about. I'd like to have her address the concerns about the communities themselves and kind of what they want and what they need.

I'm in South Central LA. It took 10 years to get a pedestrian light and three deaths. I think this camera will help enforce and we need enforcement over there. You are absolutely right. We have so many incidents that our police have to go out to. And traffic injuries, deaths are low on their totem pole. Even arson is low on their totem pole in our area.

And I've talked to many residents of South Los Angeles that would love for us to have a camera to help save lives. Money. Power does not outcount lives. And we need to start thinking about lives more than money. So if a person runs a red light and all these things that AB 645 is putting out there and they don't consider lives, they're going to do it anyway.

But I know if we do this and we put it out in our community, it's going to save lives and it's going to slow the speed. Yes, black and brown will, but black and brown and Asians have to know we have enforcements on the streets also. I'm about saving lives. And I think everybody should consider people's lives now more than their pocketbooks.

It hurts when you go to a house just in Bernal Heights, guy ready to go play basketball for his career, going to get a haircut, hit and run by speeding bicyclists, motorcyclists. And now his leg is ripped off. His career that he dreamed about is gone.

And I want to say, enough is enough. Ask people in our community, enough is enough. We call police, police don't come. But we need some safety in our community to help us. And that's why we support AB 645. Because we want to love on each other in our community.

And thank you for your testimony, and I appreciate you and your heartfelt passion for your community and the community that you serve and the way that you serve it. However, I still am concerned about the increased law enforcement activity in a community that is typically over policed and surveilling them is policing them as well. Just because it's not a physical person having a camera there. And sometimes we want to introduce that in our lives because we think it'll save a life.

And then once it's involved and engaged and impact and involved in our communities, we find that it works against us as well. And so I just want us to keep that in mind. It's not about pocketbooks over lives. It's about the fact of bringing more police activity in a community that's already over police. But I do appreciate your testimony.

Tippet on that, Ms. Wisdom. Assembly Wilson. These. What's in AB 645 does not require policing. It's actually taking it out.

Surveillance is policing. Just as an FYI, those are the same things. Those are the same things.

Speed limit is an enforcement.

Speed limit is not an enforcement. Having a speed limit is a law basically saying you can or cannot do that. It's the enforcement part. And the fact that we're using additional surveillance in a community that's already over policed and the impact that it has on black and brown lives. And I think there are other ways. I just don't believe I have a fundamental disagreement on this is the way to deal with that issue.

But one life being lost because of someone careless and recklessness by not following the law is absolutely abhorville. We don't want it. I said the wrong word. The word wrong, but we don't want it. And I agree with you on that. And I care about your community and the communities that I represent that look like me. But at the same time, there are other ways to do things.

And I think for me, I have a fundamental disagreement in terms of this is the way to solve that issue.

Okay, thank you.

Other Members of the Committee wishing to questions. Vice Chair.

Thank you very much. Mark April 25, 2023 is the first time as I've been a legislator being on the same page as the ACLU on a piece of legislation. So we made some progress there. But this is quite a large pilot project. The cities represented here represent 16% of the state's population nation and 6.4 million people in the state.

And I think if it concerns me greatly in general to think about cameras enforcing traffic laws. I mean, as a member of a City Council myself, we dealt a lot, unfortunately, with deaths on our roads, even in a suburban environment. And we took those very seriously and tried to put in traffic calming measures. And I remember one situation where we put up basically a barrier in between both lanes, and it didn't stop people from speeding.

Probably 90% of the people here sitting here sped on their way to get here. And it's unfortunate reality that it's human behavior. And to think that we're going to put up cameras and it's going to change it, and then we're going to store that information and issue tickets automatically to people really concerned me. But I just want to put this food for thought of something that potentially I could get behind in the future.

If this was giving permission to a city to put forward a process that was a public process and required it to go to a City Council and then them vote on it and say, hey, we're going to put a camera on intersection XYZ and demonstrably mandate that that happened, though, I think that that's something that it's not just a public process that I'm talking about, that we incorporate people into it. I think it's got to be an affirmative thing coming from the city.

But in regards to that. Sorry, I'm just trying to see what you guys are talking about, too. But the general thought of a city, 6.4 million people in a pilot project is just too big. We've tried this with red light cameras, and it's a monster surveillance opportunity, and it does actually concern me to that. But I'm open to your closing comments and the discussion you've had back there, and we'll consider at that time.

Can I just clarify that the bill actually does require a positive vote from the City Council for the cameras after a public process. I just want to clarify that.

On every light that they put up. Or is it just the city has to adopt a program?

Yeah, because the community groups have to work with the city to decide where they go. So there's a process that's outlined, and then they would vote for the program.

The program.

Right. Where the lights would go. They would vote for the program. They would come to them with, we're going to do lights in these seven locations, and then they would be voting on it.

All right.

We can look at the details. We're happy to take a look at that for you.

All right, thanks.

Other Members of the Committee, questions, comments? All right, well, we have a motion from Assemblymember Wicks, a second from Assemblymember Bennett. I just want to confirm. Assembly, can you be accepting the Committee amendments today?

Yes.

Okay, wonderful. I want to thank you, first of all for your passion and transportation. It's been very evident to me in many of the car rides we've shared together from the airport how much you care about this.

And certainly we want to defer to the expertise of your committee and you on the transportation policy here, for purposes of this committee, focus very much on the privacy issues. And I want to thank you for accepting the amendments.

I think we've done some work there to further those privacy protections and enhance them. And I want to thank you for the thoughtful way in which you've thought about equity issues, privacy issues, trying to put this all together, it's very complicated.

We think that that would help to give the confidence that this is not setting up some kind of surveillance that can be used for anything because the data won't exist.

And as you've heard, there are strong opinions about this. But I know that you're trying to strike that balance, and this is a complicated one, as the pastor said. Right.

We're balancing between real privacy concerns, real equity concerns, and also with saving lives. And I know in the communities that we represent in the San Fernando Valley, there have been a number of very, very tragic incidents where young people have lost their lives. Communities are asking us to do more to protect young people, to save lives, to keep people safe.

And I think that the work that we've done, and actually, with the amendments here today, I'm feeling more comfortable with this bill, and I think you're on the right path. So with that, have an aye recommendation and would invite you to close.

Sure. I know that this is not an easy bill, and I certainly appreciate all of the issues around its surveillance, the concern about increasing surveillance. In our mind, having a system where within five days, all of the records have to be purged, and then 30 days after a violation, five days if there's no violation.

We actually see this as reducing enforcement in a lot of ways because it is reducing interactions with law enforcement and also vastly reducing the amount of money that a speeding violation, what costs an individual. And so let's not forget that at the same time, people are dying out there.

Just today, a mother who was in a crosswalk with a six year old in front of an elementary school in the middle of Los Angeles was run over. The mother was killed.

The child is now in critical condition. May not make it. That vehicle was speeding, and it wasn't a vehicle speeding, despite what the way the news reported, it was a human being who was driving with a reckless disregard for human life. Maybe if that same individual had gotten a ticket from one of these cameras a week ago, they wouldn't be speeding.

Maybe if they saw the sign that said, you're coming into a speed enforcement zone because there's a school here, maybe they would have fought if they didn't care about the life they were about to take, maybe they cared about their pocketbook enough to not want to get that $50 fine. Our cities are asking us for more tools, and this gives them the tools so that we can pilot this and collect data for the first time here in California.

New York City saw a 76% reduction in speeding in 2022 because of their camera program. So we have seen the data coming from across the country in well run speed enforcement programs. And, yeah, there are trade offs here, but I have a nine year old, and I worry about her every single day.

I want my city, my City of Glendale, who has opted into this, to be able to pilot this so that maybe I'll have a little bit more confidence that people in my neighborhood know that they can't just speed around with absolutely no repercussions. With that, I would request an aye vote.

Thank you very much. As was mentioned, we have a motion from Assemblymember Wicks? A second from Assemblymember Bennett. Madam Secretary, please call the roll.

Item number 5, AB 645 by Assemblymember Friedman. The motion is do pass, as amended, to the Appropriations Committee.

[Roll Call]

Six to one that bill is out. We will leave the roll open for absent members. Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, with that, I think we are going to invite Assemblymember Jackson welcome to the Privacy Committee. This is file item 7, AB 994.

Mr. Chair, Members of the Committee, I am pleased to present AB 994, which is a priority of the legislative LGBTQ caucus. AB 994 builds on the work of last year's AB 1475 and will bring all California's even more equity, fairness and privacy. I first need to thank the hard work of the Chair and the Committee staff. The dedication of this Committee on this issue is clear, so I am pleased to accept the Committee's amendments and appreciate the hard work done on this bill.

AB 994 will require that sheriff and police departments do not post booking photos or mug shots of individuals when arrested on suspicion of committing a nonviolent crime unless the individual is deemed an imminent risk to others or the public, or if a judge orders the release of the individual's image based on an articulated law enforcement interest, or there is an exigent circumstance that necessitates the dissemination of the individual's image due to an urgent and legitimate law enforcement interest.

Importantly, in the event that a booking photo is used, AB 994 will now require the police department or sheriff's office to use the name and pronouns provided by the individual arrested. Additionally, a police department or sheriff's office may include other legal names or known aliases of an individual, if using the names or aliases will assist in locating or apprehending the individual to reduce or eliminate an imminent threat to an individual or to public safety.

And lastly, AB 994 will now require that booking photos be taken down from social media after 14 days after being initially posted. Protecting privacy and avoiding the archaic practice of being dead named is long overdue. Being used by using a known alias to identify a person is a sufficient substitute for properly identifying individuals. California should be leading the way on this issue, not falling behind.

In fact, the State of Illinois recently passed a bill preventing law enforcement agencies from publishing booking photos on social networking sites, and this February, the Utah State Senate voted unanimously to prohibit police from publicly releasing mug shots at all until a person has been actually convicted of a crime, not just being suspected of one. AB 994 provides further confidence to all people that California cares about everyone, regardless of who they are or how they identify and provide safety and justice for the public.

I wish we didn't have to bring this bill before you, but unfortunately, law enforcement has an extensive history of dead naming and misgendering transgender, nonconforming, and intersex individuals on multiple social media platforms, which, when posted, are there forever and for all to see. Not only do these postings cause strain on existing relationships with family and friends, but it can also endanger an individual's life.

Especially with the exponential increase in anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-trans rhetoric, it is hard not to stress this point enough with me today. I have with me Rosio Leone Velasco-Stoll, who is the CEO, founder and President of the Fresno Spectrum center who is here to speak in support of AB 994.

Hello, members of the Privacy and Consumer Protection Committee. I am Rosio Velasco-Stoll, founder of an LGBT resource and community center in Fresno, California. I also sit on the advisory council, the transgender advisory panel to the Lieutenant Governor here for the State of California. I sit before you as a humble trans Latina. Before you is AB 994 that exists for a very good reason, to preserve our rights, to have and maintain our dignity and respect.

I'll share with you two incidents that make AB 994 so important. The Fresno County Sheriff's Department was in a high speed chase. The individual was a trans woman named Anastasia. When she was apprehended, the sheriff's department took it upon themselves to post her unflattering mug shot with messed up makeup and hair and posted her birth name and birth gender. The post was met with comments of transphobic hate, causing a divide in our community that his political climate has already escalated.

Some of us in the trans community mentioned that it was not right to dead name and misgender, as it only serves to dehumanize and villainize the transgender community. Their reply was, well tell those people not to do crimes and we won't have to do this. I have the screenshots. A naked man arrested was Fresno Police Department's report to Fox News. They misgendered and dead named someone I know personally, Lolita. She suffers from fear, anxiety and panic.

She admitted to me that day that she had forgotten to take her anxiety meds before going to pick up her partner from his work. She was photographed wearing a thin floral bathrobe with flip flops but was labeled naked. When Fresno PD tried to traffic stop her. She panicked and all she can think of was to lock herself in her car for safety. Fresno PD disregarded their policy in dealing with trans individuals.

I should know because I helped Mayor Dyer, who was Chief Dyer at the time, draft and establish their transgender interaction policies. Dead naming and misgendering is a simple case of disrespect, dehumanizing, and villainizing the transgender community. You add posting it to social media or submitting it to the news is sheer transphobic actions. We request the passing of AB 994 for our safety and peace of mind. Thank you for your consideration.

Thank you very much. Any other witnesses in the hearing room in support?

Yes. Hello. Good afternoon. Tracy Rosenberg from Oakland Privacy in support of the bill. We just read the amendments just now, but we are still in support of the bill. Thank you.

Becca Cramer Mowder on behalf of ACLU California Action in support.

All right, we now turn to witnesses in opposition.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Members. Cory Salzillo, on behalf of the California State Sheriff's Association and also the California Law Enforcement Association of Records Supervisors, respectfully in opposition. Reading the analysis, we haven't seen the amendments. We appreciate what we think the amendments do in terms of removing the language that expands the scope of alleged crimes to which the law applies. That's helpful. We remain concerned with the language that requires the removal of a booking photo without a request from that person.

That was negotiated as part of AB 1475, which was, as the author said, just recently adopted and really is just now taking effect. We understand the concern about using a person's former name, but it remains unclear how to deal with a situation that has nothing to do with a person's dead name or dead naming a person.

But when a person gives a totally false name that law enforcement would be required to use, there's nothing in the bill that really precludes a person from making up a false name. And the bill says you must use that name. It does not say an acknowledgment of a person's, the gender with which they identify at this time or anything like that. So we're unclear on how the amendments, if they affect us at all. The analysis suggest obtaining court order in such a situation.

That seems a very extreme burden to address something like this. That's when a person deliberately intends to deceive, again, not speaking of a dead naming situation, but when a person gives a name that is not their name. And we're happy to look at the amendments, but at this time, given what we understand the bill to do, we respectfully remain opposed.

Thank you. And now invite any other witnesses in opposition. Seeing none. We'll bring it back to the Committee. Any questions, comments from members of the Committee? Assembly Member Wilson?

I just had two follow up as it relates to opposition. The opposition talks about the concern of that after 14 days, it has to come down without the request of the- Usually, I guess they get a request to take it down. I don't know if that's the case. That was assumption from what I'm reading. But would you be precluded from reposting it if it was still relevant and needed? Does the bill do that?

Through the chair. The bill acknowledges that there are certain situations in which you wouldn't have to remove it if the person is still a fugitive or if there's an exigent circumstance or, I believe upon the order of a judicial officer. So that would be the situation. I don't know that the bill addresses. I don't think the statute or the bill contemplates the taking down and then reposting. I suspect if the person were, say, released on own recognizance or bail and they reoffended, that would trigger it.

But I don't know that the bill or the law speaks to either situation. Sorry.

Did you note during your testimony, and I'd read something similar, but didn't you note during your testimony that you take issue with the fact that after 14 days it's automatically taken down? Did you not note that in your testimony just now?

Yeah, that was our concern.

Okay. But if it's an ongoing investigation, the bill does allow you to extend beyond the 14 days?

As is existing law. Well, yes, I guess if there's an ongoing investigation or if there's an exigent circumstance or if there's a court order, but under the current law, the responsibility is on the person to say, please take my photo down. This switches that default, basically to say, we have to take it down after 14 days. Correct.

And you have opposition to that?

We do.

And I'm trying to understand why, when the bill allows you, if it's still relevant, because there's an ongoing investigation or exigent circumstances, that you get to keep it up.

That's a value judgment on why it's still relevant respectfully. You, or globally, may not think it's relevant to keep it up, but it may be relevant to keep it up. Whether it's the law enforcement agency is trying to find if there are potentially additional victims, it may not be an exigent circumstance.

It may not be that we've got a court order, it may not be that the person's a fugitive, but it may be that a person who has been arrested, again, not necessarily convicted, but who has been arrested, there may be additional victims, that having that information posted online may help bring additional victims forward. So that is not contemplated by the statute or the bill. That's one example.

So this is a situation where it's not ongoing, and so the bill does say that after 14 days it automatically goes down.

And if for whatever reason, on the 17th day they wanted to repost it, does your bill or current statute prevent that from happening?

Correct.

It does not prevent that from happening.

Okay. So if you found that it was a case, that it wasn't necessarily an ongoing investigation, but there was a need for having that information still out there, nothing precludes law enforcement from reposting.

Let me just say this again. Number one, you can post it if there is a law enforcement interest.

Okay.

It makes that clear. Or if there is an exigent circumstance that necessitates the dissemination of the individual's image

Beyond the 14 days.

Correct. At any time, if there is a stated law enforcement interest, then they can do what is necessary to be able to perform their law enforcement duties.

Okay. And just making sure. So really the opposition is just having to take it down automatically and the burden now being placed on you versus the individual. All right. And the second, and I didn't write my little note down. There was a second part to that. But if there's any other questions, I'll try to remember what the second part was. It was something opposition said that I wanted to.

We'll come back to you, Assemblymember. Assembly Member Irwin.

I just wanted to clarify, did you say that serious and violent crimes were taken out? This was for Mr. Jackson. You're removing that, right?

The amendment was that this is only in regards to nonviolent crimes. So if it is a violent crime, then, yes, it'll go according to existing law.

I just didn't hear that. You did take that amendment.

Oh, yes, I did.

Thank you.

We'll back to Assemblymember Wilson and then Assemblymember Bauer-Kahan.

So in regard to the-

I like this Committee.

We're going to be here all night.

So in regard, the opposition's concern is that if somebody, I think, used an example in one of the opposition letters or even an analysis that said, I go by Mickey Mouse. So now you have to put Mickey Mouse, which is very different than what transgender and non binary people do, just to say, right?

They're not picking nicknames, they're picking their actual names. The question is, and this is, I think, for the author, is within the bill, sometimes you have your birth certificate name, right, which if you're non binary or transgender, you've typically changed. Sometimes you don't go through the process to change your birth certificate and all that, and you have a legal name or a given name or what you would be also known as, I don't want to call it alias because that denotes another thing.

But typically when you're justice involved, you would be giving that name. Right, what your name is known as. It's typically you're not giving a nickname, you're giving your actual name. So when someone is doing, and this might be for opposition, too, when you're doing some type of arrest warrant or this, where is that information pulled from? So if I've never been justice involved, and where would they get my name from? I guess.

Number one, there's nothing that prohibits law enforcement for adding additional names for the purposes of identifying someone, right? So it could be, for instance, someone has changed their name, but it may not be legal in the process. They give the name that they would like to be called, but yet whatever is on their driver's license or any other legal documents, this does not prohibit law enforcement from using those two if it would be helpful in identifying that person.

Okay. And then the concern from opposition of having to use a nickname comes from where? Is it because people don't give you their real name, they give you nicknames? Is that what the law enforcement is saying?

Happens all the time. Through the chair, the concern, again, is not, as you said, it's not the person's new name or different name in terms of a situation where you don't give a dead name. That's not what I'm talking about here.

What I'm talking about is when a person knowingly gives a false name and not a name that I go by, that I use every day, that I've adopted that this is a situation where I walk in and I get booked and they ask me what my name is and I say Lori Wilson. I'm not Lori Wilson, right? It's known that I'm not Lori Wilson. It's with that notion of intent to deceive.

So in attempting to protect the situation in which a person gives their preferred name, that this is the name I go by, it may not match my birth certificate. I'm not talking about that as an intent to deceive it. What I'm talking about is a situation where a person gives a name knowing it's false. And if a person has had previous justice contact, the officer may know it's not their real name because they've dealt with them before.

The challenge is, as we understand the language that's in the bill in print and without clarity on what the amendments do, in attempt to protect a person to be able to use their preferred name, it also allows the person to give knowingly a false name, and we have to use that name.

Versus the add-on names, which I guess the amendment addresses, because I know I have friends who for a long time, I didn't know their real name, like, the name they were giving me, and they're not transgender or non-binary or part of any kind of TGI is, they have these names that they're just known by, and sometimes they're abbreviations. Sometimes they're completely not related. And so the best way to find them, if I was to identify.

If you told me that person was William, I'd be like, I don't know William, but I do know this other person by this name. And so I think that that is helpful. I think it has been addressed potentially, but those were just two parts of the opposition that I wanted to make sure I clearly understood, because we want to keep people safe, but at the same time.

But you have to recognize that some of the language that was used in the opposition letters, particularly from a group that you represent when you're using language like Mickey Mouse or something, trivializes members of the LGBT community, and particularly trans and non binary, who, it's not a nickname. Not a nickname. So I just wanted to make it clear on that. But thank you so much for answering those questions.

And through the chair, I don't think I used the name Mickey Mouse, and I don't intend to trivialize it. It was an example of not anything involving a transgender situation, but a blatantly false situation where a person provides that name. And again, without seeing the amendment language, it's unclear to us how you reconcile the differences in that situation where you have a person who's using their preferred name versus a situation in which a person is using a totally false name.

But I think to solve that problem, that's why we allow people, allow them to add additional names that will be helpful to identifying the person, to be able to find out whatever law enforcement needs to do so. It doesn't matter what name they may give. If they are still in need of additional. If they feel there's the need to add additional names that might be helpful, then they're free to do that. So I think we stroke the right balance on it.

Thank you. I knew she'd hit on my concern. She did it better than I would anyways. But I would just add, I mean, the language in the amendments, which I know you haven't seen, so full respect for not having an opinion on that, does say they shall use the name given by the individual, right? And I think there is a chance here to the point that Assemblymember Wilson made, someone who lives as a trans or non binary individual that lives by a different name, that is the name that they use day in, day out.

And so I think there is a way to strike that balance a little bit further with that language. Not just the name you give the law enforcement officer in that moment, right.

But maybe the name you live with or you present or just a little more specificity there that maybe would strike the balance between these two things, because I think it is different to acknowledge a name that somebody lives by that if I were to introduce myself to someone they would, in the grocery store, use versus some name that they're just going to pop out in the police department.

And I think there's two things happening here, and I actually think you can probably do both by being a little more precise than just the name the individual gives law enforcement. So I'll just suggest that, but happy to support it.

I think we've done a lot of work in this space to make sure that we are recognizing transgender Californians at every moment that they interface with the government, because it is a matter of life or death whether we acknowledge trans individuals with all the dignity that they deserve. So thank you for this bill. Happy to support you.

Thank you very much. Any additional questions or comments?

Just for clarification, can you distinguish between violent and nonviolent crimes that this would be applicable? To hear again, you mentioned it in one of your remarks, and I just wanted to- Is it just regarding the amendments or are they treated differently? Nonviolent crimes and violent crimes under your bill.

Yes, it is treated differently. So, meaning this bill now only refers to nonviolent, not being suspected of a nonviolent crime, as opposed to a violent crime.

Okay, just a comment on that. And something I think I've been talking about a lot are the limitations of various crimes that are considered nonviolent crimes in California, like rape of an unconscious individual is considered a nonviolent crime. And, you know, just thinking about that through, just something that came up, know, there are very serious crimes that are nonviolent, basically. And so I'm just wondering how this bill would not apply to those.

Well, if you're saying that the legal definition of a nonviolent crime does not fit the situation you're talking about, I'm more than happy to find a way to be able to address those.

All right, thank you for the comments.

Thank you. Any additional Members wishing to questions, comments? Okay with that, Assemblymember Jackson, I just want to thank you for bringing forward this bill for your leadership on these issues, for your leadership in standing up for the LGBTQ+ community, trans folks, nonbinary folks. These are, unfortunately, a community that a lot of people are using to play politics with. This is a community that's under attack.

There are real safety issues here, and I appreciate the care and thoughtfulness and sensitivity with which you've approached this issue and the work that you're doing to protect that community. And so with that, I am happy to recommend an aye vote. I would invite you to close, and then after that, I will entertain a motion and a second. A motion from Assemblymember Wilson. Second from Assemblymember Bauer-Kahan. Assemblymember, please.

I want to thank the Committee and the Chair for their helping to continue to strike a balance. Once again, this is not a gotcha bill. This is not a bill to make a political statement. This is real life stuff people are dealing with and have been affected by. And it is our goal to make sure that this is the most balanced bill possible.

And if anyone would like to continue to offer amendments or suggestions as we continue to go through this process, more than happy to have the discussion.

Thank you very much, Assemblymember. With that, I will invite our consultant to call the roll.

The motion is due pass as amended to the Appropriations Committee. I'll call the roll. [Roll call]

Your bill is out. We will leave it open for additional Members to add on. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

We will now turn to Assemblymember Petrie Norris. This is file item 13, AB 1027. We have a motion from Assembly Member Bauer Kahan, a second from Assembly Member Wilson.

Well, thank you for that, and thank you, Mr. Chair and Members. As this Committee well knows, there are a number of legislative proposals moving through the Assembly aiming to keep our kids and our communities more safe online. AB 1027 is a narrow measure and the result of conversations with law enforcement stakeholders and tech companies. AB 1027 simply will require that large social media platforms that operate in California disclose on their websites a description of policies regarding the retention of electronic communication information.

Currently, a social media platform operating here in California is already required to publicly post a policy statement that includes, among other things, their policy on the use of the platform to legally distribute a controlled substance and a link to their platform's reporting mechanism for illegal or harmful content or behavior by adding some additional details in terms of the information that is available for access and release to law enforcement, as well as critically, details around the amount of time that information is retained, we think that we can support law enforcement in investigations that are becoming all too common into fentanyl deaths related to online fentanyl sales.

So pleased to be joined today by Chris Didier, who is the Executive Director of Void, and by Dylan Hoffman, who's here with Technet to provide testimony.

Thank you Mr. Chair, Committee Members, my name is Chris Didier and this is my son, Zach. I'm a board Member of victims of illicit drugs, and I'm grateful to speak with you. Today. I'm testifying to share a personal story of an unimaginable tragedy that hit our family. Like a Mac truck coming out of nowhere going 100 miles an hour, I stand before you broken and destroyed. Two days after Christmas, I found my youngest child, Zach, appearing to be asleep in his bedroom but not breathing.

After a thorough investigation, we learned that Zach and a friend were sold fake prescription pills through Snapchat at our local mall, advertised as harmless Percocet. Despite having no history of drug use, Zach died from fentanyl poisoning at age 17. Many social media platforms give the appearance of a safe veneer of a trustworthy app that's entertaining. However, enhanced privacy features that make social media activity both ephemeral and protected. These features have helped build a patchwork drug cartel, making cell phones a superhighway for illicit drug activity.

The safe harbor of Section 230 C of the Communications Decency act disincentivizes the adoption of safety features, and current policies require statements that include only General information about terms and usage. This needs to change. I stand before you asking. Look closely and think about this. Car making companies would not invest in seatbelts or airbags unless the national highway Traffic and Safety Administration imposed crash test requirements.

Clearly, there is a needed inflection point with the wild west of social media that levies accountability of harmful content and include additional safety correction, additional policy statements that help law enforcement with invaluable information when investigating illicit drug transactions. I stand before you with thousands of other grieving families to help social media implement safeguards, and standing before me are Committee Members who are in position to make a difference. A person died seven minutes ago from illicit fentanyl in our nation. Please support AB 1027. Thank you for your consideration and for your aye vote.

Thank you Mr. Chair and Members. Dylan Hoffman on behalf of Technet, in light of the recent amendments that are proposed in the Committee analysis, Technet will be removing our opposition and joining the support for this Bill. As the author, the Committee analysis and as my co presenter have laid out. The crisis around fentanyl is dire. Our social media platforms know and recognize that we have a significant role to play in stemming the sale of drugs on our platform. We share the goal of the author.

We're trying to eliminate the activity of drug traffickers on our platform. Our platforms take aggressive action not only to identify, but to remove and block people that have dealt fentanyl or attempting to deal fentanyl or other controlled substances on our platform. However, we know there is much more work to be done and we greatly appreciate the author for convening stakeholders to discuss solutions that strike the appropriate balance between safety, security, privacy, and the online freedom of expression.

The compromise language for consideration today represents a meaningful step forward in turning platforms information regarding drug trafficking into arrests and successful prosecutions. Providing more information about the electronic communication information and how long platforms retain that information will provide greater clarity to law enforcement about what types of data they can file a preservation request or a warrant for, and how long they have to do so. This information can mean the difference between successfully building a case against a dealer or not.

We greatly appreciate the work of the author and this Committee to amend the Bill, and we look forward to having additional conversations about how we can provide a role in this, in solving this crisis. Thank you. Request your aye vote.

All right, thank you. Are there any other witnesses in support?

Adam Reckley on behalf of the California Chamber of Commerce want to align our comments with Technet and thank the author. We'll be removing our opposition. Thank you.

Becca Cramer Mowder. On behalf of ACLU California action in light of the amendments, we are also withdrawing our opposition.

Thank you. Are there any witnesses in opposition? All right. Will the author be accepting the Committee's amendments?

Yes. Thank you. And just want to thank Committee staff for your work on this Bill and so many of the other important measures moving through our body. We appreciate you.

Great, thank you. And Committee comments?

Yes, thank you, Mr. Vice Chair. Thank you for being here, and I'm sorry for your loss. It is every parent's worst nightmare and it's a serious crisis. So I also want to thank the author for her continued vigilance on the fentanyl crisis. People are dying, like you said, every day, and we aren't doing enough.

And I just sit in this Committee week after week, baffled that we continue to say that these social media companies are free of all liability for the deaths and harm that they cause. And I just appreciate your work on this, and I don't think it goes far enough. I'll be supporting it because something's better than nothing. But I just am so disappointed that the Federal Government continues to allow the wild west and the Internet when our kids are paying the ultimate price every single day.

I just was told by a friend about a friend of hers son who was 13, who walked in front of a train the other day after finding out he was bullied on social media. It's happening every day in our communities, whether it's fentanyl or bullying. And I sit on this Committee as a privacy advocate, fighting for privacy, and yet we have to find the happy medium between privacy and safety and security for our children.

And I think we've gone too far in protecting privacy at the expense of the lives of our children. And I think we need to do better. And so I thank you for trying, and I hope we'll go further.

Thank you. Thank you for those comments, Assembly Member. And I certainly could not agree more and appreciate the commitment and the work of so many folks on this Committee as we try to thread that needle and find a landing spot where we do step up to keep our kids safe online. Because, again, as a mom, as dads in this room, this scares the hell out of me. It scares the hell out of all of us.

And as you said, we need to do more and do better on many fronts. And so this is, I think, one small piece of the puzzle. And I will say I really do appreciate the engagement of industry and their commitment to working with us, to working with law enforcement, and to recognizing the need to be part of the solution and to confront what is a massive problem.

Thank you, Senator. Member Essayli.

Thank you. I also want to commend the author. I think your Bill is very important. Even as originally drafted as a prosecutor, I can tell you the evidence of the substance and the content of those communications is critical to holding the dealers accountable, because unfortunately, the witness, the main witness in the case, in this case, the victim, is deceased and unable to testify and identify the person that sold them the pill or whatever it was.

And so without those communications, the prosecutions to hold them accountable is very tough. Now, I understand the technical challenges social media has in preserving every single communication. However, I do think there is a middle ground. I know that social media, they are trying to be proactive. There is an ever evolving list of words and emojis that are used as code for selling fentanyl. And I know you guys, I'm speaking to you as the collective social media. I know you guys know how to look for them.

I know you know how to isolate those messages. And I do think it would be reasonable to have at least those messages identified by your platforms as potentially containing coded words. You guys can certainly preserve those. So I hope you guys keep talking and we find a middle ground here. And we don't need to preserve everyone's messages, but maybe the high risk messages for a reasonable period of time so law enforcement could get a search warrant and get those. So with that, I really appreciate your work on the Bill. Thank you.

Thank you, Assembly Member yes, thank you.

Thank you, Assembly Member.

I know you've had to go through iterations on this Bill. I was happy to support it in judiciary as I represented then. It is incredible that you can come here with any amount of composure, and as a mother, I am terrified. So I appreciate that you have stuck with this, Assemblymember Petrie Norris, and I'm happy to support the Bill. Thank you.

Great. Thank you. Any other comments? All right, I just want to make a comment. Chris Didier. Zach Didier lived in my neighborhood, and the only reason why I know what fentanyl is, is, unfortunately, because we lost Zach due to fentanyl when I was on the City Council in Rockland. And since that day, I've been pretty committed to making a change in this space. And I have four pieces of legislation on the topic, three of which have passed out of Committee.

And I really appreciate Chris and the advocacy that he's doing and the work that you're doing to try to address this. Know, I've seen a lot of issues, and they're different on the various platforms, and I don't know what the solution is.

In one case, actually, that I was talking with Chris about, there was an instance in which I'm trying to sort of conceal the platform, but where a person was pretty much openly selling drugs online, and I was informed of this, and I went and viewed it. This particular incident had been reported. The algorithms didn't find a violation and reported to human review, and it was still allowed to stay on the page.

So what I did is I went and I screenshot it was a video, took the video, paused it, screenshot the shipping label, because they were shipping it and was able to find the location of where they got it from and where they were mailing it from and where it was going to, because it was in the postal service. And I sent that to my friend at the FBI because somebody's got to be dealing with this.

And I think this entire Legislature wants to see swift action and aggressive action to get this stuff off every single platform in a very serious manner. And I've only been here five months, and I'm personally trying to, and I've met with pretty much all the companies. And I know it's very complicated. I know that drug dealers act quicker oftentimes than platforms and the programming and things, and I know it's complicated, and so I don't want to undermine that.

But my 10 year old son knows what fentanyl is because it's the only way I can protect him from this. And so I think this is a good step in the right direction. I appreciate working with the industry, but also, I think after only five months, my patience is also going to get to a point where we want to see more movement in this direction. I don't want any more kid. Nobody does. Nobody's interest for kids to be dying of fentanyl.

And every single child that I know in my community that has died from fentanyl, unfortunately, has received it online. Anyways, my tirade. But I like to commend the author, and I look forward to working with you in this area for many years to come, hopefully. So, thank you. If you have a closing statement, obviously.

Thank you for those comments. And I think in just, I also want to say thank you, Chris, for being here and you and the other parents who we are working with to tackle this crisis, you have taken the ultimate tragedy, and you are transforming that into advocacy to fight for our kids and to make sure that our kids are safe online. And as I said to you the other day, our commitment to you is that we will not let you down.

And we're grateful to have you fighting with us and advocating for this Bill and for many others in the Legislature. And we're committed to seeing this through. So with that, thank you for your comments, and I respectfully ask for your Aye vote thanks.

We have a motion in a second and think we're ready to roll.

[Roll Call]

All right. It's eight to zero, and the role will be left open. We'll keep it on call. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay.

All right. AB 10--I just do what I'm told here and--yeah. All right. Mr. Jones-Sawyer, AB 1016? All right, great. Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Chair and Members, I present AB 1016; would authorize the Department of Pesticide Regulation, DPR, to create a safe and robust training program from unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly known as drones, to be used for aerial pesticide application on California farms, vineyards and nurseries. Today, farms primarily use drones to capture crop, soil health, water usage and other farm data.

A drone can be used to apply pesticides, but only if the drone aerial applicator has trained in a journeyman apprentice structure to earn the requisite training before licensing. This training requirement with fixed wing pilots creates regulatory misalignment, which limits the ability to train for and become a licensed pesticide aerial applicator in the state to only federally licensed drone operators. As evidence of this misalignment, there are only nine licensed drone aerial applicators, journeymen, in the State of California, while there are hundreds of fixed air aerial applicators.

Unfortunately, this also precludes educational institutions interested in training aerial applicators like the University of California Agricultural and Natural Resources from being able to do so simply. This precision technology is not entering our agriculture industry because the training required by the state does not align with how technology makes it into the market, which is not through fixed wing pilots.

For that reason, AB 1016 authorizes Department of Pesticide Regulation to create a credentialing program to train FAA approved drone pilots to sit for the aerial applicator license and help integrate the technology into aerial applicator businesses in the safest manner possible. If drones were part of the pesticide applicators toolkit today, the state could enhance food and worker safety while promoting agriculture workforce development.

By encouraging the adoption of this technology, AB 1016 protects farm workers, encourages students to work in the agricultural industry and equips farmers with a tool that allows efficient and precise pesticide application, saving pesticide, water and aircraft fuel costs. Over the last few weeks, my office has made a good faith effort to address the California Agricultural Aircraft Association's concern regarding safe pesticide applications. My sponsors and I have consulted with the implementing agency, DPR, on the language you see in print today.

We believe this bill will only allow aerial applications with safe pesticide applications training to be conducted before the aerial applicator exam. With me to speak in support of this bill is Al Stehly, a small farmer from San Diego County.

Good afternoon. I'm honored to speak to you today. Yes, I'm Al Stehly, a third generation farmer from San Diego County, where I grow avocados, citrus and wine grapes, mostly organic. I have been a licensed agricultural pesticide applicator for over 35 years and in that time have seen many advances in application technology that have resulted in improved efficacy and worker safety.

The UAV, or drone spray application, is a relatively new technology in this country and many California farmers want the opportunity to utilize this safe and accurate technology. The obvious improvement to safety is the ability to remove the applicator from intimate contact with the pesticides and spray equipment. The drone allows the operator to apply materials very precisely while remaining on the edge of the treatment area.

The less obvious improvement to worker safety is that for my crew, a UAV would eliminate the use of mist blowers, a 60 pound piece of equipment that is carried on the back of the applicator. The applicator trudges through the vineyard trying to maintain a uniform walking speed and application rate while climbing up and down the hills, avoiding rocks and gopher holes.

With drone spray technology, we can not only remove the worker from the application area, we are removing a heavy, gas-driven sprayer and chemical-filled tank from their back. Finally, drone technology ensures uniformity of coverage. It flies and applies materials at the same speed, no matter what the terrain. For these reasons, I ordered and purchased a drone, a $20,000 investment, and we have secured two of the three FAA licenses needed to operate it.

I say we because three of my employees are joining me on this journey into this new technology. By far, the most difficult hurdle to clear is the apprentice and journeymen process currently required to obtain a license to use a drone for pesticide applications in California. I believe this bill gives the Department of Pesticide Regulation direction and flexibility to craft a clearer path for licensed applicators like me to get licensed to use a drone without compromising the safety of field workers or the public.

This bill is in no way saying that commercial drone applicators should not have to comply with safety and training. This bill puts the responsibility for crafting and administering this training where it belongs, with the Department of Pesticide Regulation. By opening training pathways through the university or community college system, it will be easier for people like me and my employees to obtain this license. Safety is not enhanced, as some have suggested, by limiting the size or scope of the UAV.

Safe applications are a product of training, testing and continuing education. California is second to none in promoting and regulating safe pesticide use, and this bill will ensure that that continues. A drone used to apply chemicals or spread beneficial insects is not a substitute or a replacement for conventional aerial applications. Drone technology will only be used where a helicopter or fixed wing application would not be efficient or cost effective.

If you wouldn't mind--sorry--wrapping it up when you get a chance. Thank you.

In conclusion, I respectfully ask you to vote to moving this bill forward so licensed, qualified applicators can service farms and ranches with this safe and effective technology.

Perfect. Well, thank you. Any other witnesses in support?

... in support.

Thank you. Any others? All right. Seeing none. Any opposition to this measure?

All right. We have three minutes each. Thank you.

Thank you. Again, I would like to thank the author and the sponsor of the bill and your staff. You've been really open to having an ongoing discussion and we definitely appreciate that. My name is Terry Gage. I'm with the California Agricultural Aircraft Association. My members--my members make applications from the Oregon border all the way down to the Mexican border. And they average at least 25 years of experience across the board. And we make applications on millions of acres of farmland every year.

So we really understand aerial application spray dynamics. Now, the author and the sponsor, they are right. This is a powerful tool and this is going to be a valuable tool to the agricultural industry. But when we implement new technology, we need to be thoughtful about it, and we need to implement it correctly. Again, great tool for spot applications, but part of what this bill is doing is taking away the current mentorship program that we have in the apprentice and journeyman program.

And there's a lot of knowledge that's transferred and shared. And I've spoken to at least three drone pilots that have gone through the apprentice and journeyman program, and they appreciated having that mentorship. They found it completely valuable. The other problem: then you're taking away the mentorship program from the journeyman process. You're doing it in a way that's an unlimited size drone. And we know these drones are going to get larger.

So I think at that point, it's a very significant safety issue, and we have to be cognizant of that. And that is why we've suggested making some modifications to the language, limiting the size, allowing for growers to make spot applications with those--the units are out there now, but we know the future is going to develop and we don't know what that means. And there's really a lot not known about this application platform and the spray parameters, the distribution of that. So with that, I'd like to introduce Rob Scherzinger. He is from Oxnard, California, and he's a past chairman of CAAA. Rob?

Thanks, Terry. As Terry said, my name is Rob Scherzinger. I'm an ag pilot and former chairman of the California Agricultural Aircraft Association. I've been a pilot for over 50 years, and I have over 25,000 hours of ag spraying time. My company is based in Oxnard. We spray mainly in Ventura, Los Angeles and Santa Barbara counties. We also do island restoration work on numerous islands throughout Mexico, Hawaii, Midway and the United States.

I've lived the evolution of the aerial application industry, which is now beginning to utilize drones for pesticide and fertilizers, and we endorse them. I see this as positive, so long as drone pilots are professionally trained in operating the aircraft and in the application practice. There really is no shortcut to this part. It's really important to learn what you're doing from people that have done it before. Public safety demands it, as do federal and state laws and regulations. I've trained future drone pilots.

I've trained current drone pilots. I'm actually training a company right now. They are in line. They've already applied to take their journeyman written exams, but they went through the whole process that Mr. Stehly is understandably finding really difficult. It is not easy. But it's not easy to be an ag pilot. The technology of the unmanned aerial systems is expanding rapidly. They're getting bigger, they're getting more capacity, more complexity. Allowing pilots to fly these larger aircraft without an apprentice journeyman program compromises safety.

We think there ought to be a size limit. The technology right now is out there where you can fly a UH60. I mean, you can fly a 600-700 gallon helicopter autonomously. So we just have to put a limit on it. During such training, all the aspects of pesticide application are covered, but in and of itself, that's not enough. Drone pilots, like the rest of us in the beginning, need supervised time in the seat to gain this experience and to gain good judgment.

Some try to reduce the need for training because, after all, it's just a drone. But there's one similarity with ag helicopters, ag airplanes and ag drones. All three of these types of aircraft are spraying pesticides out of nozzles from a platform that has no contact with the ground. Aerial application, no matter what the vehicle, is an unforgiving event. To treat it otherwise ignores all that has preceded this positive evolution of the industry and invites reductions in safeguard, which we must avoid. Safety has to be our priority. So thank you, Members and I'm open for any questions you might have.

Thank you.

Thank you. Are there any other witnesses in opposition? That was just a hair under three minutes, too. Nice timing. Any comments from committee? I feel like I should just ask him one. Ask him a--I'm joking.

I think they're hungry.

All right. Well, with that, you have a closing statement?

And I'll make this quick. With my years of experience from South LA in farming, I would say that in all, seriously, when you look at the bill, it talks about having the Department of Pesticide Regulation formulate what the regulations will be, the training. And it doesn't really necessarily say the farmers--no disrespect to the farmers or the aerial--that they will have full control. They'll hopefully be an independent body that will make the best decision for California.

And so that's why I even took this on, that there would be a group that will look at this fairly, because I do believe we need to look at--I don't want to age you--but the decades and decades of experience and make sure it's incorporated and what we ultimately do. With that, I respectfully ask for your aye vote.

Well, great. I think we had a motion and a second, right? That's what I thought. All right, so we can take roll.

All right. Item number 8, AB 1016 by Assembly Member Jones-Sawyer. The motion is do pass to the Appropriations Committee. Gabriel. Patterson. Aye. Bauer-Kahan. Aye. Bennett. Aye. Essayli. Aye. Fong. Not voting. Irwin. Lowenthal. Aye. Papan. Aye. Wicks. Aye. Wilson. Aye.

All right, it's 8-0. We'll keep that open, but it's out.

It's out.

Thank you, Chair and Committee.

All right, thank you. The next bill is Assembly Member Pellerin.

You guys are hungry.

Actually, we're all taking a hot yoga class in here right now.

I walked in here and I went, "Whoa, it is very warm." Yes, it is. Yes, it is.

So thank you, Chair and Members. I'll start by accepting the Committee amendments and thank Committee staff very much for helping us with those. And the amendments prohibit the sending of any data related to citizenship and ensure that all cybersecurity protections are in place on both receiving ends of the Secretary of State and the Electronic Registration Information Center. In a state with statewide mailed ballots, the accuracy of our voter records is of paramount importance.

The Electronic Registration Information Center, abbreviated as ERIC, is a powerful tool that elections officials can use to ensure that they have the most up-to-date voter rolls. ERIC is a nonpartisan nonprofit governed by its member states that mutually agree to share data such as voter registration and vehicle license data in order to keep their voter rolls updated and to reach out to eligible but unregistered citizens.

When a voter moves, they often re-register to vote in their new jurisdiction but do not notify the prior county elections official that they have moved. Due to the highly mobile nature of California's population, it is likely that there are millions of voter registration records that are out of date due to a recent move. By the Secretary of State's estimates, there are almost 5 million unregistered eligible voters in California. That is greater than the population of 26 states.

ERIC subjects itself to an independent review of its information security practices, policies, procedures, and systems. These independent assessments are conducted in addition to ERIC's annual internal review of its risk threat assessment, information security management plan, and associated policies and procedures. ERIC has used information security assessment services from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

ERIC has also contracted with an independent U.S.-based cybersecurity firm to conduct a comprehensive assessment of its information security, which found that ERIC had strong data security practices. I want to be clear that ERIC members do not have access to another member's data or reports stored on ERIC's servers, and state voter registration systems are never connected to ERIC. To ensure that voter information is confidential, ERIC employs what's called a one-way hash to sensitive data elements.

A cryptographic hash is not meant to be decrypted, and it converts data into what appears to be a string of random characters. ERIC only accepts voter and driver's license data files that have been hashed in the member state's environment. Once ERIC receives this hashed data, it employs another hashing process before applying additional rounds of encryption. It is these encrypted data points which are then compared with the other member state data and government records.

AB 1206 directs the Secretary of State to join ERIC on behalf of the State of California to provide the state with data on voters who have moved in-state, out-of-state, or died, as well as data on Californians who may be eligible to vote but who are not yet registered. Member states must use all Eric reports in a manner that complies with applicable federal and state laws.

For example, in our state county elections officials would be required to follow the address confirmation notice processes provided for in current law. These processes ensure voters are not unfairly removed from the voter rolls. California joining ERIC would likely result in at least 500,000 new registered voters and perhaps up to 1 million new voters. California's efforts to improve the accuracy and integrity of our voter registration system have been evolving over the years.

Becoming an ERIC member is a natural next step in California's mission to provide to improve the accessibility, accuracy, and security of our system. AB 1206 is sponsored by the California Association of Clerks and Elections Officials. And with me to testify today in support of ERIC is Shane Hamlin, the Executive Director of ERIC, and cybersecurity expert Terence Spies.

Great. Thank you. We have three minutes each.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair Gabriel, Members of the Committee. My name is Shane Hamlin. I'm the Executive Director of ERIC, the Electronic Registration Information Center. I appreciate the opportunity to speak in favor of AB 1206 and the proposed Committee amendments today, and I thank Assembly Member Pellerin for bringing it forward and the Committee staff's work on the analysis. ERIC is a 501c3 nonprofit, as you heard. We're currently comprised of 31 states and the District of Columbia.

Our mission is to help election officials maintain more accurate voter rolls and register more eligible citizens. We are a member-led, member-governed, member-funded organization. All members serve as directors. If California were to join, they'd immediately serve on our governing board of directors. With this in mind, ERIC membership works best when the state's chief election official is fully on board and supportive of joining. Briefly what we do.

Our members securely submit voter registration and Motor Vehicle Department data, and then we are also certified to receive and use death data from the Social Security Administration. And we subscribe to Official Change of Address Data from the United States Postal Service. Utilizing just these four data sets, we provide our members with reports that identify inaccurate and out-of-date voter registrations, deceased voters, individuals who appear to be eligible but are not yet registered, and possible cases of illegal voting.

In compliance with federal and state laws, our members use these reports to contact the voters for the purposes of updating their record, removing ineligible voters and deceased voters, contacting and providing voter registration information to individuals who appear to be eligible and are not yet registered, and investigate those possible cases of illegal voting. ERIC has always taken data security and privacy seriously. It's baked into our governance documents from day one.

We are generally aware of changing data privacy standards globally and here in the United States, and we're watching as states adopt strong privacy protections following California's outstanding example in that regard. Our bylaws and membership agreement include extensive data privacy and protection provisions, in fact, make up a large share of the entire agreement, and our technical infrastructure includes multiple layers of security designed to protect all the data we have and use. Key examples of that include the hashing application, which the Assembly Member Pellerin spoke to.

Additionally, our members are bound by the federal data protection laws that apply to the data we use, and those are again detailed in our membership agreement. And we follow internationally accepted cybersecurity standards. We do conduct those annual internal and external reviews she discussed. We subject ourselves to those external reviews. We have worked with State Department of Technologies as we've onboarded new members to provide assurances that our data handling practices are reasonable and acceptable. With that, I thank you again for the opportunity to speak.

I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you.