Senate Floor

Secretary will call the roll.

Allen Alvarado-Gil, Archuletta. Ashby, Atkins. Becker, Blakespear, Bradford, Caballero, Cortese. Dahle, Dodd, Durazo, Eggman, Glazer. Gonzalez, Grove, Hutado, Jones, Laird, Limon, McGuire, Menjivar, Min, Newman, Nguyen, Niello, Ochoa bogh, Padilla, Portantino, Roth, Rubio, Seyarto. Skinner. Smallwood-Cuevas, Stern, Umberg Wahab. Weiner, Wilk

A quorum is present. Would the members and our guests beyond the rail please rise? We'll be led in prayer by our chaplain, sister Michelle Gorman. After that, please remain standing. Will be led in the pledge by Senator Archuleta. Thank you.

And we bring our minds, hearts, into God's holy presence. Loving God of mystery, Pierre Tear de Chardin said, we are all called to be pioneers. Pioneers who stand on the edge of great beginnings of unseen futures. Pioneers filled with the unwarranted confidence that visions give. Pioneers whose eyes and ears are elsewhere who hear an echo of possibilities as music poised to enter the universe. The movement forward, he says, will not happen by itself. The steps that must be taken can be summarized in five words a great hope in common. The future is in our hands. And so, loving God holy mystery we thank you for the energy within us that drives us toward creativity and wholeness. May our hearts be ever more hopeful as we work to create that beloved community where all can enjoy the thrill of forging life and love on our precious earth. And gracious God, we also beg your blessing today on all those affected by the storms and recent earthquakes. And we ask all that we ask in Your name. Amen.

Ladies and gentlemen, put your hand over your heart. As we honor 2023, let's continue to honor men and women in uniform. I pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you. We will move on to privileges of the floor. There are none. Next, messages from the governor will be deemed red. Messages from the assembly will be deemed red. Reports of committee will be deemed red. Next is motions, resolutions and notices. Any motions and resolutions? Seeing none. Next is introduction and first reading of bills. Those will be deemed red. Members, without objection, the next order of business will be Senate Resolution 8 by Senator Atkins secretary. Please read .

Senate resolution number eight by Senator Atkins relative to the election of members of the Senate Committee on Rules.

Senator Atkins.

Thank you, Mr. President. I rise to present SR 8 which makes the following appointments to the Senate Rules Committee for the 2023 24 legislative session. Senator Grove will serve as vice chair. Senator Laird, Senator Ochoa Bogh, and Senator Smallwood-Cuevas. I respectfully ask for your Aye vote.

Members, any discussion or debate on this measure seeing none, we have called this will be a voice vote. Senator Atkins requests an I vote. All those in favor of the resolution, please say aye. All those opposed. Please say no. The eyes have it. The resolution is adopted. Members returning to motions and resolutions now is the time for adjourn and memories. We will have three today. First will be Senator Umberg.

Thank you, Mr. President. Colleagues, I rise now to recognize and honor the life of Justice Richard Fybel. Justice Feibel was a friend and a former colleague. He was born in 1946 in Los Angeles, the oldest of three sons of Ernest and Ruth Fybel. He was a double Bruin, both undergrad as well as law school Fybel. Richard Fybel began his legal career in 1971. He was soon recruited to Morrison and Forster, where he served as managing partner of the Los Angeles office and grew it from a very small number to 138 lawyers ultimately became one of the five individuals managing the 900 person law firm. In 1997, he moved from the Morrison Forrester Los Angeles office to the Orange County office. In 2000, justice Fybel was appointed by Governor Gray Davis to the Orange County Superior Court, and two years later, he was elevated to become an Associate Justice on the court of appeal. During his career, a 20 year tenure on the bench, he made significant contributions in development of California law, the pursuit of justice, and in particular, the advancement of judicial ethics. He was appointed by the Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court to the advisory committee on the code of judicial ethics from 2004 all the way to 2022. As chair, he successfully navigated the elimination of the code's controversial exception to the prohibition against judicial membership and discriminatory organizations. He was the co-author of the California Judicial Conduct Handbook, published 260 opinions. He was also an academic he from 2005 to 2018. Justice Feibel was an adjunct professor at the Fowler School of Law at Chapman University, teaching a seminar on the holocaust and genocide and the law. He was a noted authority, worldwide authority on the holocaust, and the founder of the Ruth and Ernest Fybel endowed fund for literature on children of the holocaust. His parents were escapees of the Holocaust, which was established at Chapman University Samuelley holocaust Memorial library. Justice Fibel was also a diehard Dodgers fan. He had huge amount of Dodgers memorabilia, notwithstanding the fact he lived in Orange County and was a great fan and friend and advocate for Maury Wills being in the hall of fame. And one of his last adventures was meeting Dodger manager Dave Roberts and other players on the field. Near the end of his life, he'll be remembered as a great friend, a great colleague, a mentor. He survived by his wife Susan, daughter Stephanie, son Dan, daughter in law Garland, four grandchildren whom he adored olivia, Jonah, and Tessa and Max. I ask that we adjourn in the recognition of the life of justice Richard Fybel.

Thank you. Please bring his name up so he can be properly memorialized. Next up, we will have senator Skinner.

Thank you. Members I ask today that we adjourn in memory of Hale Zukas. He was a visionary leader of the disability rights movement in California and around the globe. He died of heart failure on November 30. He was 79. Hale Zukas was a longtime leader at the Center for Independent Living, which those of you in Berkeley may be familiar with, or whoever's spending time there. And he co-founded the World Institute on Disability in 1983 with renowned disability rights advocate Ed Roberts. Hale was born with cerebral palsy. It significantly impaired both his mobility and his speech. But he was an effective advocate and a brilliant engineer. Hale's mother was advised to put him in an institution, but instead she facilitated a full and productive life for him. He graduated with honors at UC Berkeley, majoring in both mathematics and Russian. Now, those of you who have spent any time in Berkeley will remember Hale. He was the person that would zoom by you in his electric wheelchair, motioned or propelled only by a pointer on his head. So in other words, he had to move his wheelchair by using his head and neck on the little mechanism at the handle of the wheelchair to get around. He also used that same pointer to communicate. He had a Ouija board on the tray of his wheelchair, and he pointed at letters or words. And very often when he spoke at public hearings or to government officials, someone when you couldn't understand him, someone else would stand over the Ouija board and translate for him as he pointed. I often found myself in that situation where at political meetings, I was Hale's voice and he would shake his head when I was correct and nod it very vigorously when I got something wrong. Anyway, he started his advocacy for disability rights in 1970. He was the person that effectively lobbied for California to start the In Home Supportive Services program. And this program has since become a model for the nation. In 1973, Hale and a group of disability activists pushed for the ratification of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, which prohibited discrimination based on disability. It was the first federal disability law in the country. Hale also successfully pushed for accessibility improvements throughout California, in the nation, in the world. His engineering accomplishments included designing the first curb cuts, which Berkeley was the first city to implement, and the wheelchair accessible buttons and other things. At BART stations and other places, he served on national and regional committees. In 1979, President Carter appointed Hale to the US architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board, where he later served as chair. In 2017, there was a 23 minutes, award winning documentary called Hale about his life, and the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences gave that film the gold medal for documentary student films. Hale was also known for his passion for trains and movies, his love of live performances. And as I mentioned, those of you who ever saw him in Berkeley. He loved to make that wheelchair go fast and to pop wheelies over curbs, go downstairs with it. There's a famous picture of him sprawled at the bottom of Sprout Plaza, where he just kind of leaped over the stairs. But he never seemed to really insure himself with taking those risks. He is survived by his brother Tim, his sister Wendy, and 30 cousins. He leaves a great many friends in the Bay Area and admirers, and an entire community of activists will mourn his loss. Thank you.

Thank you. Please bring his name up so it can be properly memorialized. Last up will be Senator Laird.

Thank you, Mr. President. I rise to adjourn in memory of a true Santa Cruz character, Jerome Arthur Fardette, who was my friend, my neighbor. He was an author. He wrote seven books. He was a surfer. He restored Surf Woody's, and for 44 years, he was my barber. And it was sometime in the late 70s when a friend of mine said, you got to go to this barber shop. He's cutting hair two doors down from you. He's a working class hero. And so I did. It was called Hair Hideaway, and he morphed after the earthquake, and I'll explain his name change in a moment. It became the Surf City Barbershop and Social Club. And you might ask, how do I know it's 44 years? Well, he kept a running list of in order, how long his clients had been coming to him. And I remember I started to ask somewhere around 20 years where I stand? Where am I? I would be in the it was only in the last three or four years that I started to approach the top ten. And it is a tribute to people coming back to him and really wanting to be with him. And I was asked frequently, because many of you know that my spouse of 27 years is a hairstylist. And his clients people would say to me, why don't you just go to John? Well, it was occupational, because going to Jerome was like going to a Santa Cruz news feed. His wife worked on the levees. He did marine biologists. He cut the hair of judges and mayors and the laugh go head. And I would always hear what was going on. And if I ever had to start a rumor in town, I would just say to him, did you know? And the next thing I know, my work was done. It would be everywhere in those first years, I would be scheduled, and occasionally I'd get a call saying, the waves are really good. Could we reschedule? And that's what it was like. He would talk so much that as I moved up the political ladder, I was tightly scheduled after every cut. And I would have to say to him, please keep cutting. Keep cutting. I want to hear, but keep cutting. And as I mentioned, other thing I was mentioning to the senator from Los Angeles. He was a native Angelino. And he said to me once, he said, I went to the same high school as Antonio Via Ragosa. And so the next time I saw Antonio, I said, hey, you and my barber went to Cathedral. And Antonio said, that was the best high school I was ever kicked out of. And the Barber, jerome loved telling that story over and over again. I mentioned he was an author. He wrote six novels. And there was an informal competition among those of us who are clients to see if you could get in a novel, to see if he would indirectly refer to you. And his last book was a book of famous people he had had interactions with. I think he was in the Navy with one of the Righteous Brothers. He took a class at Long Beach State with Steven Spielberg. And then in some way I never understood, he had some connection with an adult film star. And when I sat in the chair, I could see an autographed picture of her out of the corner of my eye whenever I was there. And if you ever walked downtown on a Sunday and you saw this surf woody parked, you knew he was in a shop writing that. That's when he would write on his books. But I think the most memorable thing that happened is he was known for years as Jerry the Barber. And he had one of those old surf bikes with balloon tires, and he would ride all over town, and he had a sign between the bars that said Jerry the Barber, and had a barber pull. And he became this local icon. Everybody would stop or everybody would shout from the curb, Jerry. Jerry the barber. And one day, somehow it just pushed his button, and he decided from that day forward he was going to be known as Jerome. And he got out his birth certificate, and his birth certificate said Jerry Arthur Fardette. And Arthur was misspelled. And at the time, it was really hard for those of us that had been going to him for decades. So I would still write my schedule. Jerry the barber. But I would call him Jerome, and a local judge would write him a check and then write Jerry the Barber in the check register. And he would look over his shoulder and go, hey. And he would say, I'm calling you, Jerome, but it's my checkbook. So he gets out the birth certificate, and he decides he's going to apply for name change. And lo and behold, it's up to discretion of a judge about whether or not to have a hearing. And the very judge whose hairy cut decided this called for a hearing. And Jerome and Janet came in, and they sat down early in the courtroom, and then people streamed in the courtroom, and Janet said to him, what's going on here? And he said, Just ride with it. And it was one of the most well attended hearings with endless testimony. I submitted a letter on assembly stationery as the ad hoc chair of the Committee on Barber Name Changes, saying that he was a local monument and you shouldn't change the names of monuments. And people spoke. And finally the judge said, I know your mother's still alive. She has to have an opinion. Is your mother with this? And after the long tortuous hearing where a good time was had by everybody, the judge gave the name change, and he went ahead. He got sick very suddenly, and he was going to keep his schedule, and he was going to keep everybody on it because he was sure he was coming back. So he called me a few days, it turned out a few days before he died. And he said, well, we have a haircut scheduled. I'm leaving you on the schedule. I'll come back. We'll do the next one. And he said, I really love you and John. And I missed the signal because basically I thought, oh, he's still fighting. He's doing okay. He's going to come back. But he passed away last fall, and a memorial was held where it was just his shop open all day, and everybody came through. So he leaves his wife of 54 years, Janet, two daughters, four grandkids, and he will be missed by everybody in Santa Cruz, chiefly those of us that would sit in the chair of the Surf City Barbershop and the Social Club. So I ask that we adjourn in memory of Jerome Arthur Fardette.

Thank you. Please bring his name up so he can be properly memorialized if there's no other business. Senator Atkins, the desk is clear.

Mr thank you so much. Excuse me, Mr. President. Thank you so much. Many of you are traveling home today. Please be safe. Some of you maybe stay at an extra day for the inauguration. But regardless, please be safe. Enjoy the weekend with your family. It is so good, so good to be in your presence and be back together with that Mr. President. And you will say it again in a minute. The floor session, the next one is scheduled for Monday, January 9, at 2023 02:00 P.m..

Thank you. The Senate will be in recess until 03:30 P.m., at which time the adjournment motion will be made. We will reconvene Monday, January 9, at 02:00 p.m. You.