Senate Floor

Alright, the the Senate will come to order. The Secretary, please call the roll.

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

A quorum is present, Members. With the Members and our guests beyond the rail and in the gallery, please rise. We will be led in prayer this afternoon by our chaplain, Sister Michelle Gorman after which, please remain standing for the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag.

Loving and merciful God, today we thank You for the dedication and endurance of our legislators and staff members. At the end of this session, we ask Your blessing on each one as we pray in the words of the poet, Jan Richardson: blessed are you who bear the light in unbearable times, who testify to its endurance amid the unendurable, who bear witness to its persistence when everything is in shadow and grief.

Blessed are you in whom the light lives in whom the brightness blazes. Your heart a chapel, an altar where in the deepest night can be seen the fire that shines forth in you, in unaccountable faith, in stubborn hope, in love that illumines every broken thing it finds. And so may God bless you and keep you. May God's face shine upon you and be gracious to you. May God look upon you kindly and give you peace. Amen.

Members, please place your hand over your heart and join me in the pledge. 'I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.'

Members, Sister Gorman is not always here when the clock strikes midnight and we end our session. And so let's take a moment to give a warm thank you to her for all the wonderful prayers. We so appreciate the perspective that you bring to the work of the Senate and your diligence in being here almost every day to start our Senate session. So we're very grateful. Thank you. Members, without objection, the Senate rules will be suspended to allow for guests on our floor.

Privileges of the floor; there are none. Messages from the Governor will be deemed read. Messages from the Assembly will be deemed read. Reports of Committee will be deemed read and amendments adopted. We're going to move next to motions, resolutions, and notices. Without objection, the Senate journals for September 11th, 2023 through September 14th, 2023 will be approved as corrected by the Minute Clerk. Pursuant to Senate Rule 2910, the following bills are referred to the Committee on Rules. File Item Number two, AB 1017. File Item Number three, AB 1122.

I want to be able to recognize any Member who wishes to move a measure to the inactive file. Does any Member want to be recognized to do such a thing? Okay. We're going to move next to consideration of the daily file, second reading file. Secretary, please read.

Assembly Bill 126, 1017, 1122.

So let me give you a little bit of the rundown of the day. We've had such a good week and we're in the final stretch. I'm going to try to give you the preview of bills that are coming up ahead so everyone can be prepared. There is going to be some rotation between Assembly bills and Senate bills, so expect that. But our whips on the floor will try to keep you informed and as I will about bills that are coming up.

We are going to start the morning with two ACAs, ACA 13 and ACA 1, followed by Assembly Bill 980--excuse me, yeah, it's not listed on here--we'll go to Assembly Bill 799, File Item 12. So those are the first three bills up. Once we finish with those, we're going to go to ABs and then based on timestamps, we may go back and forth to ABs and SBs in coordination with the Assembly. So that is the order of business for this afternoon and into this evening.

Alright, Members, little switch in drivers up here. And I believe we're going to start off with our presiding officer today. So I'm going to step up. So everyone have their seatbelts on, trays in the locked and upright position, and we're going to start with File Item 109, ACA 13.

The Clerk will read.

Assembly Constitutional Amendment 13 by Assembly Member Ward in act relating to voting.

Thank you, Madam President. On behalf of Assembly Member Ward--we've got the sound effects just in time--ACA 13 is a measure that asks one simple question: If a measure is proposed to raise a voter threshold to greater than a majority, shouldn't the same proportion of voters be in agreement? That's the simple question that this measure asks.

Senator Glazer.

Currently, under California law, any ballot measure approved by a majority of voters could selectively require a future ballot measure to pass with a supermajority of the vote. ACA 13, which is called the Protect and Retain the Majority Vote Act, would retain the majority vote requirement for passage of state and local initiatives by requiring any statewide initiative seeking to increase a threshold to also be approved by the same higher threshold it is proposing.

With a pattern of abuse of our initiative process to use a lower threshold to set a higher threshold for future voters and worse, using this tactic to extract legislative actions for special interests, the time is right for the Legislature to reflect a protection afforded in the Oregon Constitution since 1998 and adopt ACA 13 to send to the voters, to give the voters the choice to give the voters their consideration.

Now, the success of these tactics mean that in future elections, questions are decided through the veto pattern of a minority, not the will of a majority. This, my friends, is inherently undemocratic. This measure has been characterized as eminently sensible, and it's very basic. If a measure proposes to raise a voter threshold to greater than a majority, then it should achieve the same vote threshold that it proposes.

We often see this issue paired with revenue questions, and make no mistake, raising the voter threshold for local government without the same level of support of voters jeopardizes their ability to deliver essential services, including funding for schools, public safety, homelessness, and housing. But it's not just about a revenue question. Some of you may recall Ohio Issue 1. It attempted to raise thresholds to thwart a question on reproductive rights. Supermajority votes for local housing policy or citing shelters for homeless individuals have been floated.

Really, any subject could come up. This measure will protect and retain the majority vote of these important questions. It also provides clarity for the rights of local government to submit an advisory vote to the voters subject to a majority vote to provide feedback on their priorities as they see fit. And with that, I respectfully ask for your aye vote on ACA 13.

Thank you. Senator Seyarto, you are recognized.

Thank you, Madam President. I rise in opposition to ACA 13. Very simply, if you look beyond all of it, what this is about is raising taxes, is making it easier to raise taxes, and specifically those taxes that come in the form of on your property tax bill, in assessments, through bonds, et cetera, et cetera. The reason the voters chose this two-thirds threshold before is because they wanted to make raising taxes very hard.

They wanted to make it very hard because way back in the day, it was not hard at all. What happened was you wound up with a runaway tax structure, especially on your property taxes, and that was eroding the ability of people on fixed incomes, especially seniors, to stay in their homes because their property taxes were going up so fast and so much without restraint that finally somebody stepped in and did something about that, and that somebody was Howard Jarvis.

I was fortunate enough to be hanging out with my grandfather, and I got to watch Howard Jarvis during the initial meetings of Prop 13, and I got to see why they were doing it and the struggles that property owners were having with every year. First that one year, they get a property tax bill for 500 dollars, and then the next year, it's 1,100 dollars. That kind of runaway taxation drives people not only out of their houses, but out of the state. So the taxpayers passed this initiative.

And ever since that day, there's been time after time where people are trying to take a bite out of that. They tried to do it all at once, but that failed. Taxpayers recognized that, 'you know what, they're trying to get rid of our taxpayer protections offered by Prop 13.' If communities want to raise taxes, some of those can go through this process. And guess what? A lot of them did. And a lot of them were able to pass school bonds.

They were able to pass all of these things. But what happened after that is why this is, again, people are very hesitant to pass this. They're very hesitant now. And the reason is because they weren't getting the bang for their buck. When we raised up their taxes, all they really got was everybody comes to the trough, takes their slice of the pie, and the taxpayers don't get what they thought they were going to get out of their bond.

Sometimes these projects would go on and on and on forever because they're searching for other money to bring in to finish a project because they got done spending all their money on all the other stuff. When people came in and recognized, 'we got a 30 million dollar bond, let's go get our slice,' if you don't give taxpayers their bang for the buck, they're not going to approve your tax. Now you say, 'you know what? It's 51 percent. Majority rules.'

The problem is, the way we structure our ballot language, most people won't get past the initial sentence. And if that sentence says what this one does, I forgot during the introduction what it was called, but it makes them think that, 'hey, I'm protecting my 51 percent.'

It doesn't make them think, 'hey, I'm protecting our 66 percent that we need to make it hard for our state leaders to put something on ballot to raise our taxes or our communities or our school district or our water district, whatever it may be.' And when you're talking about communities, communities can still do, they can still raise taxes on a 51 percent. Well, 50 percent plus one. They do that through a process and they put on a sales tax measure. It just can't be specific as a general tax.

And a lot of cities have done that. And a lot of cities, especially coming out of a pandemic or just going into the pandemic, coming out of a recession, that's how they got a lot of their things done. That's how they caught up on roads. Because we don't send them enough of our road money. We spend our road money on something else. So folks, don't make this into what it's not. This is all about being able to make it easier to raise taxes on our citizens.

And if you want to go back to your districts and tell your citizens this is what we're going to do, and if you buy into this, next comes all of the ballot measures where we try to fool you into the 51 percent by saying 'this is a Safe Communities and Schools Act.' And next thing you know, crime is out of control. That's what we're afraid of. That's what citizens are afraid of. That's what I used to be afraid of.

But now I can come up here and help spread the message that if that doesn't change, if we don't become more responsible with the money we have, and if we don't start being really careful about passing a bond and then not giving people their money's worth, like the bullet train, all of that leads to the distrust that our communities have. And you know what? We deserve it because we keep doing it over and over again.

So I will not be supporting this, and I won't be supporting the other one. I will shorten my speech for the next one that comes up. But it's not a speech, folks. I'm not reading this off of anything. This is me telling all of you why people are so ticked off. Tax Freedom Day is about, it used to be just for federal taxes, used to be April 17th. Well, it's floating around at the end of April for your federal taxes.

If you add up all of your taxes that you pay, it's going to be floating around 55 percent, which means somewhere around July is when you stop working for the government and you start working for your family. That's what people are ticked about. It needs to go backwards, not forwards. If we can't fix what we've got going on in California with the 300 billion dollars a year that they are shoveling into our coffers, there's something wrong with what we're doing.

We need to look at that really hard, and we need to fix that before we start trying to trick them into doing something that ultimately is detrimental for them. So I urge you to vote no on this. I hope my colleagues will join me. If not, I hope you can explain that to your constituents. Thank you.

Senator Wiener.

Thank you, Madam President. I rise in strong support of ACA 13, which is long overdue. I think it's really important to focus on what ACA 13 does. I know in the next measure, we will have a discussion about changing an existing rule. ACA 13 does not change any existing rules. It doesn't go back retroactively and change anything.

What it does is it says for the individuals and organizations that are trying to make it impossible for our school districts and our cities and our counties and our water districts and so on and so forth, to make it impossible for them to actually fund critical community needs. For these organizations that are trying to kneecap local government's ability to fund basic services: fire, police, having enough fire stations, having water systems that are not poisoning people, having transportation systems where people can actually get around.

They're trying to make it impossible for local government to actually fund these not optional, but essential services. And they've been doing it for a long time, and they're trying again with the constant threats of saying everything has to be two-thirds, everything is two-thirds. And they want to do it so that we can continue down the road of 34 percent of people vetoing the ability of 66 percent of people to make a democratic decision.

It's so antidemocratic and they are trying to go further and further down that road, so that, for example, when California used to have one of the best funded K through 12 education systems in the country and then we fell into the 40s and we're trying to claw out of that and we're finally making progress, and they want to drag us right back down because they don't believe in government. They don't believe in public services and we need to make clear that if you are seeking to do this, you should have to meet that threshold too. It is common sense. It's a great idea and an urgent aye vote.

Thank you, Senator Wiener. Senator Atkins, you are recognized.

Thank you, Madam President. Colleagues, I rise also in support of ACA 13. I want to thank my Assembly Member and I want to thank the floor manager today for bringing this forward. California's progress is under threat. Across the country, we're seeing the initiative process being used to limit the voice of voters, including a recent attempt in another state to raise vote thresholds to attack reproductive health care and other issues that fractions are trying to wrest from the hands of voters.

We should assume it's only a matter of time before those same attempts are made here in California. And to be blunt, to be very blunt, we are here today because of very few special interests led by the California Business Roundtable have qualified a measure, have qualified a measure that wants to change the rules to their benefit. The California Business Roundtable's measure seeks to increase voter thresholds and limit the voice of California voters.

They want to further empower a minority of voters so they can eliminate critical services that Californians rely on, including defunding police, fire services--that will be the result--and cutting money for key housing affordability and homelessness prevention programs. Make no mistake. They want to fundamentally alter the foundations of our government, bring it to a halt, and stop our progress. We're here today because voters should be given the opportunity to decide if they want to protect their majority vote before another threat can further diminish that right.

It's that simple. Colleagues, ACA 13 does not impact Prop 13. That's a red herring. That's a myth of a message. It doesn't raise taxes or any of the other claims made by opponents. ACA 13 asked voters if they want to protect the majority vote. Plain and simple. It asked if they think the Business Roundtables measure should play by the same rules that they want to impose on other measures. Let's let the voters, the people of California, decide. I ask for your support and your aye vote.

Thank you. Senator Jones, you are recognized.

Thank you, Madam President. As our colleague from Riverside I think asked, 'how much is enough? How much of all of our hard-earned money and our constituents hard-earned money is enough for government to take? When can we go to our constituents and say we got enough?' I would argue last year when we had 100 billion dollar surplus, the government had too much. And now we're in the point of having a 33 billion dollar deficit projected.

We don't even know what that's going to be until after October 15th because of the delay in tax filing. So I'm rising today in opposition to ACA 13 for a couple of reasons. The measure would wrongly require higher voter approval threshold for citizen-approved ballot measures--initiatives--that seek to protect taxpayers from further tax invasion from the government. A similar measure was recently defeated by the voters in Ohio when politicians attempted to change the rules governing ballot measures to affect outcomes.

Their measures sought to create voter limitations on the ballot by increasing the threshold for voters to amend the Constitution. Elected officials across the nation, including Governor Newsom, rightly opposed the Ohio measure and its abuse of the initiative process. What did President Joe Biden have to say about the effort to change voter threshold in Ohio? He strongly rejected it and called it, quote, 'a blatant attempt to weaken voters' voices.' And that is spot on for this very eerily measure in front of us today.

ACA 13 undermines initiative process and undermines the voice of California voters, while creating an uneven playing field that favors greedy tax increases, more money for the government. Importantly, it jeopardizes the critical taxpayer protections provided by Prop 13, Proposition 13. ACA 13 would make it difficult to nearly impossible for Californians to impose new limitations on taxation. California families pay some of the highest taxes in the nation.

This Legislature should not be attacking efforts that seek to protect taxpayers and reduce the cost of living in our state when so many are struggling to make ends meet and a large number of Californians every single day wake up in the morning thinking about, is this the day I leave California? And that should really shake us all to the core that so many Californians are having that thought. My family moved to California in 1978. My dad was a home builder in Colorado.

He owned his own business. We came to California on vacation for two weeks. While we were here, he put in a job application for eight different jobs. He was willing to give up his business in Colorado to work for somebody else in California. And as a result of those eight job applications, he got ten job offers because California was the Golden State. California was the land of opportunity. California was where everybody in America wanted to live. And measures like this cause people to wake up every morning wondering, is this the day I leave? I ask for a no vote.

Senator Roth, you are recognized.

That requires a viable transportation system and we have no transit. Buses from Riverside County don't easily get into Los Angeles County and you certainly can't get the last mile to your job. Rail is almost nonexistent except for limited lines at limited times. And so we depend on concrete freeways to move people from housing to jobs.

Thank you, Madam President. You know, I represent the other part of Riverside County. And for years, Riverside County has been the land of opportunity where housing has been expensive on the coasts. Riverside County and counties just like it in the inland parts of the state have built housing so that people can afford to live, workers can afford to own a home for their families.

Unfortunately, as you've heard me speak on the floor before, the jobs--typically because of our state policies and the subsidies we provide--are located in the urban coastal areas and so those folks who choose to have a home in an affordable area, such as the area that I'm privileged to represent, have to drive long distances, some as much as two, two and a half, and in some cases three hours to get to the west side of LA to work at the job so they can afford the homes out where we live.

Now, as a state, we've adopted a policy that we in this body and the one in the Green Zone have voted on and the Governor has certainly insisted on, of reducing vehicle miles traveled. That's in our policy. We probably may get a bill dealing with that today, again. What that means is anytime you add housing, and we have a lot of housing to add in Riverside County as a result of Reena, you add vehicle miles traveled.

Unfortunately, the California Transportation Commission and those bodies that approve funds are essentially prohibited from approving any new transportation project that adds vehicle miles travel. So what does that do--I'm going to get to the point--what does that do for those of us down in Riverside County? It means we depend on local transportation measures to fund transportation improvement projects. And we have since the 1970s.

As a matter of fact, Riverside County, as I recall, was the first county in the State of California to do a local transportation measure, Measure A, and got it passed. Well, the reality of that, we know from history and from polling, is we cannot get a local transportation measure by and through the hoop at a two-thirds vote majority. Two- thirds vote. What this ACA 13 does, and maybe in Southwestern County, they don't have transportation needs, but I'll tell you this, what this measure does is counteracts a proposal that will require a two-thirds vote to get a local transportation measure passed.

So I'm supporting ACA 13 because it will allow us to continue to get and to move local transportation measures through the electorate at a 50 percent plus one vote. Measures that the constituents need in order to move from the housing that we direct us to build for them to the jobs that we locate in areas that are not convenient to the housing. So I want you to think about that as you cast your vote on this measure.

It has nothing to do with Prop 13, but there's certainly been a lot of calls on Prop 13, and the opponents to this ACA have sufficiently riled up the electorate that I think we're up to 500 or 600 calls in my office talking about Proposition 13. Well, I have no interest in disturbing Proposition 13. As a matter of fact, it keeps my 83-year-old mother-in-law in her house, which is good. So I'll be supporting the measure and respectfully ask for your aye vote.

Thank you, Senator. I hope she's able to stay. Senator Glazer--I see no other mics up--Senator Glazer, would you like to close?

Yes, thank you, Madam President. Members. Let me thank the good supportive comments from the Senators from San Diego and San Francisco and Riverside. And let me also thank the opposition Senators from Murrieta and San Diego for their engagement in this conversation here today. A couple things I want to say about property taxes and also about accountability, which the Senator from Murrieta brought up. On property taxes, the Senate insisted on two amendments to this measure, both printed in the bill itself.

The first one is an intent language at the start of the bill where it says, 'the provisions of this measure are not intended to reverse or invalidate provisions of the Constitution in effect before January 1st, 2024, including the provisions of Proposition 13 of 1978.' I don't know how you can be clearer that this measure itself will do nothing to affect Proposition 13.

And then in the measure itself, another amendment was inserted by the Senate that makes it clear that this section, meaning the provisions of this bill, apply to all statewide initiative measures submitted to the electors on or after January 1st, 2024. It makes it clear in two places. This has nothing to do with a previous initiative, certainly Proposition 13. I was around for Proposition 13 and it was about property taxes being too high and putting limitations on property taxes.

This measure has nothing to do with Proposition 13 and property taxes. Nothing at all. Let me speak to this issue of accountability because I know that we all want to see oversight and accountability with all the taxes that are paid in our city and our state, our county, our special districts. That's a legitimate issue, and it's a legitimate issue for the voters to engage in in any future measure that's on the ballot dealing with taxes. Certainly no one, I don't think, would disagree with that.

And the choices can be made locally and the accountability can be made locally. This measure does nothing to change any of those desires to have that kind of accountability and oversight. But I want to stress this as I conclude, which is that, look, there are a lot of significant needs out there in our communities. Many of the folks who spoke earlier mentioned some of those. But this measure isn't even about that.

It's about a trick that's played on the voters in the state and jurisdictions where they say, hey, we just need a majority vote, but we're going to impose a two-thirds vote on a measure in the future. It's to eliminate that trickery that has occurred in our state, going forward so that voters can be dealt with in a straightforward way. It's what we all strive for in the work that we do. Honesty, transparency, directness, straightforwardness.

That's what we need to build trust in our government, build trust in our future. This measure does exactly that. And with that, I respectfully ask for an aye vote.

The Clerk will call the roll.

Allen? Aye. Alvarado-Gil? No. Archuleta? Ashby? Aye. Atkins? Aye. Becker? Aye. Blakespear? Aye. Bradford? Aye. Caballero? Aye. Cortese? Aye. Dahle? No. Dodd? Aye. Durazo? Aye. Eggman? Aye. Glazer? Aye. Gonzalez? Aye. Grove? No. Hurtado? Jones? No. Laird? Aye. Limon? Aye. McGuire? Aye. Menjivar? Aye. Min? Aye. Newman? Nguyen? No. Niello? No. Ochoa Bogh? No. Padilla? Aye. Portantino? Aye. Roth? Aye. Rubio? Aye. Seyarto? No. Skinner? Aye. Smallwood- Cuevas? Aye. Stern? Aye. Umberg? Aye. Wahab? Aye. Wiener? Aye. Wilk? No.

Please call the absent Members.

Archuleta? Hurtado? Newman?

The author moves the call. Oh, I'm sorry. Ayes: 28, noes: nine. The measure passes. Thank you.

Alright, Members, we're going to move ahead to File Item 108. File Item 108. This is ACA 1. Secretary, please read.

Assembly Constitutional Amendment 1 by Assembly Member Aguiar-Curry in act relating to local finance.

Senator Wiener is the floor manager. Senator Weiner, the floor is yours.

Thank you very much, Mr. President. I rise as a principal co-author to present Assembly Constitutional Amendment One on behalf of Assembly Member Aguiar-Curry. ACA 1 simply asks voters if they would like to lower the threshold, the vote threshold, for local affordable housing and infrastructure projects from two-thirds to a 55 percent supermajority, which is what we currently enacted or have for school bonds. ACA 1 does not increase taxes. It does not even change the law.

It simply permits local governments who have lost critical tools like redevelopment to place before local voters a local measure to address the myriad of public infrastructure challenges that cities, counties, and special districts are facing today. ACA 1 is optional. If a local government does not want to propose a measure to their voters, they don't have to do it. ACA 1 includes historic and unprecedented accountability measures to protect voters and ensure fiscal accountability, transparency, and oversight.

Colleagues, our communities are in dire need of affordable and supportive housing. They are unable to address critical infrastructure projects that have endured decades of neglect. They're unable to adequately support their fire and police and other public safety departments. And, of course, as we all know, the number of unhoused people on the street keeps rising.

The best way to solve these problems is to empower local communities who are in the best position to determine what their community needs and what they are willing to pay to support those needs. I want to note that the author, Assembly Member Aguiar-Curry, will be submitting a letter to the Journal memorializing her commitment to work with the California Association of Realtors and other stakeholders on various accountability measures over the recess, and she has committed to doing that. I respectfully ask for your aye vote.

Thank you, Senator Wiener. Discussion and debate. I see microphones up from Senator Jones, Senator Min, Senator Seyarto. We'll begin with Senator Jones and then Senator Rubio.

Thank you, Mr. President. Members, I rise in opposition to ACA 1. As has been previously stated, Californians pay some of the highest taxes in the nation. Just this year alone, the Legislature--this year, this is an unbelievable statistic to me, actually--this year, this Legislature, the Assembly, and the Senate, proposed 200 billion dollars in new taxes on the backs of Californians. ACA 1 aims to make the burden of taxes even higher.

This measure wrongly chips away at critical taxpayer protections by making it easier for politicians and special interests to raise taxes at the local level. Part of our fight to fix California is taking a strong stance against measures that will set us backwards. If this bill moves forward to the ballot, I implore the voters to not buy the sham argument of housing and infrastructure in support of this bill.

As such, I will be strongly opposing this bill, and ask you to protect all taxpayers and oppose this measure as well. I ask for a no vote.

Thank you, Senator Jones. Next up, Senator Min, followed by Senator Seyarto and Rubio.

Thank you, Mr. President. Your tuxedo looks fabulous. I voted for ACA 13 because after looking closely at it, I determined that it really did not impact Prop 13 directly, and I dismissed the arguments against it.

I will be voting no on this particular measure because it does go after Prop 13 and I think substantially changes that. And I think my constituents face a high tax burden and one that we should not be exacerbating, so I will be voting no on this and just wanted to explain my reasoning.

Senator Seyarto.

Thank you, Mr. President. I rise in opposition to this measure, and I do have a question for the floor manager, if he would be so kind.

Senator Wiener, will you take a question? He says yes, so go ahead, sir.

So in this measure, it says it's taking sales and use tax and making that 55 percent. So for cities, sales and use tax, you can raise with a 50 percent. Does that mean the 50 percent is now no longer eligible, and that has to be 55? In other words, does it raise what's currently available to cities to raise taxes from a 50 percent simple majority up to 55?

The tax portion of ACA 1 is about special dedicated taxes, not about general taxes. Special taxes usually today require two-thirds. It would be 55 percent. And again, this is for public infrastructure projects.

General taxes for cities can also be used for all of the things that you had described before, and that's a 50 percent threshold right now. And that's a tool that they have to address those issues of fire, police, infrastructure, and all of that. It goes into the General Fund, and from there, they make decisions about what is the priority in their communities. So I just want to make sure it doesn't affect that. And you're giving us the assurance that it does not.

Senator Seyarto, speaking to the Chair, is that a question or just a statement?

I just asked the question again.

You asked the same question again? Okay.

Just confirming.

This is about special dedicated taxes. We know that frequently, voters like--in terms of accountability--like to know where the money is going, and they like it when money is lockboxed for new fire stations or affordable housing or whatever the case may be, and right now, you often need a two-thirds vote to do that, and that's what this is about. A general tax is not affected by this measure.

Understood. With my comments, please?

Yeah, you can go ahead.

Thank you. So this is an attack on the Prop 13 protections that communities installed, as I have stated before, and I'm not going to repeat that part. But one thing I am going to repeat, not repeat, but I'm going to bring up here is all of our efforts seem to be going into the low income, affordable, and what's really entry level housing.

But in the meanwhile, we have done nothing to fix the regulatory process in the last 35 years that is still burdening the rest of the housing market. So essentially what we're doing is we're locking everybody into affordable, their only house, the only house they can afford, which is going to be one of the affordable houses or the entry level homes. They have nothing to move into. That's why you see the housing market is not going down while interest rates have gone up a lot.

There is nowhere for people to go. There is nowhere for young people to move up to so they can raise their family. And where they're going to move up to is out of the state. We need to fix the problems that we have in spending here in California, not try to make it easier to use the one solution that everybody likes, that, 'hey, we'll just raise taxes. We'll just take a little more, take another chunk out of those taxpayers' year.' So I appreciate the Senator from Orange County standing up and recognizing this for what it is, and I ask for a no vote. Thank you.

I have microphones up from Senator Rubio, Skinner, Caballero, Niello, and Dahle. We get next with Senator Rubio.

Thank you, Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen of the Senate. Today I rise in strong support and as a proud co-author of ACA 1. This is a good government bill that gives power to the voters and ensures that the majority of their voices is heard. This bill is about local jobs, local investments, and local control. I think every Member on the floor can agree that we need to build more housing and we need to improve our infrastructure.

As the good Senator from Riverside stated, we have so much housing need and yet we don't have funding to take care of the roads and everything else that we need to take care of. ACA 1 simply gives the voters that ability to decide for themselves on the ballot. Do they want this? It's up to them, not up to us. We want to make it easier for them to raise funding for housing and infrastructure, and again, it's absolutely optional.

And because I held myself as a strong proponent of local control, this gives them the control. It's about local control and local needs. They decide what they need and hopefully their constituents, the residents, agree or disagree, and that's completely up to them. ACA 1 also includes significant guardrails to protect voters and hold their leaders accountable. So I understand this is really difficult because everyone envisions taxes, but it is specialized to the needs of our communities and right now our local communities are struggling.

And we're not trying to impose anything on them. We're just saying you decide what you need. What do your residents need? What services can you boost? And this is all about our cities, our communities, and them controlling what they want for themselves. And with that, I ask for an aye vote. Thank you.

Thank you, Senator Rubio. Senator Skinner, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Mr. President, Members. I find this discussion fascinating because I keep hearing some of the opponents indicate that by our vote on this measure, we're raising taxes or we're imposing the raising of taxes. That is not what ACA 1 does. ACA 1, as my colleague who just spoke made clear, and as our floor manager made clear, it allows us to put on the ballot a measure that allows voters to choose how they want to proceed. So it is literally only empowering our voters.

And if our voters decide that they want the current system that we have, they will have the ability to do that with this measure. So I just wanted to make clear that this is not imposing. This is putting a measure on the ballot that allows the voters to choose whether they want to change that threshold. And I think our voters, they cannot choose to do so unless we give them this option or unless we put it on the ballot, so I think it is an appropriate thing for us to do. And with that, I ask for your aye vote.

Thank you, Senator Skinner. Senator Caballero.

Mr. President and Members, let me start off by saying I'm going to support ACA 1 today, but there are some really important technical issues that need to be addressed. And I want to thank the Committee on Governance and Finance staff for their help to identify--to help me identify--the issues that we need to focus on.

And I also want to thank the author who has agreed to file a letter to the Journal, as has been articulated earlier and outlining what specifically these issues are. But I wanted to talk about them today because some of them are just really technical issues. The ACA would lower the voter threshold for local taxes and bonds that fund affordable housing or public infrastructure.

And the public infrastructure language is very broad, and so there need to be some guardrails around it so that it's very specific and we don't end up with situations where cities or counties, local entities that can do these kinds of measures take advantage of the situation and put money into things that might not be appropriate. Also, the current definition of taxes and bonds is very broad, and it needs to be tighter and more specific.

Again, technical issues that could have been addressed had there been the time to do the double refer that I think would have been helpful. Also, some of the purposes that are listed on the measure could also be financed through Mello-Roos developer fees or benefit assessments. And the reason this becomes important is these are already structures that are in place for local government to be able to pay for things and those who benefit directly from the new infrastructure should have to pay the cost, not the general taxpayers or the homeowners who pay the bonds with higher property taxes.

So we think that also needs to be tightened up a little bit. Issues that were raised with what constitutes affordable housing, there have been issues raised about that. It goes up to 150 percent of the AMI and there's some concern that have been raised and the author has agreed to meet with and to discuss what might be the appropriate definition, what might some of the narrowing of that particular issue, and finally, actually, I think there's two more finallies.

The measure doesn't define parcel tax. Again, easy definition. The definition that we use for parcel tax in other instances have important safeguards which have exemptions for seniors and SSI recipients.

So if we're going to use parcel tax the way that we normally do, they should have the guardrails to ensure that those safeguards for seniors and SSI recipients are maintained. And then finally, there may be an issue about accountability measures with the audit. The report goes to the State Auditor, but that may not say what exactly the State Auditor is supposed to do with it, and local government also has to post the audit publicly on their website in order to be able to notify the public.

This is all about transparency. We want to make sure that happens as well. So with those, I'm going to be supporting the bill today. I think it's a really important measure that helps local government achieve some of the goals that they have and allows them to go out to the voters, have a discussion about this, and if the voters believe that this is a good use of an amendment, then they'll support it. So I respectfully ask for your aye vote today.

Thank you, Senator Caballero, and it's nice to have you back with us.

Thank you.

I see microphones up from Senator Niello, Dahle, Stern, and Nguyen. Begin next with Senator Niello.

Thank you, Mr. President. And might I offer you look real snappy today. I rise in opposition to this bill. I grant the point of my colleague from Berkeley. This bill does not raise taxes. That's correct. But it does make it easier to raise taxes, does leave it in the voters' hands. But there are good reasons why there are supermajority requirements on some tax measures.

My colleague from San Francisco made the comment in his presentation of the bill that taxes designated to a specific purpose are easier to pass. That's right. That means, to the contrary, general taxes that can be used on anything are harder for voters to vote on. So it only makes good policy and tax setting sense that there would be a higher threshold for tax for special purpose taxes. That's why that was initiated in the first place.

The other issue regarding a supermajority is that with regard to parcel taxes, property taxes or the approval of bonds that end up being paid by parcel taxes, not all taxpayers are property owners. And it's the exercise of that old phrase: 'don't tax me, don't tax thee. Go tax that guy behind the tree.' It's very easy to impose taxes on somebody else and that's the reason for the supermajority that's required on property-based assessments. Now the question is this is still a supermajority, but it's only five percent.

The existing is two-thirds. And I would suggest that for the protection of taxpayers and for the protection of this state with regard to taxes being one of the highest taxed states in the country that it would only make sense to defeat this measure and maintain the existing supermajority on those taxes.

Senator Dahle.

Thank you, Mr. President and Members. I too, rise in opposition. I'm going to be really short and to the point. The reason we have a housing problem in California is because this Legislature has passed all kinds of laws that make it very difficult for housing, number one. Number two, this bill is a direct impact on Proposition 13. This is a parcel fee. That's what this is. Prop 13 capped that and allowed you.

So I want to just make, the last comment I want to make, the great Senator from Riverside who was concerned about his mother-in-law losing her home, he should be more concerned if he votes for this because eventually it'll get down to where she's going to be losing, her property taxes can go up if this kind of legislation is passed. I urge a no vote on ACA 1.

Thank you, Senator Dahle. Senator Stern.

Thank you, Members. I think there's been a sort of presumption in this discussion, at least from the opposition that somehow citizens are capable of being duped, that they won't be able to figure out what's going on here, that they're not smart enough to know how this is going to work. I think there's sort of a cynicism wrapped in that argument that I just don't share. But I think the bill indulges that point and says 'let's be skeptical.'

Let's not just say, let government say 'trust us,' but let's have citizens oversee government. And not just citizens, but independent auditors. So for the first time in what I understand our state's history at a local level, we will have independent audits annually--city, county, special districts--on any of the funds slated for expenditure here.

And not just that independent audit but then submitted to the California State Auditor, and not just to the California State Auditor but also made public, and not just made public but overseen by a Citizens Oversight Commission that has to be constituted by real people who may not--don't have a lobbyist, who are just taxpayers and average citizens, and they're actually given financial training to go do that oversight so they can think for themselves too. All those stage gates are brand new innovations in law.

I truly see this as a taxpayer protection measure as much as it is an infrastructure and growth measure. This is to me how we should be making policy when it comes to taxes and empowering citizens and not always just trusting ourselves or affirming what we think is efficient. So I think this should satisfy both the fiscal skeptics and those who want to build, and they're actually one and the same. We can do both. So with that, I respectfully ask for your aye vote.

Senator Nguyen.

Thank you, Mr. President. I rise in opposition of ACA 1. This is a direct attack on Prop 13. It's a direct attack on those who are hanging by the thread to keep owning their home. I represent--90 percent of my district is in Orange County. We've had, throughout the years, there are areas--and even in Orange County our voters have approved tax increases--and there are areas where they've said enough is enough.

The current system works and it works because it allows people who don't own a home to eventually reach that American Dream. Allowing this to move forward, all we're saying is, 'those of you who own a home or those of who you want to own a home, you're never going to get there.' Owning a home in California today is very difficult, if not impossible. For most people, for our children and next generation, it's a pipeline dream now. It's not there anymore.

And more partial tax, one after another gets onto the property tax. And remember, not every voter who's going to be voting on these measures are property tax owners. So it's always easier to again, like my colleague from Sacramento stated, 'it's always easier to have that other person pay for the tax and not yourself.' I understand the need for infrastructure, the need for housing. We pay the highest gas taxes in the nation.

Just this week I've asked us to suspend the gas tax just by dollar and it was rejected on this floor. That gas tax was promised to the voters it would go to infrastructure. Now we're also allowing it to now have individual cities and counties that option as well. When is enough is enough? And so I'm asking you, as you're casting your vote today, to think about the future generation. Is owning a home possible anymore?

And currently, those who own a home, are they going to start losing the home once this passes? So I respectfully ask for a no vote.

The last microphone up. Senator Alvarado-Gil.

Thank you, Mr. President. I will keep my comments short as well. I just wanted to acknowledge that I will not be able to support today ACA 1. I really wrestled with this mainly due to the fact that I represent thirteen counties and I have a wide variety of opposition and support on this issue.

But what I will say is that although I listen to my constituents and I hear them on everything that they're saying, there's one piece for me that I have to underscore, and that's hypocrisy. So for me, even in today's Senate, for us to pass this vote, we're not simply going to weigh on the simple majority. We are going to require at least over 67 percent of the legislators here today to pass this.

So if we are asking for standards to be weakened or lessened for our jurisdictions and for our voters, our constituents, why are we not holding ourselves to those same standards? In fact, in our bylaws, there are some votes that we cannot pass without over 87 percent of a majority. So for those reasons, and for the reasons that I'm keeping my constituents in mind with this, I'm not going to vote for today and for many of the reasons that were already spoken today. Thank you.

Thank you, Senator. I see a microphone up from Senator Grove.

Thank you, Madam President. In deep respect for my colleague from Stock and I will make this very, very brief, I just want to tell you, there's an article in the Sacramento Bee this morning that talks about how affordable housing in this state is 670,000 dollars. I can't afford a 670,000 dollar home, and I think the homeless people on our streets can't afford a 670,000 dollar home. And if you ask people in this state, 670,000 dollars for a home is on the high end price, especially in my district.

Allstate, State Farm, Geico, and other insurance companies are moving out of this state. They can't get the rate increases and the things that they need from the Department of Insurance. We have a huge insurance problem, and even if you could own a home for 670,000 dollars, you would have to pay cash for it because you wouldn't get a mortgage company to finance a loan if you couldn't insure the property, and insurance is very difficult to get in this state.

Talk about the FAIR Plan, but who can afford that? You could just put your 2,000, 3,000 dollars a month you have on insurance, put in a savings account, and in a few years, you'd be able to pay off your home. It's just ridiculous that policies out of this building continue to increase the cost of living and then to pass a burden on to taxpayers to let them increase taxes on individuals who really can't afford those tax increases where we become highest poverty rate in the state.

We were just labeled that again this morning. We retained that title for another year. And again, it's because of policies that passed out of this building. Please forgive me, my colleague from Stockton, for speaking so long. I respectfully ask for a no vote.

Thank you, Senator Grove. All debate having ceased, Senator Wiener, would you like to close this debate?

Senator Wiener.

There you go. Yes. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, colleagues, for this debate. I just want to briefly say something about housing, which I know a little something about. We've actually done to my colleague from Murrieta, we've done quite a bit of work using the regulatory obstacles to building housing. And my counterpart in the Assembly is here, and we work very hard on that. And I want to thank the Senator for Murrieta, for his vote yesterday on a Bill that did exactly that.

But we also know that public investment in housing is critical. And California, with support of the federal government, used to invest dramatically in housing for Low income people. It stopped a few decades ago, and that's when homelessness started to explode. And so we should empower our communities to invest in housing to reduce homelessness, to stabilize working class and Low income families in their homes. But fundamentally, ACA one is about democracy, and it's about whether we should have anything close to majority rule.

It's about whether we think it's fair and appropriate. And a good result when 64% of people in a high fire hazard zone, when 64% of people vote in favor of a measure to Fund new fire stations, 64% that's usually any of us would be thrilled to get 64% in our reelection. We would think that that is a voter mandate. But that's a failure in California because of the absurd two thirds vote. And that's why the firefighters are one of the co sponsors of this Bill. I respectfully ask for an aye vote.

Allen aye. Alvarado-Gil no. Archuleta aye. Ashby aye. Atkins aye. Becker aye. Blakespear aye. Bradford aye. Caballero aye. Cortese aye. Dahle no. Dodd aye. Durazo aye. Eggman aye. Glazer. Gonzalez aye. Grove no. Hurtado aye. Jones no. Laird aye. Limon aye. McGuire aye. Menjivar aye. Min no. Newman. Nguyen no. Niello no. Ochoa Bogh no. Padilla aye. Portantino aye. Roth aye. Rubio aye. Seyarto no. Skinner aye. Smallwood-Cuevas aye. Stern aye. Umberg aye. Wahab aye. Wiener aye. Wilk no.

Please call the absent Members.

Glazer aye. Newman.

On a vote of 29 to 10, the measure passes. Members, we're going to move next to file item 12. This is Senate Bill 799. Following that, we're going to move back to the Assembly third reading, beginning at file item 85, 89 and 90. So we're going to start next on file item number 12. SB 799 by Senator Portantino.

Secretary, please read.

Senate Bill 799 by Senator Portantino an act relating to unemployment compensation and making an appropriation therefore.

Senator Portantino.

Thank you, Mr. President. And Members, I rise to present SB 799, which would provide Unemployment Insurance to striking workers. Let me be clear. Those striking workers would have to be on strike for two weeks before being eligible. Between 2012 and 2022, only two strikes lasted beyond two weeks, representing a very small fraction of the overall number of people who file for Unemployment Insurance.

That's significant because people have raised legitimate concerns about the Fund itself. And the impact on that Fund would be very minor relative to this Bill, but the impact to the individual on strike would be significant. We have seen rhetoric out there where people say, well, when people lose their house, lose their apartment, not be able to put food on their table, they'll be more malleable at the bargaining table. That's an untenable conversation. We want people to be respected.

We want people to be able to pay their rent. We want people to be able to put food on their table during a strike or not during a strike. It's the right thing to do. We see significant unrest in today's labor market. Why? Because the economy is changing. Business models are changing. We're coming out of COVID We have this significant unrest that has manifested itself in writer strikes, in hotel worker strikes, in public employee strikes, both city and county strikes, in hospitals, nurses frontline, healthcare workers.

Why is there unrest? Because the models are changing. But the conversation and the worker dignity protections haven't changed to meet that new model. It's happening now. So let's inject a modicum of stability into the conversation, a modicum of decency and respect for that striking worker. And again, the conversations around the Fund are legitimate. And this conversation over SB 799 has actually put the Fund at the forefront of the conversation. And so we're going to deal with that piece as well going forward.

And I think that's the appropriate thing to do. But let's remember, when somebody goes on strike, it's not a romantic thing. It's hard on that family. I remember my own mother in law talking about my father in law's strike a decade after the strike, about the impact it had on the family. It was hard for them to get over it. It was hard for them to go through it. We should provide Unemployment Insurance for those striking workers beyond two weeks and I respectfully ask for an aye vote.

Senator Dahle.

Thank you, Mr. President and Members. I am surprised that we even have a Bill of this magnitude here in these chambers. I don't know how many of you do a payroll, I'm assuming not very many, a private payroll every two weeks. But I do. I want to give you a little history about unemployment. As somebody who actually worked for a business and got laid off and had bills to pay, unemployment was there for me.

Unfortunately, since I've been a business owner, my employees have never had to use unemployment. But I pay into unemployment in our business. And in 2008, we had the Great Recession. President Obama extended unemployment benefits up to 90 weeks. Now, there's a Fund that we all pay into, the employer pays into. It's called unemployment tax.

And that Fund was raised to pay back to make sure our Fund was full because we borrowed money from the federal government to issue those unemployment checks for up to 90 weeks, typically was six weeks that you were able to get unemployment benefits. 2015, we finally got our Fund back, paid off to the federal government loan that we had. And then COVID came and we had the whole nation unemployed. And in California, we had unemployment problems we knew about in 2008, didn't fix it.

The Department is ran so poorly in California that we had people in prison getting unemployment. And now the Fund is $30 billion in debt. 30 billion. And now who pays for that? If you don't have employees, you don't pay for that. But if you have employees, you pay for that. That's me, my wife, and our business that pays for that. And the thousands of businesses in California that pay for that unemployment Fund and unemployment is great. It's there for you when you actually lose your job.

But this Bill, what does it do? It allows somebody who has a job, has a job to go on strike and get an unemployment claim or get unemployment benefits. That's not what unemployment was made for. It was made for people who actually lost their jobs, not for people to go on strike. So essentially, the business owner, myself, would be paying a worker to go on strike to negotiate against me. Think about that. This is the most crazy thing I've ever seen.

And I can't even get my head around the logic of why we're here even having this discussion. This is a labor dispute, not an unemployment dispute. No wonder the California people in business have named this as a job killer. It's totally a job killer. There's no way that you can come up with a logical reason to give somebody unemployment who has a job, who decides to go on strike.

Members, I mentioned earlier when we had the budget, about the fact that there wasn't one thing in the budget that helped a California business stay in California. Not one thing. I have not seen a Bill in the six or 700 bills that we've seen last couple of days that helps me stay in business in California. Not one. Plenty of bills that raise my electricity rates come after unemployment. This Bill many other bills that hurt my business.

I compete against businesses outside of California, and they're shipping products into California cheaper than I can provide that product. Here in California, you cannot have a strong public sector unless you have a strong private sector. And Members, businesses are leaving California because of pieces of legislation like this. Why don't for once, we do something to keep a business in California that lays the golden egg that raises the $300 million we spend every year. Members, this is a horrible Bill. This is a bad idea.

This is going to hurt California businesses. Every one of those little small businesses in your community is going to be hammered by this if their people go on strike. Let's not set a precedent in California and take the money that business owners pay and use it to pay employees of theirs to strike against them. I urge a no vote on this Bill.

I have Senator Jones, followed by Senator Becker and Senator Neelo. Senator Jones, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Mr. President. I also rise in opposition to SB 799 for two reasons. First, I am concerned about anything that will add to our UI Fund and add taxes for California's employers. As has been very eloquently described by our previous speaker. California employers are already going to see tax increases in the next 10 years. And as we presently sit at around an $18 billion debt, I cannot support a Bill that's going to add to that debt, Members. Think about that.

We owe the federal government already today, we owe the federal government $18 billion of Unemployment Insurance that we have to pay back. We don't get to just write it off. I've heard some of my colleagues mention that.

I'm about to do an, "Are you kidding me here?" I've heard some of my colleagues mention that the UI Fund debt is already so large, how much could this Bill really matter by adding to it? But having a lot of debt does not make more debt any less wrong. I would propose that we'd have our former colleague, Senator Waikowski, come back and do a bankruptcy lesson for us all. I cannot support a Bill that will add debt for employers who are completely uninvolved in the strikes.

Second, I am concerned about the EDD's ability to even do this right now. We have all discussed at length EDD's failings during the pandemic and heard from our constituents about them as well. And I know every single one of you got calls from your constituents about how poorly EDD was doing processing unemployment during the pandemic. My office alone processed over 4000 constituents requests for help with Unemployment Insurance through the EDD, and I know you did as well.

EDD is presently trying to straighten out its systems and get things right. And I can't support adding more difficulty to that plate at a time when they, truly unemployed, are struggling for their benefits. I've heard several of our Democratic colleagues from this floor share with me that they have concerns about this Bill.

So I hope that as a result of your considering this over the week, the points that are being made from people that are directly affected by this, knowing that the EDD isn't prepared to handle this, and understanding that we owe the federal government $18 billion in debt, that you will join me in voting no. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Senator Jones. Next up, Senator Becker, followed by Senator Niello and Senator Seyarto.

Thank you, Mr. President. There is a real need to support striking workers, almost often the most vulnerable Californians among us who simply are asking for living wages and safe working conditions. Many of us have been on a picket line. We know it's not glorious and we know it's a lot of hard work. My mom was a union negotiating team and no one wants to go on strike. As our good friend said, nobody wants to go on strike.

I did spend my first two years here in the Legislature on the JLAC Committee, the Joint Legislative Audit Committee where we worked on EDD and raised a lot of concerns with the Unemployment Insurance Fund and the damage that we did to that Fund during COVID So I do wish there was better data to understand this and how will impact our UI Fund and to look and see how the models in New York and New Jersey are working.

And before we take this step but I am inclined to support our workers. But one thing is clear we are in desperate need of unemployment reform and I hope we can start that conversation at earnest in the fall. I, for one, am very willing to engage in that conversation. I've talked to some folks in both sides who I think are willing to do it but that is clear going forward. I hope we have that conversation in the fall.

Thank you Senator Becker. Senator Niello.

Thank you, Mr. President. I had put my mic down because my points were kind of already made but my friend from Bakersfield inspired me to redundancy. But the fundamental point of the problem with this Bill is that it turns the Unemployment Insurance benefit system on its head and by virtue of that it makes no sense.

So it was stated that the cost will not be significant but the consequence to the striking worker is. Well, first of all, Unemployment Insurance was intended was imposed to take care of people who lost their job through no fault of their own. That's not what's going on in a strike that's, number one, turned on its head. Another issue is that my colleague from Bieber complained that in a situation like that he could be compensating an employee for negotiating against him.

That's bad enough, but it gets worse. He also mentioned small businesses that are going to be small businesses whose contribution to the Unemployment Insurance Fund is going to be increased just by these additional costs. We're already, however many billions in debt and trying to make that up. We should have had more in the budget this year about that. But I digress. But the problem is smaller businesses, businesses of five or 10 employees.

I would suggest that the cost to them of these increased contributions to Unemployment Insurance is not insignificant and they are merely innocent bystanders to a strike that might be going on a thousand miles away from them. I urge you no vote.

Senator Seyarto followed by Senator Roth and Senator Grove. Senator Seyarto.

Thank you, Mr. President. I rise in opposition to SB 799. As stated before, getting laid off is a not voluntary thing to do. Nobody signs up to get laid off. And that's what unemployment is for. Quitting your job is a voluntary thing that unemployment does not cover when you quit your job. Going on strike is also a voluntary thing, and that's not what unemployment is meant for.

But if you look at the negotiating dynamics that this causes is essentially what you're doing is you're putting the thumb on the scale. And I understand why, but really you're taking the incentive of the worker to come off strike and get back to work. The worker has a stake in those negotiations, and so does the employer. And if we're taking the incentive away from one or the other, that creates an imbalance in the negotiating process.

And when that happens, you don't have a win win negotiation result at the end. You have a win lose that serves to weaken our businesses. It serves to disincentivize people from even doing business in California, and it hurts our small businesses. So I urge you to vote no on this measure and stop trying to put the thumb on the scales. Allow our collective bargaining processes to work out there. That's what we gave them the opportunity to do.

We can't keep running back to us to fix the problem because they don't want to do the collective bargaining process. Thank you.

Thank you, Senator Seyarto. Senator Roth.

Thank you, Mr. President. You know, having practiced in this in related areas as a lawyer for many, many years before this gig, I thought I'd try to set the record straight with respect to the current status of the Unemployment Insurance Fund and Employers' obligations with respect to that, because we certainly need to separate the current state and condition of the Fund from this particular know. Frankly, you'd need a pandemic sized layoff to create a similar situation with respect to the UI Fund.

Now, it's true that the employers in this state will have their quarterly Unemployment Insurance premiums rise to pay off that significant pandemic related debt absent some infusion of cash from the state or cash from somewhere else.

And you can certainly debate the wisdom of this Bill from a policy perspective because there certainly are issues with regard to that since we were somewhat changing the rules that have been in place in the nation since 1935 with the passage of the National Labor Relations Act and the dynamic between labor and management with respect to collective bargaining.

But as to a particular or specific employer and a strike, the layoff will only impact that employer's quarterly UI contributions or the UI account, perhaps if the number of strikers associated with that particular employer is high vis a vis the workforce, or if the employer's prior layoff experience is significant. But the current State of the Unemployment Insurance Fund and whether we owe 17 billion or 18 billion or $20 billion is not particularly relevant to this Bill. So I thought I'd let you know that I will be supporting the Bill today.

Thank you, Senator Roth, Senator Grove.

Thank you, Mr. President. I rise in opposition of SB 799 colleagues. Being an employer like my colleague from Bieber, without us in the employment industry, like employers in the state, in the employers in your district, whether they're small or large, you would not have one dime, one penny to spend in this capital. And I know you guys all say I pay taxes too. Yeah.

But the original money that came from small business or businesses that create jobs in this state came to this capital, which pays for the things that we allocate resources for and that pay, our paychecks, our staff's paychecks. It's not like government generates that money. Businesses generate that money that's collected either by payroll tax, property tax fees, permits to build a building. I mean, it's almost $14,000 for permits, just even before you put a nail in the first two X four that goes down.

So all of it is done or provided to the State of California. Every penny generated comes from a business you can know, like, you know, I pay taxes, but the check you get from the State of California was originated from a business who sent their resources up here for you all to spend by trust Fund is overdrafted. Like my colleague from Bieber said, it's overdrafted. It was overdrafted in the past and it took us, I think, seven years to pay it off.

And now you have an unfunded liability. This is just an extension of a tax. And people don't call it that. And it's a retroactive tax. And the reason why I say that is, two years ago, we priced a product in a competitive market and we said, in my business, this is what we're going to charge for this product. The same way my colleague from Bieber, in a competitive market, probably prices his grain or his seed.

And then two years go by and we paid on our taxes for our employees prior to the two years going by, the 6.9% on the first $7,000 that's earned by the employees, this is 100% employer funded. No contribution comes from the employees in any way, shape, or form for Unemployment Insurance.

It's set up like my colleague from Riverside, Murrieta, said, that it was to ensure that employers came with good faith so that if somebody lost their job without having a fault of their own that their compensation would be covered for a period of time so that they could be taken care of while they look for another job.

The UI Trust Fund after you've priced your product and you've covered FICA, Federal Food and City, EDD Workers Comp Liability, and a myriad of other things that we have to protect for in order to give somebody a job so they can provide for their family, we price that at the rate for Unemployment Insurance for that particular year. Then you fast forward two years and you have an unfunded liability on this UI Fund.

Now, instead of getting a food attack reduction for your taxes that you would have had paid a year before or two years before for this employee that you calculated the percentage of your profit on to run your business and pay your taxes, you are now going to have to pay an additional tax. We're going to have to pay off every employer in the State of California is going to have to pay off this $18 to $30 billion.

There's no number out there yet, but $18 to $30 billion that is generated from a two year ago price structure, if that makes sense. So this is a retroactive tax on businesses. And businesses are already struggling in this state. They were shut down during COVID Thank God. The Governor made a statement the other day that said that he wished he would have done things differently. I don't know if letting business stay open would be one of them, but I would hope it would have.

So I just think that continuing to tax our businesses specifically when the employers have zero contribution and skin in the game for a tax that is 100% employer funded and letting those employers draw down those benefits for the opposite of what the unemployment tax the unemployment tax was originated for, so that it wasn't for no fault of our own. It's a choice to go on strike.

And I agree wholeheartedly with my colleague from Bieber that you're just going to be paying your employees to bargain against you, which puts you at a complete, whole disadvantage in this bargaining situation. And frankly, colleagues, I'm going to say it I think many people are thinking about it: the fourth branch of government in this Capitol building has a little bit too much power this year, and I respectfully ask for a no vote.

Thank you, Senator Grove. I have Senator Padilla, followed by Senator Durazo. Senator Padilla.

Thank you very much, Mr. President. I rise in support, and I was not planning to rise and speak to the matter. However, I think it's important in this debate that a couple of the assertions being made by our distinguished colleagues go answered first and foremost to one of our colleagues here. I think it's absolutely appropriate and correct to remember that we need to distinguish the policy question before this body from the fundamental deficiencies in the structure of UI and the system itself.

That is something we will need to grapple with regardless. And I think that that's an important fact to call out. Again, there may even ultimately be questions as to whether this is the appropriate vehicle to address the legitimate question before us.

But as a matter of public policy, the real question this Bill presents is whether or not it is fair and equitable to allow folks who work hard, who are exercising their rights under the laws of this nation, in this state who are exercising their collective bargaining rights to avail themselves of UI in these circumstances. I would think that, as we do with many bills in this body, we have to weigh the competing legitimate values that we're posed with all the time.

And I think when we do that here, we have to come to the conclusion that the answer to that is yes. And it should be a resounding yes. Mr. President and colleagues, the assertion that I want to dress myself to is to remind us all that almost in every situation when workers exercise their right to strike, the power dynamic is almost never in favor of the workers. It is in favor of the employer. That is why we have the National Labor Relations Act. That is why we have a body of laws that protect workers in this state. This one should be added. I respectfully ask for an aye vote.

Thank you, Senator Padilla, Senator Durazo.

Thank you very much. I think for colleagues who are making a statement about this would be an incentive for working people to go out and stay out. Really has no basis in reality. I don't know how many people here have either gone out on strike or been involved in a strike, but it is a very, very difficult decision to do it's when you really believe to sacrifice your income that will be coming into your family to take care of your family, because something very serious is at stake.

Either the wages they're threatening to cut, the wages they're threatening to cut, health care, threatening to cut a pension, something that would justify the sacrifice of giving up their income, the thumb on the scale already exists. And when people make that very difficult decision, it's really not a free decision. It's what they absolutely have to do. UI benefits are a safety net for people. They don't take it lightly. It's not going to incentivize anyone.

The amount that they get would be so small, it barely would cover providing food for their family. And yes, the UI spurs economic activity and generates revenue for small businesses. I've seen it. I know it. That's in reality, what happens. It recycles funding into that community. The UI program has existed primarily to help stabilize local economy when working people are out of work. And it's up to us to add to that definition of being out of work.

The human right that working people have to be able to collectively bargain and say, I need something better for me and my families. I strongly urge and aye vote thank you.

Thank you. Senator Durazo. Any further Senator wish to be heard on this matter? Seeing no further microphones up, Senator Portantino, you may close this debate.

Thank you, Mr. President and colleagues. I appreciate the robust conversation that we've had and the comments on both sides. Clearly, as articulated by my colleague from Riverside. The Fund is a separate issue from the policy. And to speak specifically to the policy, this is a change. But I would take exception to the notion that every worker is faced.

The decision is taken out of the hands of every worker, because fundamentally, that's what's changed in our economy today. When AI comes in and replaces a worker, that worker isn't choosing to be replaced. So it's a valid conversation for that worker to say, what's my role going forward? If you're contemplating an AI replacement for me, that's a valid conversation. As a business model changes, it affects the worker.

And so what this does is provide a little bit of security and safety for that worker during that difficult decision. And as my colleague from Los Angeles mentioned, it was intended to help local economies by providing a modicum of income to that family on strike so they can survive. And so that's what's at stake here. This is a moment in time where the marketplace has changed significantly and we should look at how we function, our laws to meet those changes.

And so that's why I chose to author this Bill, because of this moment in time coming out of the pandemic and embracing that unrest with a solution that we can make to help people is worthy of an aye vote. And I respectfully ask for an aye vote today. Thank you.

All debate having ceased, Secretary please call the roll.

Allen. Alvarado-Gil no. Archuleta aye. Ashby aye. Atkins aye. Becker. Blakespear aye. Bradford. Caballero aye. Cortese aye. Dahle no. Dodd no. Durazo aye. Eggman no. Glazer no. Gonzalez aye. Grove no. Hurtado aye. Jones no. Laird aye. Limon aye. McGuire aye. Menjivar aye. Min aye. Newman. Nguyen no. Niello no. Ochoa Bogh no. Padilla aye. Portantino aye. Roth aye. Rubio. Seyarto no. Skinner aye. Smallwood-Cuevas aye. Stern aye. Wiener aye. Wilk no.

Please call the absent Members.

Allen aye. Becker aye. Bradford aye. Newman. Rubio aye. Umberg aye.

Secretary please call the absentees one last time.

Newman.

Members, we're going to now move to the Assembly bills on our floor. They begin at file item 858-589-9091. Floor authors for those are choa bog Dodd of Robrado Gill. So we begin with Assembly Bill 988, file item 85. Secretary, please read

On a vote of 27 to 12, the measure passes.

Assembly Bill 988 by Assembly Member Mathis and acquire to mental health

Senator Ochoa-Bogh the floor is yours.

Mr. President and Members, Assembly Bill 988 would require in any entity seeking funds from the 988 Safe Suicide Behavioral Health Crisis Service Fund to report the number of individuals who have identified as veterans or active military personnel in its annual expenditure and outcome report. The Bill will provide data about how California's veterans are faring and whether they are aware of available resources. I strongly support data gathering because, armed with facts, government entities will be better able to help the veteran population.

With mental health issues and hopefully slow the current veteran suicide crisis. The Bill passed through both houses with no no votes. I respectfully ask for an aye vote.

Any discussion on this matter, Senator Archuleta?

Thank you, Mr. President. I stand as the chair of the Military and Veterans Committee to say this is so very, very important for our nation, for our State of California, who we love and support our veterans. And I think we realize that friends and family who have men and women serving, they've come back from Iraq and Afghanistan are right now with PTSD and they're falling every single day to suicide.

And some of the bills that my colleague from San Francisco has put upon us to help with the drug enforcement, some way to help these veterans, I applaud that. And AB 988 surely goes in that direction to acknowledge the number of suicides that are happening to our veterans. And I urge an aye vote.

Thank you. Senator Archuleta. Anyone else wishes to speak on this? Seeing none. Senator Ochoa Bogh may close.

I respectfully ask for an aye vote.

Thank you. Normally, this would be eligible for unanimous roll call, but we have not established one yet, so hope we might do it right here. So, secretary, please call the roll

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

On a vote of 40 to zero, the measure passes and we have established our unanimous roll call. Next up, Members, is file item 89. This is Assembly Bill 1065. The floor manager is Senator Dodd. Secretary, please read

please call the absent Members?

Rubio aye.

Assembly Bill 1065 by Assembly Member Jim Patterson, ENaC relating to communications.

Senator Dodd.

Mr. President and members, I rise to present Assembly Bill 1065, which makes wireless broadband projects eligible for state grants that fund broadband deployment to connect unserved households. This bill has enjoyed bipartisan support, I respectfully ask for your aye vote.

Any discussion on this legislation? Any further discussion? Seeing none. This is eligible for unanimous roll call without objection. Ayes 40, no zero. The measure passes. There's an objection, case. Sorry, I missed that. Secretary, please call the roll.

Allen. Aye. Alvarado-Gil. Aye. Archuleta. Aye. Ashby. Aye. Atkins. Aye. Becker. Aye. Blakespear. Aye. Bradford. Aye. Caballero. Cortese. Aye. Dahle. Aye. Dodd. Aye. Durazo. No. Eggman. Aye. Glazer. Aye. Gonzalez. No. Grove. Aye. Hurtado. Aye. Jones. Aye. Laird. Aye. Limon. McGuire. Menjivar. Min. Aye. Newman. Aye. Nguyen. Niello. Aye. Ochoa Bogh. Aye. Padilla. Aye. Portantino. Aye. Roth. Aye. Rubio. Aye. Seyarto. Aye. Skinner. Smallwood-Cuevas. Aye. Stern. Aye. Umberg. Aye. Wahab. Aye. Wiener. Wilk. Aye.

Secretary, please call the absent members.

Caballero. No. Limon. McGuire. Menjivar. Nguyen. Aye. Skinner. Wiener. Aye. Ashby. Aye to no. Stern. Aye to no. Menjivar, no.

Members, we're going to call the role one last time, please. Everyone's attention. Secretary, please call the absent members.

Limon. McGuire. Skinner.

On a vote of 31 to six, the measure passes.

Alright, Members, we're going to return to our work here on the Senate Floor. We're going to begin--resume--File Item 90. This is Assembly Bill 88. Floor manager is Senator Alvarado-Gil. Secretary, please read.

Assembly Bill 88 by Assembly Member Sanchez in act relating to crime victims.

Senator Alvarado-Gil.

Thank you, Mr. President. I rise to present Assembly Bill 88 on behalf of Assemblymember Sanchez. This Bill will help crime victims their next Akin and family Members meaningfully exercise their right to attend parole and resentencing hearings. This is a great measure that has received bipartisan support and I respectfully ask. For an Aye vote.

any discussion or debate on this matter, seeing none this is eligible for a unanimous roll call. Seeing no objections, ayes 40, no zero, the measure passes. We're going to skip for the moment file item 91 and move to file item 92. This is Assembly Bill 1420 by Assembly Member Berman. Secretary, please read

Assembly Bill 1420 by Assembly Member Berman and act relating to Firearms.

Senator Blake Spear.

Thank you. President and colleagues. AB 1420 ensures the Department of Justice has the authority to inspect and write citations for any violations related to the sale, transfer and storage of firearms. California has some of the most unwaveringly strong firearms laws in the nation and these laws save lives. Having these laws is sensationally important, but equally important is ensuring that they are industriously enforced. For these reasons, I spiritedly urge an aye vote. Thank you.

Thank you. Senator Blakespear, discussion on this matter? I see a microphone from Senator Dahle.

Thank you. I was actually prepared to support this Bill, but the emails are going to be sent to the Department of Justice. And just recently, a couple of years ago, the Department of Justice let out everybody's confidential information who had a concealed carry in California. And for that reason, I won't be able to support this Bill. I'm worried that same type of confidential information will be exposed again.

Any further discussion on this legislation, Senator Alvarado Gill, you may close. zero, excuse me, Senator Blakespear, you're the floor manager, you may close.

I respectfully ask for your aye vote. Secretary, please call the roll.

Allen, Aye. Alvarado-Gil, Aye. Archuletta, Aye. Ashby, Aye. Atkins, Aye. Becker, Blakespear, Aye. Bradford, Aye. Caballaro, Aye. Cortese, Aye. Dahle, No. Dodd, Aye. Durazo, Aye. Eggman, Glazer, Aye. Gonzalez, Aye. Grove, No. Hurtado, Aye. Jones, No. Laird, Aye. Limon, Aye. McGuire, Aye. Menjivar, Aye. Min, Aye. Newman, Aye. Nguyen, Niello, No. Ochoa Bogh, Aye. Padilla, Aye. Portantino, Roth, Aye. Rubio, Aye. Seyarto, No. Skinner, Aye. Smallwood-Cuevas, Aye. Stern, Aye. Umberg, Wahab, Aye. Wiener, Aye. Wilk Aye.

Please call the absent memebers.

Becker, Aye. Eggman, Aye. Nguyen. Portantino. Umberg, Aye.

Senator Durazo, the floor is yours.

On a vote of 33 to five to measure passes, we're going to move next to file item 93, Assembly Bill 1317. Secretary, please read

Assembly Bill 1317 by Assembly Member Wendy Carillo an act relating to tenancy.

Thank you, Mr. President. AB 1370... 1317 will require property owners of new multifamily apartments across 10 counties to lease parking as a separate and optional expense. Commonly referred to as unbundled parking. Tenants deserve the flexibility to pay for the number of parking spots they need, and not through the cost of their rent, subsidize the cost of parking spaces for others, especially when carless tenants are often the poorest amongst us. Unbud bundled parking decreases carbon emissions and vehicle miles traveled while increasing transit ridership and providing tenants with a discount on their rent. Moreover, unbundling parking can free up spaces that other residents need, reducing pressure for a scarce amenity. This bill is well-tailored and cost-effective to alleviate the state's dual housing and climate crisis, all while giving tenants greater flexibility and promoting equity. Thank you, and I respectfully ask for your vote.

I see microphones up from Senators Ashby, Dahle and Wiener. We'll begin with Senator Ashby.

Thank you. Colleagues, I think the premise of this bill is a good one. The idea that the author brought forward, and we talked about it in one of the committees is that if you uncouple parking with the cost of an apartment, that you may reduce the cost of apartments. But I will just say this to you that may or may not necessarily be true. And while I think it would be a good study, the real problem with this bill is that it selects 10 counties, including my own, and says that it is a pilot project. However, there is no end date and there is no report back. So in perpetuity, we would be making one set of rules for 10 counties and a different set of rules for 48 other counties without having the opportunity to come back and see if it works. And since it includes my county, I'm going to vote no today, and I urge a no vote.

Senator Dahle

Thank you, Mr. President. My comments go right along, sort of with my colleague from Sacramento. This includes Shasta County, where we do not have mass transit. It's a very rural county in California. And I actually went to the author and said, "Why are you including my county?" It doesn't make sense for my county, where we have... you know, if you unbundle the parking, that's how you pay for parking. Part of that is part of the parking when you build. And she said, "Because I want to have a diverse package of counties." Not because it made sense, but because she wanted to have a diverse package of counties. So I too cannot support this bill because it includes a county that is very rural, and maybe it works in San Francisco and Los Angeles and maybe even here in Sacramento, I don't know. But it surely doesn't work in Shasta County and the author was unable to take it out. So I respectfully ask for a no vote.

Senator Wiener.

Thank you, Mr. President. I rise in support of AB 1317 and thank the author for bringing this important measure forward. This is honestly about choice, about a resident's choice about whether or not they want to pay for parking. If they want to pay for parking, they can pay for parking. But if it's not unbundled, then they're being forced to pay for parking even if they don't have a car, even if they don't want to. And it raises their housing costs, and that undermines the individual choice of a resident to decide whether they want to pay for parking, which can be very expensive. This is not some sort of radical departure. Nearly half of new apartments are already unbundling their parking. This is a trend and this will help facilitate that trend. Unbundled parking has long been implemented not just in San Francisco, but other cities. The UCLA Center for Sustainable Communities estimates nearly a 6% reduction in future vehicle miles traveled based on that policy. UCLA also found that households that do not have... that have forced parking, that's not unbundled, drive nearly 4,000 miles more than folks who live in places with unbundled parking. They spend more on gas, they emit more carbon emissions than other households. And again, they don't even have the choice to unbundle that parking. This is a climate-friendly measure and it is about the choice of these residents. And I respectfully ask for an aye vote.

Any further discussion on this measure? Senator Niello.

Thank you, Mr. President. Question of the floor manager.

Senator Wiener, will you take a question? Senator Durazo, how about you? Would you take a question?

Senator Wiener will take it for you.

Perhaps I just ask you, Mr. President.

Perhaps you may, but no, I think there's a yes there by the floor managers. Senator Niello, please ask your question.

Thank you, through the president. I'm wondering if the author of the bill talked to the counties selected in the bill.

Senator Durazo, do you have an answer to that?

Mr. President, I don't have an answer to that, I'm sorry.

Well, on my time, I suspect the answer to the question is no. And in addressing a comment of my colleague from San Francisco, this is not about choice. Maybe individually, but before that happens. The counties involved here, I submit, had absolutely no choice whatsoever in being involved in this pilot, which is really a one-size-fits-all for every county on the list, and I was told that she was looking for a diverse list of counties. And that, by definition, means that a one-size-fits-all is not going to work very well. What works well in Sacramento is not necessarily going to work well in Lassen County. So this isn't about choice. Secondly, I have never, ever, have you? Seen a pilot program that has no data collection and no end to it. I really think this is very poorly thought-out policy. I urge a no vote.

All right. Any further discussion or debate? Senator Eggman.

Thank you, Mr. President. I just wanted to make a point. Somebody asked the question if anybody was consulted about which counties were included. I would like to say I represent two of the counties and I was not ever asked.

All right, any further discussion or debate? Seeing none. Senator Durazo, you may close.

Thank you very much. I also want to just add, in terms of the application, it's new construction of 16 units or more. And with all of, thank you, colleagues, for your comments, I respectfully ask for an aye vote.

Secretary, please call the roll.

Allen. Aye. Alvarado-Gil. Aye. Archuleta. Aye. Ashby. No. Atkins. Aye. Becker. Aye. Blakespear. Aye. Bradford. Caballero. No. Cortese. Aye. Dahle. No. Dodd. Durazo. Aye. Eggman. No. Glazer. Aye. Gonzalez. Aye. Grove. No. Hurtado. Jones. No. Laird. Aye. Limon. Aye. McGuire. Aye. Menjivar. Aye. Min. Newman. Nguyen. No. Niello. No. Ochoa Bogh. No. Padilla. Portantino. Aye. Roth. Rubio. Seyarto. No. Skinner. Aye. Smallwood-Cuevas. Aye. Stern. Aye. Umberg. Wahab. Aye. Wiener. Aye. Wilk. No.

Please call the absent members.

Bradford. Dodd. Hurtado. Min. Aye. Newman. No. Padilla. Roth. Aye. Rubio. Aye. Umberg. Aye. Bradford. Aye.

Call the role one more time. Did you get it? Please call the roll one more time.

Dodd. Aye. Hurtado. Padilla. Aye.

Vote of 27 to 12. The measure passes. We're going to take another short pause. Members, please stay here in the chambers. Members, on behalf of pro tem Atkins, we want to welcome a former pro tem to the senate. The senate welcomes back Sacramento Mayor, former pro tem Daryl Steinberg.

Members, we're going to now shift gears just slightly. We're going to move to File Item 100 and File Item 13. So, can get ready at your places for both of those. File Item 100 and then File Item 13. I want to make sure that the floor manager for File Item 100 is ready to go. She appears to be, so the secretary, please read. This is Assembly Bill 531 by Assembly Member Irwin. Secretary, please read.

Assembly Bill 531 by Assembly Member Irwin in act relating to behavioral health by providing the funds necessary, therefore through an election for the issuance and sale of bonds of the State of California and for the handling and disposition of those funds.

Thank you.

Senator Eggman, just a moment, please. Can we ask Members to please return to their seats, please? Members, could I ask you to please return to your seats? Senator Eggman, thank you for your patience. The floor is yours.

Thank you very much, Mr. President. I am very proud today to present on behalf of Assembly Member Irwin, AB 531, which is part of the reason Senator Steinberg is here. And I'll talk more about that on the next bill I present.

But this bill is going to provide--we've all talked a lot about our need to do more for housing, our need to do more for homelessness, our need to do more for those suffering from severe and persistent mental health, those who are suffering more from substance abuse.

And our veterans, as we know, we have been--we had a moment of silence for 911 recently, and we know basically since then, our country has been, our people have been involved in conflicts overseas, and they continue to come home with wounds that are still open and bleeding and sometimes those are in their minds just because of the traumas that they signed that check for us to go to defend our democracy in other parts of the world, to fight for freedom, and when they come back, they should be able to have the respect and the dignity of having a roof over their head.

This bond will go to the voters. Let the voters decide if they want to invest 6.38 billion dollars into housing. Housing for homeless, housing for the mentally ill, housing for those with substance abuse, housing for children and families, and housing for our veterans.

This is an incredibly important program and incredibly a part of all the work, and I want to say again, all the work we have all done together in this chamber, in this capitol for the last couple of years, really trying to streamline our mental--like address the crisis that we see before us. So one of the things that we know is that there is not enough for housing.

And we're going to talk more about how we're going to reuse the money that we currently have in our Behavioral Health Services system, but we also want to talk about the need to have more funding for housing. As we all know, when we decided to do LPS way back when, and we said, we're closing the hospitals and everyone's going to live in the lowest restrictive level of care, that's still incredibly important.

And that is part of the tenets of this bill, that people should live in the lowest restricted level of care, but we also need to be sure that we have that continuum of care that we promised Californians decades ago. We promised them decades ago. We're going to move people out of state hospitals.

We're going to let them go, and we're going to have housing in the communities, like villages and cottages and places where people can live and thrive close to their own homes and their own families so they don't have to--as we all know, you hear about somebody needing a bed somewhere, they have to leave that county. They have to go six counties over to be able to find a bed appropriate for somebody to be able to have a place to stay.

Our emergency rooms are backed up. How many times have we talked about hospitals and emergency rooms and our public safety officers? That's because there's not a place to move people once they come in. I hope there's nobody in this chamber that thinks the status quo is okay, what we see when we're walking around. This week, I've been staying in Sacramento. I had the occasion to walk by one gentleman three different times, laying in the same place in the sidewalk.

I stopped yet last night just to make sure he was still alive because you can't tell sometimes. You just can't tell. That should break every single person's heart. And again, these are the most vulnerable amongst us folks. These aren't the people who are living high on the hog anywhere. These are people who are chronically homeless, chronically mentally ill, and people we need to be able to get out of our hospitals, out of our jails, out of our prisons, and back into our communities.

So as you all know, I have a lot of passion about this issue. And the new bond funding will be used to construct, acquire, rehabilitate, more than 10,000 new treatment beds and supportive housing units, as well as new sites to serve more than 100,000 people annually. That is going to be 4.4 billion for community-based clinical care based on the success of our existing behavioral health program that we did a couple of years ago, altogether, the BHCIP Program.

This includes an additional 1.5 billion for local governments to apply for. We heard a lot from counties and cities and our Tribes, so this will be just for them. Cities, counties, and Tribal entities will have a guarantee for at least this amount of the bond. They're still eligible for the rest of it, but this 1.5 is set aside especially for them.

Thirty million just for Tribes, and another 2 billion in the form of another program that we've developed and that has worked and that is our Homekey program. And this includes the 1.65 billion set aside for the veterans housing. And again, I hope you all have new home key programs that have been going up in your communities that are specifically for veterans because I know I do.

So we've talked about the need to be able to do this, the need to be able to have the resources for the housing, our communities to be able--our cities and our counties have been begging for this kind of support. And again, we're going to talk about how we're going to redo the Behavioral Health Services Act in a minute. But this is an incredibly important piece to actually have places for beds, for treatments, for facilities for those in desperate need.

Help me, help the Administration, and a huge thanks to former Senator Steinberg, Mayor Steinberg, the Administration, for helping envision this whole process to be able to have this to go before the voters on the March ballot to see if they too agree that this is one of the most important things that we can do as Californians.

Thank you, Senator Eggman. Discussion and debate. I see a microphone up from Senator Jones and Senator Blakespear. Senator Jones.

Thank you, Mr. President and Members. I strongly agree with the floor jockey's arguments in favor of this expenditure, this spending, and the work that we need to do in this area of healthcare in California. Unfortunately, I disagree with the avenue in which we're doing that here today, going into debt and doing bond financing. Last year alone, as has already been stated several times on this floor, that California had a 100 billion dollar surplus.

At that point in time, California Senate Republicans jumped on this opportunity to make meaningful investments in our state. We called for a ten percent spending of the surplus, ten million dollars on mental health infrastructure. We could already be moving down the road on this spending and this infrastructure and this so important services that we're talking about this morning. Unfortunately, the majority party and the Governor ignored our calls to tackle this issue through responsible budgeting. Fast forward to today.

California has a 32 billion dollar budget deficit just in one year. 132,000,000,000 dollar swing from positive to negative. Ladies and gentlemen, most households and most businesses that size of a swing would wipe them out, bankrupt them. They would be done. Even worse, we are expected to be in budget deficits through 2027. Four more years of budget deficits in the State of California and now AB 531, asking Californians to take out a loan to fund this program.

No matter how crucial this program is, we must find another way to address the issue that does not pour, make the state go further into debt. We should not be funding anything with completely irresponsible budgeting schemes at this time or anytime. I ask for a no vote on AB 531, and let's find another way to finance this much needed infrastructure.

Thank you, Senator Jones. Senator Francinita, Senator Blakespear, the floor is yours.

Thank you. I rise today in support of this. I came up to Sacramento nine months ago expecting that we would be spending every week talking about the crisis of homelessness on our streets. And the reality is that up here, we articulate every number of crises, and we are all dealing with so many different things, and there are competing priorities. But the homelessness crisis is so acute in this state that we absolutely need to invest in the solutions.

This bond is not anywhere near the scope of what we're going to need to actually eliminate encampments on our city streets and provide homes for people who desperately need them. But this is at least something. And the reality of the mental health and drug addiction, alcohol addiction, the problems that people are facing who are living unsheltered on our streets is just so extreme that we have to invest in the solutions.

So I think all of us know and believe that the situation with homelessness is unacceptable and that the status quo is unacceptable. And we have to realize and grapple with the fact that it will not self-resolve. There's very much a hope and almost a myth that if we just let things continue on, this will self-resolve, and it won't. We just see that it's getting worse every single month.

So I strongly urge my colleagues to support this, and I urge us to do more than this this year and next year and working with the Governor's Office so that we can return to a time when nearly everyone lived inside, that it was functionally zero people at the level of homelessness. That should be our goal in this state. And with 170,000 people living unsheltered, and that growing every month, we are just nowhere close to that. So I strongly urge an aye vote here.

Thank you, Senator Blakespear. I see microphones up from Senators Niello, Roth, Stern, and Ashby. Next up, Senator Niello. I see you, Senator Grove.

Thank you, Mr. President. This is a frustrating issue for me. A year and nine or ten months ago when I recognized that redistricting gave me an opportunity to come back to the Legislature, I really wondered if I wanted to. And I talked to a lot of people and thought about it long and hard. But there's one reason why I decided I wanted to get back in the mix and I discussed this with my colleague from Stockton early on. It is the issue of homelessness.

I think it's the most urgent, crucial problem facing the State of California. And I was on the sidelines because I still follow the process on the sidelines, watching what was being done to try to cure the problem of homelessness. I've said several times before that we spent five years spending 20 billion dollars and the numbers got worse. In my opinion, our approach to homelessness was fundamentally flawed and we knew all along that we had a tremendous shortage in mental health beds in the State of California.

And that's why, when I first saw the Governor propose this bond a few months ago, thought to myself, we just realize now that this is crucial enough that we need to borrow almost five billion dollars to solve that problem when in the last five years, we could have solved that problem, not just with the ten million dollars mentioned before, but one billion dollars a year in those five years would have been virtually budget dust. And we could have financed this.

We could have the money now to deploy it now and not have to borrow it. I have to support the comments of our minority leader relative to finding another way to do this. I know we have deficits, but we also have choices. A budget is just a series of many, many choices. What is the most serious problem facing the State of California today? Again, I believe it's homelessness. Providing mental health beds is part of that.

That should be a top priority for our budget, even if we have a deficit. And regrettably, I can't support the bond measure.

Senator Roth.

Thank you, Mr. President. You know, unfortunately, there's no amount of annual budget surplus that will be sufficient to address our mental health needs in this great State of California. Down where I come from, since 2019, using General Fund money, that budget surplus that folks have been talking about, Riverside County has constructed over 580 community and residential mental health and substance abuse beds. Over 580. More than any of the counties in total in the State of California and yet there is a need for more. Much, much more.

Our emergency departments in Riverside County are completely clogged, completely clogged largely by those who are in the emergency departments with severe mental illness. Our emergency departments have become our psychiatric hospitals. Our emergency room physicians are our psychiatrists and psychologists. The situation is untenable and we still have the same 77 acute care mental health inpatient psychiatric beds, including only 12 for adolescents and no beds for pediatrics that we have had for years and years and years, and those beds are completely full all of the time with a waiting list just like a hotel to get in for treatment.

We can't wait for the next budget surplus to roll around the corner to help us address, not only in Riverside County, but in the other counties of this state, to address our needs for mental health beds of all kinds, but specifically including acute care inpatient mental health. Bond financing is the only option. It is a necessity, and I urge an aye vote on this measure.

Senator Stern, followed by Senator Ashby and Grove. Senator Stern.

Thank you, Mr. President. It sort of feels like coming to the end of a giant journey where I didn't even have to steer the ship or put my oars in the water. Ever since this author took the reins from the mayor and all the giants around here, it's been happening.

And since our Governor decided to engage in the way he has with the life he's had in cities around this state and all around this country, this ship is moving, and things are going to change, and this bill will save people's lives, but it will also change how it feels to live in California. There are obviously a lot of other things that we need to do in this state to make this all work. This is a bond. This is about beds.

This is about built places that are not the street. But we know we've got to get CalAIM reform done, and we've got to get MHSA reform done, and we've got to get care courts implemented, and we've got to look at conservatorships, and we've got to look at our prisons and the pipeline from our prison system right onto our street. That's the one I just want to touch on for a second.

It's a bad moment in your life when you have to pray for someone you love to get arrested. That's a really bad place. And yet that's what parents and partners have to do every single day in this state because they can't find their loved one and they don't know what happened to their life, and they got to hope they come in the system somehow, and if that's the way, that's it.

But what's happening right now is people get pulled in through that part of the system, and they get spit right back out. And especially the people who are severely mentally ill. Give you a statistic. Last year in Los Angeles County, 1,640 people who have severe mental illness and had committed a misdemeanor had their cases dismissed, and they left the system.

There are a lot of services in Los Angeles to pick those people up, but there is a disconnect where people, five humans a day who have decompensated in some of the worst places on earth say, 'well, case dismissed, and we've done our duty. You've been under our wardship during the pendency or trial, and now you're free to take some services. We'd really like you to get into some housing, but you're free to go.'

And what people do when they're schizophrenic or they have had a psychotic break or left their Abilify medication and got it stolen or lost or just lost an ID card, those decisions to enter care don't happen. And those are the people who are dying on our streets every day, and we've all seen it. I know this author, and I know this Governor, and I even know all the teams.

Everyone in this Senate, everyone in this Legislature, everyone in California walks by somebody and sees them in a spot where we've trained ourselves to look away because it's just too hard, but it has to stop. And this is both a moral crisis, but at a fiscal level if you want to justify this. Our prisons should not be where we deliver care. And the way we recycle people through will save taxpayers billions of dollars over time.

Billions of dollars that is basically just a recycling system for an immoral and ignorant and depraved kind of poverty that we're bigger than. I appreciate the author. I appreciate the Governor and what the speaker have done here. Our pro tem, thank you. I respectfully ask for your aye vote.

Senator Grove.

Thank you, Mr. President. I too, want to extend my adoration for the author to bring this forward. I know that she worked on this in her military career and also in her private life. I live up here, like all of us do, four days a week, and I live off of the 50. And when I come in off of the 50 down 12th Street by Loaves and Fishes, I pass at minimum 40 to 50 people out on the streets every day. That's minimum.

I drive those streets when it's raining. I drive those streets when it's 110 degrees in the early morning or even evening hours. And to be honest with you, Colleagues, it's cruel. It is absolutely cruel. We are the State of California and we treat those people like, I mean, I bet they get treated worse than individuals in a third-world country.

I have a friend of mine, Darlene Denison, she is a State Farm agent and she promised her mother that she would always take care of her brother, and she has spent years trying to keep him off the street. And she finally was somewhat successful. She's been successful on and off. A month here, a month there, on and a month, off a month. And she finally got him an apartment and got him settled in and got him back on medication.

And we're talking about not people that have a desire. Some of those people out there, Colleagues, I'll be honest with you, they just need to get a damn job and go back to work and stop holding the sign and do that kind of stuff, but we're not talking about those people. We're talking about chronically ill, homeless people that they're not going to get a job. They're just not. Let's just be real. A lot of them are not going to get a job.

And frankly, a lot of them are not going to live a long time. Based on their lifestyle and how they live, they estimate that their lifestyle is three to five years. That's the research that Darlene has done. So back to Darlene's brother. She promised her mom she gets him a housing. He leaves housing.

And only somebody who is mentally ill or has a problem would leave a perfectly good apartment and go live in two stairs down to a flat area in the back of a grocery store on the cement, no blankets, no coverage, no nothing. And I was talking to her the other day, and she's starting a nonprofit because she did get him an apartment, but he doesn't like his neighbors, and his neighbors definitely don't like him. And there's no sense of community.

And I'm so proud of Kern County and putting together a facility that will house 12, not a lot, but 12 tiny little homes and a barbecue area in the center with a park where people like this that have community around them can be successful until, frankly, they leave this world. These aren't people that--I have a lot of people say they should, need to get a job. Well, some of them do. But these people, they can't. We're talking about a specific piece of population.

I'm not trying to be destitute. I'm just saying, it's just a reality. I would encourage--because you guys know I'm a person of faith--I would encourage you to work with an organization called CityServe. CityServe works with government agencies all around the world, Ukraine, all around the United States, in different countries, and they have contracts, and they have mitigated and reduced cost to house these individuals because they could provide you with furniture, with towels, and everything you can get at Costco, a Walmart, and it's all free.

And unlike contracts that you sign with normal government agencies or agencies, I think it's a three or four line contract that says if they give you this product, you can't sell, barter, or trade it. You have to give it to the person that you're trying to help. What's beautiful about this is--and I'm just saying what's really good about this is--that sometimes you want to just create dignity for these people, too.

And I believe this nonprofit has a heart for these people, and they want to create dignity. So when they give them housing, or you have housing that's provided, they don't just go, here's towels for your kitchen. They sit down with the individual and it's like, what color do you want your kitchen? And I remember this guy could hardly talk, and I'm not making fun of him, but he goes, 'well-woe.' And they said yellow. And he said yes.

And so everything yellow is in that kitchen, and he thinks it reminds him of sunshine. And that gave him dignity for the three years that he survived off the street in that little apartment. So I realized that, and I'm right with my colleague, the minority leader, you guys waste a hell of a lot of money, and we tell you no all the time, but sometimes you just got to suck it up and do the right thing. And so I respectfully ask for an aye vote on this.

Senator Seyarto, followed by Senator Skinner.

Thank you, Mr. President. So I feel like this discussion has been turned into a 'people who agree that there's an issue and people who don't agree that there's an issue.' But that's not what this discussion is about. This discussion is all of us agree that there's an issue and it needs to be addressed. And from a financial perspective, how are we going to address that? We've known that this has been a problem. We've even dedicated money before to solve the problem.

We spent 20 billion dollars on housing solutions that some of it got spent in some areas where it worked, as my colleague from Riverside was pointing out. When you give counties the ability to do what's right for their area and be able to respond to the problem in a way that helps their area and breaks the problem down into smaller portions so that it's actually workable, that works. What this discussion today is about is doing another bond.

We have approximately 106,000,000,000 dollars in bonded indebtedness already, and that translates into about 6 billion dollars of interest a year. And although this is a smaller amount of all the bonds that have been suggested this year, one of the things that really concerns me is that instead of 20 billion dollars with little to show for it a few years later, what if we spend five billion dollars and the only thing we have to show for it in five or six years or seven years is an interest payment that we have to continue to make on the bond?

That's what concerns me. And while we talk about deficits of 32, 35 billion dollars, remember our budget is set right now at somewhere around 310,000,000,000 dollars. That's a hell of a lot more than we had five years ago. And yet we've had opportunity after opportunity to invest money up front in solving this crisis.

And so that's the approach. That's the responsible approach from a fiscal perspective that we should be taking. We shouldn't have to wait for an election. We shouldn't have to do any of that.

We should be putting this money into the budget and spending this money to do exactly all of the things that this bond would be doing so that we could get it on the ground, get it up and running, and not have all the stuff that had to get attached to this bond during the negotiations for it. But we chose not to. So what we choose to do and what we choose not to do makes the difference.

I choose not to support bonds until, number one, we start whittling down some of our bonded indebtedness so my kids don't have to pay for it all, but number two, when we have the opportunity, when we have the amount of money that people send to us through their current tax system, they work through July--remember, they work through July to pay for all this stuff--but then we don't use it for the things we need the most. That's called setting priorities.

We need to set our priorities better. I don't want to look at this in five years and say, 'hey, here's your interest payment. I don't know where the hell all the other money went.' This is a huge problem, probably one of the biggest problems in the State of California, and yet it has not been a priority. We need to make it a priority for our regular budget, not incurred debt. Thank you.

Thank you. Senator Skinner, followed by Senator Ochoa Bogh.

Thank you, Mr. President, Members. Some of you may have noticed that I have not voted on most of the tax expenditures that even ones that I would normally support this year or the last couple of years. And that's my role as Budget Chair when we have to be smart about our money. And that's what a lot of our colleagues are speaking to.

And I was in the Legislature and on the Budget Committee when we were in the middle of the recession and we had to make incredibly painful cuts. So I appreciate the concern about indebtedness. However, there are some times when our need is so great and where bonds are an entirely appropriate expenditure. Now, the number of bonds that were before us, and they are not all yet passed, right, but we have got a lot that are in play. There are too many.

They are. But this one is essential. This one is essential. And I want to especially thank my colleague from Stockton for her dedication within this issue for so long, and the author, and many others, and our former colleague from San Jose who had the Mental Health Caucus. And we talk about people that are either on the streets or such severe mental illness. But I'll just tell a very brief personal story. My brother, who is bipolar and has a substance use disorder but can at times be very functional.

And I think many of us know people like that. But when he is unhoused is when his condition really deteriorates. Fortunately, I was able to house him for a while. Now he is very temporarily housed, but he is at least functional enough to be applying to housing. But he has been applying to housing that would meet his needs. He has been submitting applications for three years now, three years, and he has not yet found a place.

And it's not because he was denied or somebody sent him something and he didn't respond. No, it's because there haven't been available. He's been put on waiting lists. And while right now he's pretty functional. My concern, and I think is everybody's, is that if he is unhoused for any period of time, he will not be functional and then he will not even apply. So there has to be more of this housing. And with that, I ask for your aye vote.

Senator Ochoa Bogh.

Thank you, Mr. President and Members. I was not prepared to speak, but I'm going to speak on this really quick, because homelessness and everything of this sort has been a concern for me and for my district from the get go. And I came to this body in 2020 in hopes to be part of the solution. Based on conversations that I had with stakeholders in my district as well as having the blessed opportunity to sit in public safety, to sit in various committees, I've learned quite a bit about the concerns and the issues that we have.

It's one of the reasons why--and noticing the surplus that we've had in the past couple of years--understanding that we have spent about 20 billion dollars this year, up in the past three, four years, dealing with homelessness. I introduced legislation back in 2022, SB 1298, that would address the mental health bed capacity by expanding it, asking to utilize some of our surplus 1 billion dollars a year, every year.

And I want to thank this body, because with unanimous bipartisan support, it passed this House and it died in appropriations in the Assembly. In 2023, again, I introduced SB 65, which was the investment in essential mental health capacity, asking this time for 1 billion dollars of our budget to be allocated for that purpose, for the next three years, limiting it. It's about priorities. It's about priorities, and we've had had the money. We just haven't allocated it. We haven't chosen to do that.

This body, the Senate, has supported both of my bills, and for that, I am so grateful to my colleagues. But I want to make sure that we understand that we've had the money. We've had the desire and the will in this Senate killed in the Assembly not to move this forward. We've had the money. It's about in priorities. And even though I haven't supported any of these bonds today, I am going to support this one.

And I'm doing it in good faith, because there is a need in California. And even though we haven't done it and even though this Republican has put forth policy and legislation in hopes that we could address it, since we've had 20 billion dollars to address homelessness and we haven't done anything about the infrastructure part of it, I'm going to support this bill today in hopes that California will see it as a priority and we can move forward on it. And for that, I respectfully ask for an aye vote.

Alright, I see Senator Laird.

Thank you, Mr. President. I wanted to comment on a couple of items that have come up in the debate, and the first one is on the service side. Years ago, I ran an aid service agency and one of the things we did is work with people that were on the streets that had some dual diagnosis, whether it was mental health or drug.

And one of the hardest things was we would be out there with street workers and we would risk trying to help them, and this trust would be built and they would be ready for treatment, whether it was mental health or addiction. And there wasn't anything available. And we have heard discussion about waiting lists that's not a time when waiting lists are a relevant thing. You get somebody's trust, they make a decision to go, that's not something that holds for the life of being on a waiting list.

And so on the service side, delivering this is very important. Making the difference that's in this is very important. But I wanted to speak to the financing issues that have come up because I had the misfortune to be the Budget Chair for a number of years, during the Schwarzenegger years, where California just plunged into debt, and we're talking about debt here.

And I'm telling you, there was a 15 billion dollar bond issued just to do expenses. Once that was done, you were done. We were stuck with 15 billion dollars that went on. There was one year where the twelfth payroll of the state that was due on June 30th was moved to July 1st so that we could save one-twelfth of the state payroll and pay it in the next year. And then Jerry Brown becomes Governor, and there were like 400 funds that had been borrowed from.

He attacked the wall of debt and he made sure that every one of those funds was paid back. He reset that monthly payroll from July 1st back to June 30th so that we could get back on track. We paid off the 15 billion dollars of debt for expenses that were long gone and did everything to wipe out that debt. And so right now, on the debt score, we are more solvent than we have been in 20 years.

And the rule of thumb is--and I heard numbers tossed out earlier in the debate--the rule of thumb is that your borrowing in bonds should always be the high end, should be between five to six percent of the General Fund. That is a level of acceptable investment. If this bond is sent out today and approved by the voters, we will be well within that acceptable limit of debt. And so the question should be the policy question about whether we need to do this.

And I think many Senators have made the comments on the urgency and the difference this will make. And so this is sound financially and is just incredibly necessary on the program side. I urge an aye vote.

Thank you, Senator Laird. I see a final microphone up on the floor. Pro Tem Atkins. Pro Tem Atkins, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Mr. President. I'm particularly pleased, of course, that the former pro tem and the mayor of Sacramento is here today. When I came here thirteen years ago, it was to work on housing and homelessness. And I saw him as a real mentor, someone who had worked on housing as a person in local government. I was thrilled with the work that he was doing here to support local communities, to have resources for housing.

And then the Mental Health Services Act was incredible for those of us working on the streets trying to help homeless folks. My colleague from Stockton and I talk all the time about how is it that we have been here for this number of years and yet this intractable problem still faces us? It's heartbreaking. If we can't do something about this, I just don't know who can. But I believe we can. And I know the good assemblywoman is waiting patiently for us to move this along.

So I just want to make a couple of points. One: bonding is what we've always done to build housing in this state under Republican governors and Democratic governors. It is a tool that we use to do this work. California, like states across this country, we have an issue around housing affordability, and it is impacting significantly. not just our most vulnerable and poor folks and working, struggling, working Californians, it is impacting folks with mental health issues, our returning veterans, on and on and on.

Two groups recently--I just welcomed the California Psychological Association to San Diego for their conference in San Diego last Friday. And when I mentioned the fact that I know the biggest struggle you have working with some of your clients is that they need stable housing, and I saw heads shaking like you couldn't believe. It is a huge issue for mental health to be able to find housing for individuals.

This particular measure and this bond focuses on yet another stakeholders groups, group that has reached out to us: hospitals. The Hospital Association talking about behavioral health beds, not having nearly enough. The numbers have already been given. So they're telling us what they need us to do and how they need us to move forward. They're asking. And yes, we have invested a lot in housing. We have invested a lot in housing. We've invested in homelessness. But we've got to be intentional and focused.

And this particular measure gives us a roadmap for what we intend and need to accomplish and produce. We have the ability to do oversight and accountability. It's within our purview to do that. And I think we should. I also want to commend the Governor because the pandemic has made all of this worse. The housing issue, homelessness, behavioral health, the early childhood initiative that we have passed and put money into that is being implemented.

All these things together have to get us a step and a step and a step further to get the youngest possible folks, our young kids help as soon as possible to keep from having situations where our loved ones end up with bipolar disorder and then end up self-medicating and making it more and more complicated as is my family story with a young man. So all of these efforts combined are really going to help this item.

And I am so glad to see that there will be bipartisan support for this because I think it is the right thing to do at this time. I commend the floor manager and certainly the author and please ask for your support on AB 531.

Thank you, Senator Atkins. We've heard from thirteen Senators on this debate. Anything further? Seeing no microphones up. Senator Eggman we'll turn to you to close the debate.

Thirteen has always been my lucky number, sir. I want to thank everybody who spoke on this issue. As we can see, this has a lot of passion for many of us. It impacts all of us. I know nobody goes home to their districts and they don't hear about this issue. We've spent as a budget sub three Chair last year and as a Member this year. We've spent over 12 billion dollars in the last couple of years on mental health issues and homelessness, and it's not enough, right, because a lot of that is one time funding.

And I understand we might like to have an ongoing one billion dollars, but, which isn't responsible, not knowing what the rise and falls of budgets are going to do. So we've done all we can with one time money. When we had it, we put it out. And I'm pretty sure all of you have new programs that have popped up in your districts that came from that funding, that BHCIP funding, that Homekey funding, all of those programs.

But this is another part that actually deals with the mental health component of it because a lot of that that was just for homelessness, it's also for the mental health folks. And we'll talk a little bit more about the services, but before, there wasn't a good way to be able to pay to have people in housing. So this, coupled with 362--I'm going to talk about in a couple of minutes--provides the infrastructure, and then it also provides 326.

And then--I got a little Dyslexia, I told you about that--and then it also provides the ability to pay for that and with the services that wrap around it. And as my one colleague talked about, it's best just to have locals figure it out. This is what this does. This provides for locals to pull it down, put within their communities, to be able to make dignity for every single person, to be able to have a chance to get off the streets.

I had a health crisis in my house this summer. I needed some help with my daughter. My sister happened to be going to Europe, and she took my 15-year-old daughter with her. And when she came back, I said, 'what are some of the things you noticed?' And she said, 'Mom, I noticed that people don't watch their back there like they do here.'

It's so sad to me to be able to have my child because of the violence we have on the streets because what we see constantly having to watch her back. And I've taught her that, you know, I've taught her that you check out your surroundings all the time. Other countries don't have to do that because they have more humanity about how they treat people and to be able to provide things within their community.

And when I talk about the people who are going to get housing and going to get treatment, let's also not forget about their families. The person that the Senator from Bakersfield talked about, area, talked about, there are families who are desperate for us to be able to provide resources for people to have safe places to live near their families. Let's keep the promises that people made to Californians a long time ago. Better late than never. I ask for your aye vote.

I'll debate having ceased on Assembly Bill 531. Secretary, please call the roll.

Allen? Aye. Alvarado-Gil? Archuleta? Aye. Ashby? Aye. Atkins. Aye. Becker? Aye. Blakespear? Aye. Bradford? Aye. Caballero? Aye. Cortese? Aye. Dahle? Dodd? Aye. Durazo? Aye. Eggman? Aye. Glazer? Aye. Gonzalez? Aye. Grove? Aye. Hurtado? Aye. Jones? No. Laird? Aye. Limon? Aye. McGuire? Aye. Menjivar? Aye. Min? Aye. Newman? Aye. Nguyen? Niello? Ochoa Bogh? Aye. Padilla? Aye. Portantino? Aye. Roth? Aye. Rubio? Aye. Seyarto? No. Skinner? Aye. Smallwood-Cuevas? Aye. Stern? Aye. Umberg? Aye. Wahab? Aye. Wiener? Aye. Wilk? Aye.

Secretary, please call the absent Members.

Alvarado-Gil? Aye. Dahle?

Nguyen. Niello.

On a vote of 35 to two. The measure carries measure passes.

All right, Members, we're going to move next to file item 13. This is SB 326 by Senator Eggman secretary, please read Senate Bill.

Senate Bill 326 by Senator Eggman an act relating to to behavioral health and declaring the urgency thereof to take effect immediately.

Senator Eggman.

Thank you very much, Mr. President. And we all think you look lovely up there today in that Tux. We think it should be a thing. SB 326 is back for concurrence and there was a lot of amendments made because it still needed a lot of work, right? It has to be a collaborative process. We all have to go forward together. I want to give a huge thanks to the Administration for so much leaning into this.

We've never had an Administration really focus and prioritize these issues like this Administration has in this Governor. I want to thank the initial author of the Mental Health Services Act, Senator Steinberg, who is here with us in the chamber today. Wouldn't we all like to be able to come back on a moment in our life 20 years later and be able to redo it? I know I would. And that's what this is about.

It's about we did this 20 years ago and our entire world has changed in the last 20 years. So it's time to change the way we think about funding behavioral health. We know initially, when this was initially passed, there were well over 20% of our population who were uninsured. Now we know that is a closer to 5%. There are so many more things that we can Bill for now that we couldn't before.

With the advent of our Children and Youth Behavioral Initiative, with our Care Act, with Calam and all these other things, we are reimagining how we do mental health treatment and how we work with our counties, how we work with our cities. I'm sure you've all heard from your big city mayors or your counties about this issue that this is one of the most important things we can do.

So now that housing that we're going to build in the communities, we have to be able to provide for people to be there for subsidies, for paying rent, for paying for those treatment beds, for being able to provide for the services that are needed. That's why now 30% of the money is going to be able to go. We're going to provide flexibility.

But to be able to provide for those services, we're also going to have another about a 30% be able to be used for that whole person care. We know that's one of the most effective things we can do, and that's the kind of things we have to do. And the other 30% for services, for innovation, especially around our children and early intervention, we know one of the best things we can do is to intervene with early psychosis. Right?

If we can have statewide programs that are evidence based and able for smaller counties like way up north in the hinterlands, to be able to pull things off the shelf that we know are evidence based and work, we can get so much earlier. Start on being able to help our young people. It's time to readjust how we use our Behavioral Health Services Act. And we also need to talk about those with substance abuse.

We have excluded that unless you have a dual diagnosis as part of our Behavioral health services, our mental health services. That's why we're changing the name to Behavioral Health Services. We know that psychosis, we know that the kind of drugs we're seeing on our street now is deadly and creates the same kind of organicity in the brain as a mental health condition has. So we should be able to treat them as well. This is the right thing to do.

This is the right time to do it. And I am so, again, so grateful for all the help that came together, all the collaboration. Initially, we had children's groups against it. We've been able to work with folks. We've had communities of color who are afraid about losing a lot of the money. We've been able to work with people. Is it perfect? Nothing's perfect.

But the good news when to send this to the voters, they get to decide on the structure, but people will be able to come back and tinker here or there as we see going forward. This is not a one and done, it's when it's changed the structure. But we will be able to come back and make adjustments as needed through this Legislature. I'll be gone.

A lot of you will still be here and be able to make sure that this is going exactly the way it's supposed to be. I also talk about the really enhanced and increased oversight and accountability, really being able to look at how all of our dollars are spent and what is the outcome on that, so we can make adjustments as needed. It's not just a report. We're actually looking at the numbers and deciding then how the resources will be spent.

This is a monumental, necessary thing to do. A lot of people have come to the table on this, and I think it's just the right time, the right place. Let's get this done.

Thank you, Senator Egman. I have microphones up from Senator Ashby and Senator Grove. Senator Ashby, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Mr. President. I wanted to rise today to say a couple of things. We do a lot of important work on this floor, and I've seen so many amazing things, just even in my first year. But this moment is particularly special. I don't think this happens very often. You need the stars to really align. You have the perfect Senator to author this. Perfect. Your experiences, both personal and professional, lead you to a place where you understand this better than almost anyone.

And the only person I can think of who might know it better than you is also standing in this room and is someone that I care about so deeply the mayor of my city the former pro TEM of these chambers and the Senator for whom I get to follow in his footsteps my mayor, Daryl Steinberg.

And also in the back of the room helping with this issue is a Member of the governor's Administration, Dana Williamson whose personal life experiences and incredible professional experiences have also led us to this moment. The three of you have brought the State of California to a place where I believe we have hope for a problem that everyone is trying to solve for a problem that for those of us who've just come from local office have been trying to solve.

We're taking a resource already in play one that Senator Steinberg put in place and modernizing it with what you know, Senator Egman and with the support of the Administration we're ready for California to really tackle this problem. And I've been waiting for weeks to have this opportunity. This is really special for me. And I know you said you won't be here but if it's the will of the voters, I will be.

And you have my word that when you're ready to come back and be a part of this conversation again in years to come I can't wait to stand here with you then too. And I thank very much my mayor and my friend Dana Williamson for their part. And I urge and aye vote.

Thank you. Next up, Senator Grove.

Thank you, Mr. President. I briefly rise in support of SB 326 if you have like the author said, it's not a perfect Bill but we don't have the ability to vote on perfect bills unless you're talking about my Bill that got out of here yesterday. A perfect Bill. We don't have the opportunity to vote on perfect bills very often. But overwhelmingly, if you have problems with this Bill overwhelmingly whole person care should exceed any doubt or any reservation that you have.

Dr. Mindy at Good Samaritan Hospital met with me and he goes, we have this problem. And she's like, zero, my gosh. Every time we treat somebody, they come in and we have to treat them for chronic illness and most of them are homeless. And then they've got this big, huge, gaping wound on their arm that's gushing out, pus. But they can't treat that because they're not authorized to do so because they're a mental health facility. But doctors oath first do no harm, right?

And they treat the wound care and they do wound care and they treat to get them stationary so that they can move them to another facility or a hospital or urgent care but is authorized to treat this. So just the idea that somebody who is qualified that has a medical license and pass the boards can provide. Whole person care is the most beneficial piece of this piece of legislation.

And when you deal with the chronic homeless and the disease and the dysentery and all the things that are on the street that our homeless population deals with, I think this is a great Bill, a great start. I, too, like my colleague from Stockton will be gone, but hopefully when she said there's a little tinkering, hopefully nobody from the far right or far left get a hold of this Bill.

I just pray that you guys just keep moving forward and addressing the issues that need to be taken care of to eliminate or at least reduce the serious issues that we have with homelessness in our state. We've wasted, like I said on the previous Bill, a lot of money. And we need to stop spending that money on stuff that doesn't work in the real world. We set goals and have measurable goals that we meet or exceed.

And if you don't meet those goals, then you have a meeting and you change direction. So I would ask that we look at this piece of legislation for what it is. Like my colleague said, it's not perfect, but overwhelmingly, the whole person care is the reason why I'm supporting this Bill. And I respectfully ask for an Aye vote.

Thank you, Senator Grove, Senator Nguyen, followed by Senator Neelo.

Thank you, Mr. President. I, too, rise to support SB three, two, six. And I want to thank the author, her patient, her willingness to continue to tweak and work the Bill to the very end is so greatly appreciated across the state, because she's right. Most of us would love to look back 20 years ago and maybe tweak a little bit here and there, and we have that very opportunity today. There are things in the previous Bill that doesn't work today, and we could do better.

And this Bill, actually, it's not perfect, but it is where we need to be at this moment in time to help our mental health and our homelessness population. And it's something that I care for and worked on dearly in the last several years being up here. Those are the issues that everybody in my district, and even if you, I would assume everybody on this floor hears from your constituent about this very issue and the homelessness issue that's across the state.

And so I thank you, and I thank all those who've been involved moving this forward, and I ask for an aye vote.

Senator Neelo.

Thank you, Mr. President. When I spoke before, I talked about my concern about homelessness and that being really the issue to drive me to come back to this institution. And I talked about watching from the sidelines what's been done over the last several years. In my opinion, there's been much too much of a top down approach programmatically to homelessness.

30 some programs initiated at the state level only one of which really provides flexible funding to counties and an indescribable reluctance of the Governor to commit more than a budget year's worth of funding to counties. Those things concern me. And in this Bill, there is still a bit of a top down approach and some restrictions on counties that concerns me. But we've acknowledged a couple of speakers already. This isn't perfect, and frankly, I'm not sure we deal with perfection here. We deal with what we can.

We have 120 legislators with 120 different viewpoints on various issues. I will support this Bill because I want to be part of the solution. My colleague from Sacramento said acknowledged, well, maybe you won't be here, but she will be. Well, she and I came in together and voters willing, on one more election, she and I will go out together and I will be here. And I'd very much like to be part of the solution. I urge and aye vote.

Senator Dahle.

Thank you, Mr. President, Members, I wasn't going to speak, but I don't want to miss this opportunity to just say thank you to my good friend from Stockton, who has educated me beyond words on this issue. My district looks a lot different than most everybody's district. We have very small rural communities in the 15 counties that I represent. But I will tell you, when I drive home, I go through the town of Bernie, and there are people on the streets in Bernie, California, which is crazy.

It doesn't make sense. Never in my life had we seen that until the last maybe 10 years. Now, yes, in Shasta, we're highly populated cities, absolutely. But all throughout my district, as I travel my district, these are young people, they're old people, they're veterans. And I just want to say again, this isn't perfect, but it's good.

And I'm going to support this piece of legislation and knowing that the commitment that the Senator from Stockton has made and her passion is why I would not miss this opportunity. Now, on the previous one, my district never votes for bonds. Zero. aye voted for the Prop water bond, and my district voted against it. And I got chastised for that for a long time, but I thought it was the right thing to do.

But in this case, I want to support this Bill, and I appreciate the hard work of my good friend from Stockton.

Thank you. Senator Dahle, any further conversations from Members? Any further debates? Seeing none. Senator Eggman. You may close.

Thank you very much, Mr. President. And again, I want to thank the Administration. I want to thank Mayor Steinberg and all of my colleagues, and especially those who I've been with since 2012. And we've been talking about all these things. And just to say we're talking about the entire continuum of care. That's what we keep talking about, right? We can't just fix one little part and then, whoops. There goes something else.

We have been able to work last year with carecourt, with Cal Am, with the youth behavioral things. And I'm very happy to say while we've been in here, the Assembly passed my conservatorship grave disability overwhelmingly over there, too. Another piece. So we can help those who are getting ready to fall off the cliff, but we have to have a place for them to move down to back into the community, back to home.

When my staff and I got together at the beginning of in December last year and we talked about what could we really do with the coalition, the coalition of mayors and the psychiatric community and the human services community and the Administration, we came up with a wish list, a dream list altogether. Members, we are going to make all of those dreams come true, not just for us, but for Californians, to give us back a little bit of hope and dignity. And I ask for your aye vote.

Thank you, Senator Eggman. All debate having ceased. Secretary please call the roll.

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

I Wilk I please call the absent Members.

Alvarado Gill Aye. Bradford Aye.

That's a vote of 40 to zero on the urgency. 40 to zero. And the Assembly amendments are concurred in. Congratulations, Senator Egman Members, I want to appreciate on behalf of our leadership, the wonderful work that we've done this afternoon. We've dealt with some very consequential bills in a very productive and sincere manner. I want to offer you, if you want a few minute break, maybe a 510 minutes break, if that would be of interest to Members seeing no objection. We'll do that.

We ask that you do stay here in the Capitol for that brief break, and we'll see you in a few minutes. Okay, Members, if I can get your attention. Mr. Umberg, will you do the go ahead, bang it a couple times. He always wanted to do that. It's like a secret wish. Members, come on back into the chambers here. We're going to have a little bit of a switch. We're going to do concurrence items now.

So I want to make sure everybody's attentive so their bills could actually get to the governor's desk, potentially. We're going to begin on file item six, and from there we're going to go six, seven, eight, nine, ten. 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. So these are authors Ochoa Bogh, Caballero, Niello, Seyarto, Jones on deck. Okay, so we'll begin with file item number six. This is SB 722.

Secretary, please read.

Senate Bill 722 by Senator Ochoa Bogh an act relating to daycare facilities.

And I want to remind this author and all the authors to come that this is about Assembly amendments. Members, hit that one more time. This is about Assembly amendments, not the whole Bill and main Bill. And finally, we do have Members off the floor, so we're going to go through the roll only once. Only once, and then everything will go on call. All right, with that, Senator Ochoa Bogh, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Mr. President and Members, SB 722 is back in concurrence. Assembly amendments delete the civil action protection and authorize a licensed child daycare facility that submits to DSS a completed IMSP, this is for Senator from Santa Cruz, using the template form to enroll a child prior to approval of the plan. The Bill has no opposition and passed the Assembly at 77 to zero vote. I respectfully ask for an aye vote.

Any discussion or debate on this measure? Discussion or debate? Seeing none. Secretary, please call the roll.

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

Senator Ochoa Bogh moves the call. By the way, Members, if you need a table for two tonight, please let me know. All right, we're going to move to file item number seven. This is SB 890 Committee on Governance and Finance.

Secretary, please read.

Senate Bill 890 by the Senate Committee on Governance and Finance. An act relates to taxation to take effect immediately, tax levy.

Senator Caballero, nice to have you back in the chambers.

Thank you, Senator. I appreciate it. Mr. President, SB 890 is the Senate Governance and Finance Committee's annual property tax omnibus Bill. Assembly amendments make two technical changes. Respectfully ask for your aye vote.

Any discussion or debate on this Committee Bill seeing none. Secretary, please call the roll.

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

Senator Caballero moves a call. Going to move next to file item eight. This is SB 264 by Senator Niello. Secretary, please read.

Senate Bill 264 by Senator Niello. And accolating to taxation to take effect immediately. Tax levy.

Senator Niello.

Thank you, Mr. President. Members, SB 264 merely extends the sunset date of an existing disaster loss tax deduction enablement. The amendments in the assembly were simply technical and clarifying. There are no no votes and no opposition to this measure. I respectfully ask and aye vote.

Any discussion or debate on this? I think your remarks Senator Niello broke the system, so we're going to have to reboot it. So just hold on a second. Members, we're just correcting a technical glitch and we'll be right back with you. Please stay here. Please stay at your desks.

Members, the secretary is going to call the roll on file item eight. Secretary, please call the roll.

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

Senator Niello moves the call. Members, we're next going to go to file item 9, 10, 14 and 15. That's Seyarto, Jones, Becker and Menjivar. We'll begin next with file item nine. This is SB 613 by Senator Seyarto.

Secretary please read.

Senate Bill 613 by Senator Seyarto and accolating to solid waste.

Senator Seyarto, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Mr. President. And members, please move to the edge of your seats. I am here to present SB 613 on concurrence. 613 is regarding organic waste recycling and simply clarifies an exemption for a small special district in my area. Amendments in the assembly were technical and clarifying. SB 613 has passed every committee with full bipartisan support, and I respectfully ask for your aye vote.

Any discussion or debate on this measure? See no discussion or debate. Secretary, please call the roll.

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

Blakespear aye to no.

Blakespear aye to no.

Senator Seyarto moves a call. Members, we're going to move next to file item 10. This is SB 844 by Senator Jones. Secretary, please read.

Senate Bill 844 by Senator Jones, and accolating to alcoholic beverages and declaring the urgency thereof to take effect immediately.

Senator Jones.

Thank you, Mr. President. Members, I rise to present SB 844, which clarifies existing law for the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. The assembly graciously added some amendments to simply add an urgency clause. I respectfully ask for your aye vote.

Senators, any discussion or debate on this matter? Any discussion or debate? Seeing none. Secretary, please call the roll.

Allen. Aye. Alvarado-Gil. Aye. Archuleta. Aye. Ashby. Aye. Atkins. Aye. Becker. Aye. Blakespear. Aye. Bradford. Aye. Caballero. Aye. Cortese. Dalhe. Aye. Todd. Aye. Durazo. Eggman. Aye. Glazer. Aye. Gonzalez. Aye. Grove. Hurtado. Aye. Jones. Aye. Laird. Aye. Limon. Aye. McGuire. Aye. Menjivar. Aye. Min. Newman. Aye. Nguyen. Aye. Niello. Aye. Ochoa Bogh. Aye. Padilla. Aye. Portantino. Aye. Roth. Aye. Rubio. Aye. Seyarto. Aye. Skinner. Aye. Smallwood-Cuevas. Stern. Aye. Umberg. Aye. Wahab. Aye. Wiener. Aye. Wilk. Aye. Grove. Aye.

Senator Jones moves the call. Next up is SB 582 by Senator Becker. File item 14. Secretary please read.

Senate Bill 582 by Senator Becker an act relating to healthcare.

Senator Becker.

Thank you, Mr. President. This Bill is designed to protect healthcare providers, including small doctors practices and community clinics from price gouging by their technology vendors. The amendments in the Assembly reflect feedback from industry stakeholders, resolve a chapter in conflict, and add cleanup language. I respectfully ask for an aye vote.

Any discussion on this legislation? Any discussion? See none. Secretary please call the roll.

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

Senator Becker moves a call. Members, here's where we're going to go next 15. File item 15, 16, 17, 18. That's Menjivar up next on deck, Newman in the hole for those who follow baseball. Stern and followed by Laird. So we'll begin with file item 15, SB 635 by Senator Menjivar.

Secretary please read.

Senate Bill 635 by Senator Menjivar, an act relating to healthcare coverage.

Senator Menjivar, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Mr. President. Colleagues, I'm rising to present to you SB 635 the Let California Kids Hear Act. Currently, right now, as a new parent with a Bill that passed years ago, your child, your newborn child, will get screened. However, that's as far as the services go. If you're told that your child is hard of hearing, deaf, you are not covered to purchase those hearing aids that range, on average, $3,000.

So we're having right now is parents going out of pocket to purchase these necessary items for children's developmental needs. The SB 65 is looking to mandate insurance coverage for youth up to 21 years old. Previously, a colleague in the Assembly attempted this Bill and was pulled back in an attempt to do this through the Department, a program that has ineffectually been addressing the needs of our children in California. This program has had $16 million poured into it.

And with that money, we have only served about 200 kids out of the over 7000 children who are eligible for this program. Respectfully ask for an aye vote to ensure that California kids can hear.

Discussion or debate on this issue. Senator Grove.

Thank you, Mr. President. I rise in support of SB 635. I think the most important thing that we need to learn here is, like I said earlier, that as a business owner, you put a plan in place, you do a root cause analysis, you monitor that plan, you set goals. And if you don't achieve those goals, then you meet again and you change the course of the direction of where you're going in order to achieve the goals.

I know I said a lot in that that was, I don't want to say irrelevant to the Bill, but basically, like my colleague said, $16 million was allocated to this program and a defunct state agency or a state organization basically served 200 kids. We're going to use that money to reroute it, make sure these other 7000 kids get the ability to hear. It will reduce the cost on the opposite end.

When you have kids that can hear and learn at an earlier age instead of going back when they're seven, 8, 9, 10, sometimes 11 years old, and try to retrain individuals and service them with the things that they missed growing up because they couldn't hear, it would save a tremendous amount of money. I think it's a good program. I respectfully ask for an aye vote.

Any further discussion or debate. Senator Nguyen?

Thank you, Mr. President. I, too also rise in support of SB 635. I want to thank the author because this is what government should be, is looking at a problem and then bring it and moving it so that we can actually help these children. Previously, this week, I talked about vision and eye care for children. It's also very necessary for these children because a lot of these children we can help and prevent long term damage to their ears and hearing.

And so this is actually a good Bill and the right Bill to do. And this is on behalf of all those children, thousands of children that needs our help. And so I thank the author for bringing this forward. I ask for an aye vote.

Any further discussion or debate? Discussion or debate? Seeing none. Excuse me, Senator Dahle, I didn't see you over there.

Well, you'll hopefully be able to hear me on this Bill. Actually, somebody who is hearing impaired. I have my hearing aids in right now and today's technology is really awesome. By Bluetooth, I can turn it down, and so when my seatmate is out of control, I just very simply turn it down.

But I want to thank the author for bringing this forward from somebody who is actually hearing impaired and has a son who is hearing impaired and was born that way, and we didn't realize it till later on and have a nephew who is severely hearing impaired and sometimes the parents don't catch it. And for disadvantaged folks who are and Low income people who don't have the ability to.

And I'm going to tell you, the school system's, hearing things are not like what I got at the audiologist that really can connect with your ears. So I want to thank the author for bringing this forward. I think it's going to help a lot of really disadvantaged folks get hearing aids and be able to learn and that's the thing at the young age, you miss so much when you can't hear.

It was so horrible during COVID when we had our mask on and with your glasses and with hearing aids not being able to see people's mouths. You will be surprised if you're hearing impaired, how much you read lips and don't realize it. So I want to just thank the author. I'm super happy this Bill is here. I have no idea why our caucus has a nun on it, but anyway, support the Bill.

Want to give Senator Grove a point of personal privilege if she wants to.

Thank you, Mr. President. I do appreciate that. If I wasn't my colleague from Bieber's seatmate, he wouldn't have some of the great ideas that he listened to to bring to the floor with the arguments that he presents to you or the support comments that he presents.

It's a point of personal privilege, right?

Happy to yield a point of personal privilege. Okay. Any further discussion on the Bill? Further discussion seeing none. Senator Menjivar, you get the opportunity to close.

Yes, sir.

Thank you so much to my three colleagues that stood up in support of this. I'm not sure why we haven't been able to pass this. We are behind close to 30 states that have already implemented this. Let's be the next one. Thank you. And respectfully ask for an aye vote.

All debate having ceased. Secretary please call the roll.

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

We have a full house now, I believe. So. We're going to call the roll a second time. Secretary please call the absent Members.

Durazo.

Alright, we'll put the matter. Senator Menjivar moves the call. Members, we're going to move next to file item 16. This is SB 386 by Senator Newman. Secretary please read.

Senate Bill 386 by Senator Newman in acquitting to elections.

Senator Newman.

Thank you, Mr. President. I rise today to present SB 386, which is back on concurrence and which intelligently makes various non controversial fixes to California's election code. Amendments taken in the Assembly were technical and clarifying. I am respectfully asking for your aye vote today.

Any further discussion on this legislation? Any discussion on these amendments? Seeing none. Secretary please call the roll.

Allen? Aye. Alvarado-Gil? Aye. Archuleta? Aye. Ashby? Aye. Atkins? Aye. Becker? Aye. Blakespear? Aye. Bradford? Aye. Caballero? Aye. Cortezz? Aye. Dahle? No. Dodd? Aye. Durazo? Aye. Eggman? Aye. Glaser? Aye. Gonzalez? Aye. Grove? No. Hurtado? Aye. Jones? No. Laird? Aye. Limon? Aye. Maguire? Aye. Menjavar? Aye. Min? Aye. Newman? Aye. Wen? Aye. Nguyen? No. Niello? No. Ochoa Bogh? No. Padilla? Aye. Portsntino? Aye. Roth? Aye. Rubio? Aye. Seyarto? No. Skinner? Aye. Smallwood-Cuevas? Aye. Stern? Aye. Umberg? Aye. Wahab? Aye. Weiner? Aye. Wilk? No.

Senator Newman moves the call. Next up is file item 17 SB 539 by Senator Stern. Secretary, please read.

Senate Bill 539 by Senator Stern and accolating to the Sepulveda Basin.

Senator Stern.

Thank you very much. Members, this returns for the assembly with amendments on the findings and declarations and some clarifying amendments. I'll just say very briefly, San Fernando Valley is a very hot place. There's not a lot of places to go to find any respite. Sepulveda Basin is in the heart of the San Fernando Valley, and right now it's not utilized. It has huge potential to bring equity and some source of coolness and calm to our valley. And we think it also can be a source of water infrastructure going forward. So we're hoping the Department of Water Resources and other partners engage City of LA and the county without respectfully ask your aye vote.

Any member wish to comment on this legislation? Seeing none. It's eligible for unanimous roll call. Members, without objection. Ayes 40, no zero. The measure passed. The amendments are concurred in. Members, we're going to move to motions and resolutions. I see Senator Laird, does not, no. I see, Senator Portantino.

Thank you, Mr. President. And Members, I request permission to submit a letter to the Journal relative to SB 50, no. 509. Without objection.

Senator Lamont.

Thank you. I'm requesting to move file item 69, SB 639 to the inactive file.

The desk will note Senator Caballero.

I rise to submit a letter to the Journal on SB 306.

So noted. Senator Atkins.

Thank you, Mr. President. I rise to submit a letter to the Journal on my Bill, SB 519. The letter has been approved by both sides of the aisle.

Thank you. So noted. Any other motions or resolutions? Members, we're going to move a little round on the file here. We're going to move to Assembly third reading file item 87. File item 87. This is Assembly Bill 309. By Assembly Member Lee. Give you all a moment to get organized. Floor Manager is Senator Wiener, and we're doing this to coordinate with activity and actions in the Assembly so people are aware. Okay, everyone seems to be prepared. So if the Secretary would please read.

Assembly Bill 309 by Assembly Member Lee an act relating to housing.

Senator Wiener, the floor is yours.

Thank you very much. Mr. President, colleagues, SB 309, which I'm presenting on behalf of Assembly Member Lee, will create the social housing program for California within the Department of General Services. It will identify and develop up to three social housing projects on state owned surplus land. Social housing is publicly backed, affordable at a variety of income levels, and financially self sustaining in the US. Montgomery County, Maryland, is building social housing. Seattle recently passed a ballot measure to do so as well.

Other states, like Hawaii, New York, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, have introduced social housing bills. This is a trend, a good trend for the future as we tackle our housing crisis with diverse strategies. Social housing has a demonstrated track record of success around the world. And countries that have strong social housing programs tend to have much more housing stability and lower rates of homelessness.

Social housing leads with a philosophy of universality, meaning that people within a wide range of income levels are eligible to live in these homes. So this is about mixed income housing by building off the work our state is already doing to address the housing crisis. Social housing will complement this work by serving as another tool that the state can use. I respectfully ask for an aye vote.

Members want to ask everyone to keep their conversations quiet or back of the room so we can give respect to all of our colleagues who are speaking. All right, discussion or debate on this measure? Discussion or debate. See? No microphones up. Secretary, please call the roll.

Allen aye. Alvarado-Gil. Archuleta. Ashby. Atkins aye. Becker aye. Blakespear aye. Bradford. Caballero aye. Cortese aye. Dahle no. Dodd aye. Durazo aye. Eggman aye. Glazer. Gonzalez aye. Grove no. Hurtado. Jones no. Laird aye. Limon aye. McGuire. Menjivar aye. Min aye. Newman aye. Nguyen no. Niello no. Ochoa Bogh no. Padilla aye. Portantino aye. Roth. Rubio. Seyarto no. Skinner aye. Smallwood-Cuevas aye. Stern aye. Umberg aye. Wahab aye. Wiener aye. Wilk no.

Please call the absent Members

Alvarado-Gil no. Archuleta. Ashby aye. Bradford aye. Glazer. Hurtado no. Mcguire aye. Roth. Rubio aye.

Please call the absent members one last time.

Archuleta. Glazer. Roth.

Senator Weiner moves a call. Members, we're going to take a 45 minutes dinner break. We're asking that you please do not leave the Capitol. All of the Members need to remain here for dinner and not return to your offices. Senator Dahle, what purposes do you rise?

I would just like to rise for personal preference, Mr. President. I have an employee who's been in the Capitol for some time, Melanie Bryant, who's my scheduler, who's going to retire at the end of the end of the month. I just want to wish her well and thank her for her service to the district, First Senate District. Thank you.

We thank her for her service. Alright, to see no other microphones up, but we're planning to start promptly at 06:00 p.m. Members, so dinner break until then.

We're going to lift the calls. We're going to lift calls, Members. So you want to lift one call. Everybody should be at their desk. We're going to lift the call on file item 87. Secretary, please call the roll.

Archuleta. Glazer. Roth.

On a vote of 27 to 10, that measure passes.

We're going to lift the call on file item one. Excuse me. All right, Members, we're going to move back to Assembly third reading. We're going to begin with file item 104. This is Assembly Bill 389 by Ramos floor managed by Ochoa Bogh. Secretary, please read.

Assembly Bill 389 by Assembly Member Ramos an act relating to Native American repatriation.

Senator Ochoa Bogh.

Thank you, Mr. President. Members, as co author, I'm pleased to present AB 389, which requires the California State University to adopt policies and procedures to implement the Federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 and its 2001 California counterpart, and to ensure that campus committees utilize these policies.

It also requires that the members of Native American tribes make up the majority of the members on the system wide and campus based committees, and prohibits the use of Native American human remains or cultural items for purposes of teaching or research. AB 389 is supported by multiple tribes and the CSU system. I respectfully ask for an aye vote.

Assembly Bill 1228 by Assembly Member Holden in acquitting to employment. Senator Limon, the floor is yours.

Members, any discussion on this legislation? Any discussion? Seeing none. This measure is eligible for unanimous roll call without objection. Ayes 40, no zero. The measure passes. We're moving next to file item 105. This is Assembly Bill 1228 by Assembly Member Holden. Secretary, please read.

Thank you Mr. President and colleagues. Today I rise to present AB 1228 on behalf of Assemblymember Holden. The recent amendments create a path forward to resolve employer concerns around the content of last year's AB 257 while preserving fast foods workers hard fought efforts to secure a seat at the table to raise labor standards. Upon the withdrawal of the referendum against last year's legislation, AB 1228 will raise the statewide minimum wage for fast food workers to $20 an hour in April of 2024.

Thereafter, the Council may establish minimum wages for fast food restaurant employees that take effect on an annual basis and may increase by no more than 3.5%. The Council may elect to set minimum wage standards that vary by region. The Council created by AB 1228 will still develop minimum fast food restaurant employment standards, including standards on wages and working conditions.

This Bill ensures that there is equal representation on the Council between the fast food restaurant industry and the franchisee or restaurant owner, as well as fast food employees and employee advocates. The author and sponsors have committed to continue to work through technical amendments to address concerns raised by Unite here further clarifying exempted workers, including those at public recreational spaces. This Bill has the support of SCIU, the National Restaurant Association, and the International Franchise Association. I respectfully ask for an aye vote.

Any discussion or debate on this matter? Senator Durazo.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. And thank you to my colleague. This Bill shows how powerful it can be when workers, advocates, business owners, and industry leaders come together to uplift the dignity of work. Millions of workers and their families, now and in the future, will be uplifted. About a third of California's 40 million people live in poverty or near poverty. Our siblings in this industry work full time and often more than one job.

These wage increases are meaningful and will immediately impact their lives and benefit communities. SEIU and Unite Here also reached an agreement, as my colleagues said, for future technical changes. The agreement will include important amendments for fast food restaurants located in hotels, event centers, stadiums, airports, theme parks, museums, corporate campuses, and gambling establishments. There will also be amendments for restaurants located on state lands, such as port districts, parks, and piers.

Members of the Senate and Assembly have agreed to work with the stakeholders to get these changes done as soon as possible next year, with the commitment of the speaker and our own Senate President Pro TEM. Thank you, Madam Pro TEM, for your leadership colleagues. I respectfully ask for your aye vote.

Thank you, Senator Dahle.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Members, I rise in opposition to AB 1228, and I just want to make one comment. It may be dubbed a Happy Meal, but when you get the price for that meal, you're going to be scared. I respectfully ask for a no vote.

Any further discussion, see no mics up. Secretary, excuse me, Senator Limon, you may close.

I respectfully ask for an aye vote.

Thank you. Secretary please call the roll.

Allen aye. Alvarado-Gil. Archuleta aye. Ashby aye. Atkins aye. Becker aye. Blakespear aye. Bradford aye. Caballero. Cortese aye. Dahle no. Dodd aye. Durazo aye. Eggman aye. Glazer aye. Gonzalez aye. Grove no. Hurtado. Jones no. Laird aye. Limon aye. McGuire aye. Menjivar aye. Min aye. Newman aye. Nguyen no. Niello no. Ochoa Bogh no. Padilla aye. Portantino aye. Roth aye. Rubio aye. Seyarto no. Skinner aye. Smallwood-Cuevas aye. Stern aye. Umberg aye. Wahab aye. Wiener aye. Wilk no.

Please call the absent Members.

Alvarado-Gil aye. Caballero aye. Hurtado aye.

Ayes 32, noes eight. The measure passes. We're going to move next to file item 50. Members file item 50. This is Senate Bill 105. Senate Bill 105 by Senator Skinner. Secretary please read.

Senate Bill 105 by Senator Skinner an act relating to the state budget and making an appropriation, therefore, to take effect immediately. Budget Bill.