Senate Standing Committee on Natural Resources and Water

Senate Natural Resources and Water Committee will come to order. Good morning and welcome to our Committee. This is an informational hearing on the governor's infrastructure budget trailer package, and for today's hearing, we'll be hearing from two panels of witnesses prior to taking public comment.

After these two panels have been completed, we'll have a public comment period for those who wish to comment on the proposed infrastructure trailer bills on today's agenda. The Senate continues to welcome the public and has provided access to both in person and teleconference participation for public comment.

For individuals wishing to provide public comment via the teleconference service, the participant toll code is 877-226-8163 and the access code is 3308805. In early January of this year, Governor Newsom proposed the Administration's initial budget for fiscal year 2023-2024.

This was followed on May 12th by the release of the governor's May Revise of the budget to reflect changes in the State's needs and economic outlook since the release of the original budget. On May 19th, the Newsom Administration released its proposed infrastructure budget trailer bill package.

This trailer bill package includes ten bills that span a broad range of state law and policy, covering Caltrans' contract authority to streamlining water projects and wildlife crossings over a proposed rail line from Southern California to Las Vegas, plus other items.

These ten proposed trailer bills, if passed, would enact sweeping changes to many facets of state policy and if not thoroughly vetted, could result in potentially significant unintended consequences for the state and its residents. Typically, the Legislature addresses substantial changes to state policy through the regular policy building committee process over months of each legislative year.

This Policy Committee process includes regular opportunities for stakeholder and public input, vetting, and negotiation. The Policy Committee process is valuable for controversial and contentious issues in particular. In contrast, the budget trailer bill process is comparatively truncated in time and usually provides far less opportunity for stakeholder and public input, vetting, or negotiation.

The trailer bill process makes sense for narrowly-crafted bills to address specific and often technical budget implementation requirements. There is precedent, however, for passing broader and more sweeping policy changes, such as contemplated here in the governor's trailer bill proposal, particularly when there's time, sensitivity, or urgency involved.

As recently as last year, the Legislature has passed more expansive trailer bills when we have deemed these to be warranted. So obviously, that is the focus of today's hearing. The governor's infrastructure trailer bill package includes a sweeping set of large and impactful policy changes around items related to CEQA, endangered species, and other areas.

Many of these changes would ordinarily fall under the jurisdiction of the Senate Natural Resources and Water Committee which is why this Committee is leading this hearing. In recent days, I've heard from many of my Senate colleagues who have expressed deep concerns about the budget trailer bill proposal, both because of substantive concerns and because of the process that is being utilized here.

We've also heard from stakeholders who are opposed to many of the proposed policy changes that are contained in the trailer bill package. I've often heard the refrain, 'why do these proposals need to go through the budget trailer process? Why can't they go through the ordinary policy Committee process?'

Now the Newsom Administration has communicated to us their strong belief that it's necessary to push through the proposed infrastructure package through the trailer bill process because time is of the essence, and that if we do not act now, we may lose significant federal infrastructure funding.

I'm glad that we have Members of the Administration here today to make that case to us and justify each of the major policy changes contemplated in the governor's proposed infrastructure package. In particular, I am looking forward to receiving answers to the following questions. One: why are each of the ten proposed policy changes necessary?

Two: why should we ignore and override the concerns of those opposed to each of these ten proposed policy changes? Three: why is the trailer bill process the necessary vehicle for these proposed policies? And four: to the extent that there is federal funding that might be at risk here, what specific federal funding can be tied to each of the proposed changes?

To be clear, the Administration is asking the Legislature for urgent action here. I have concerns about bypassing the ordinary Policy Committee process, but at the same time, I recognize that there may be a strong case for us doing so.

Today's hearing presents an opportunity for the Administration to make its case on why the Legislature should act with urgency on these measures and to show that the benefits of these proposed policies to the state are so significant that they outweigh any risk of unintended consequences from rushed and incomplete vetting.

We're also hoping that the Administration will be able to justify why opposition to the proposed package should be ignored or overridden, and in some instances, decades of established state policy permanently changed. An equally important goal is to hear the perspective of stakeholders and the public on the proposed package.

This Committee has jurisdiction over many elements of many of the proposed trailer bills, but it is important to note that other Senate Policy Committees, including Senate Environmental Quality and Transportation, among others, also have jurisdiction over important elements of the package.

This hearing will start with a presentation by the Newsom Administration and its selected witnesses on the infrastructure trailer bills package. I've asked the Administration to present on all ten of the trailer bills with an emphasis on those aspects within the Committee's jurisdiction. The Administration is also joined on this panel by a representative from the Legislative Analyst Office.

The second panel that follows includes three representatives of stakeholders whose interests are both within the Committee's jurisdictions and would be affected by the infrastructure trailer bill package. I recognize that the stakeholder panel does not represent all stakeholders with an interest in this package, both within the Natural Resources and Water issue area, but also more generally.

We have scheduled an extended public comment period to hear from all of those that might be interested after these panels are completed. I also encourage anyone who is interested to submit written comments to the Committee at sntr@sen.ca.gov. That's sntr@sen.ca.gov.

This email address is available on our Committee website and will ensure that any comments submitted will be forwarded to the appropriate Senate Committee with jurisdiction. I would like to thank all the panelists in advance for being here to share your insights and perspectives.

I know all of you are very busy and your time here is very appreciated. We appreciate your flexibility and patience and participating in this hearing without very much lead time. With that, I'd like to take a few moments to allow my Senate colleagues the opportunity to make their own opening remarks. Do we have any opening remarks here? Senator Seyarto. Vice Chair Seyarto.

Thank you very much and thank you all for being here this morning to help us understand this package a little bit better. You're looking through it and looking through the governor's proposals, you see a lot of trying to address issues that have been long-standing issues, and not just for the public projects that we do out there that are so important, but also for private sector projects that are also very important in reaching the state's ambitious economic climate and social goals.

And it's been a frustration that some of these type of proposals can't be looked at on a bigger, grander scale, and that's one of the things that I'd like to hear from all of you is this piecemeal approach where we're doing one project at a time or we're just addressing public sector projects related to infrastructure in trying to streamline some of our processes because while we're trying to protect the environment with a lot of our process in CEQA and things, there are things that are outdated and there are things that are redundant.

And those are the things that if we don't not only fix that in the public sector, but if we don't address that for the private sector--and that takes a bigger approach--we're going to continue to have these because the private sector, the home builders, and all of those other folks that put in infrastructure that are not related to us, they have to put in public infrastructure as part of their projects.

And going through this, I've dealt with folks year after year after year and their frustration is the same. The delays--and those delays wind up costing us as it costs the taxpayers. I'm anxious to hear not only how these are going to help and how each of these items are going to specifically help in shortening timelines, but also protecting the protections that we already have.

And so, super appreciate it, and I'll let others comment at this time so that I can listen to the important messages that you guys have for us. Thanks.

Senator Laird.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you and the pro tem for setting up processes to deal with this and to the legislative analysts for a brief roadmap of the issues. I worked, as did some people in this room for Jerry Brown for eight years who said that reforming CEQA was God's work and he could not do it in eight years, and so today we are facing conflicting challenges, some of which were just alluded to.

We have climate goals, we updated and we strengthened them last year, and we have to figure out the best way to meet them. There may be federal funding that hangs in the balance and we have to drill down on how that is. I think that it was just mentioned about dealing with reform one project at a time and how bad that is. I agree.

It's just a question of whether you deal with that comprehensively in a matter of days because I think the trailer bills and the deliberations in a matter of days to consider such major changes is problematic, and we also at the end of this year's budget process where there are a number of things in the budget that has been developed that speak directly to this issue.

I mean, the Administration asked for 60 positions for permitting and the Department of Fish and Wildlife, and I think in the budget thus far are 40, and so how do what we were doing concurrently work with this? So looking through those challenges in the lens of this hearing, I think we have to clearly define the urgency.

Can't be general, has to be specific in what it is, and I think deferring to the legislative process makes more sense, but there is an example here and last year, the governor parachuted in in April and said, 'oh, I might want to keep Diablo Canyon open.' And he had a whole series of proposals and he proposed to dealing with a lot of them in the budget process and in the end, the debate was what you absolutely need in the budget process that can't be handled by a longer deliberative legislative process.

And so in the end, two things that were necessary and would have been lost in order to make a decision in August, were adopted in the budget, and then the legislative process worked. It was a town hall meeting with 700 people. There were stakeholders, and a comprehensive agreement was developed in that amount of time, and I think that should serve as a benchmark here. So I really look forward against those lenses of seeing what the next steps are and the best way to achieve them.

Thank you, Senator Laird. Senator Smallwood-Cuevas.

I appreciate the comments that have been said by my colleagues, but what concerns me most is the absence of a real focus on equity in what's been presented, and I want to understand in more detail how we ensure that this once-in-a-generation investment that is going to come to address infrastructure does not completely skip over communities that are hardest hit and those that have been historically marginalized and excluded from so many of the sectors that fall under the infrastructure umbrella.

We want to promote the state's equity directives. We want to support the governor's emphasis through his executive order on diversity and ensuring that there are mitigation and details around equity in terms of how the state is going to invest its funds. I think--I appreciate that in his order, there was a statement about taking additional concrete steps to address existing disparities and outcomes and advanced equity by designing a delivery system for state procurement services and investments. None of that is outlined here.

If we are not intentional, there will not be an intentional outcome, and already in my district, I have dozens of zip codes that are in recession, plus eight percent unemployment. So if we're going to make these investments on the front end, we have to know that equity is going to be included here, and so I'm very curious to hear more about how these projects are going to be an opportunity to bring our economies together and ensure that hardest hit communities are prioritized, so I'm looking forward to the presentation.

Thank you, Senator. Senator Becker.

Thank you, Chair. Chair of Sub Two, just want to make a few remarks. We made a decision to go through this more detailed process. I want to thank the Senate Leadership for facilitating this more in-depth discussion. In our subcommittees, we spent a lot of time talking about the IRA and the federal programs, what the qualifications are, what the potential is for our state, how do we maximize that?

Which includes the fact that many of the incentives, particularly those for environmental justice communities, are highly competitive and require applicants to have full proposal details about financing and pathway forward. We spent a lot of time, again, talking about how to position ourselves. So I do view a lot of these proposals in that context and think about how do we make ourselves more competitive? We've gotten zero of the initial 2.8 billion dollars of battery manufacturing grants, for example.

So I provided--shared with my colleagues some of my staff's research on this and look forward to hearing your view on that as well. So as we go forward and discuss these proposals, I just want to make sure that we do have the clear facts on that and we're looking at what do we need to do to better position California going forward. Thank you.

Senator Durazo.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Somewhat going along with what my Colleague Senator Smallwood-Cuevas mentioned about the equity, the equity is absolutely essential for California to include communities that have been excluded over and over and over again, but equity to jobs doesn't matter if those jobs are low-paying jobs, if those jobs are minimum wage jobs, if those jobs have wage theft prevalent in them.

And the Biden Administration has made very, very clear that federal infrastructure funds need to include strong labor standards, enforceable labor standards that then make equity something that benefits all Californians. Unfortunately--deja vu--last year when we were talking very close to the end to the deadline about climate bills on a climate package, we proposed specific language on enforceable labor standards and that was completely left out.

So I'm really looking to see now that the federal dollars that we are all so concerned about getting--all of us want the maximum federal dollars--we have to include them in these projects, not in a superficial way. We want enforceable, and we have that. We've had hearings after hearings after hearings. We have the analysis. We have the research. We have the language. We have everything. This will not take more than a few minutes to include, and so as we position ourselves as a state, we're so proud of our climate policies, of our climate investment.

We have to be equally, equally proud that we are going to have strong labor standards that are enforceable specifically through our procurement process. So I really look forward to hearing. There's no doubt that we need to move infrastructure. We have dollars. The feds have dollars. We should use those, but I'm not in support of moving something just for the sakes of moving it without having the quality that Californians deserve and all Californians deserve. Thank you.

Thank you, Senator Durazo. Senator Cortese.

Thank you, Chair Min, and I'll also extend my thanks to all who have, I know, in a hurry put this hearing together. I thank everyone in the room, the legislators and the Administration alike, and others know that there's been a whole series of so-called accountability and oversight hearings on the Senate side which were really designed in part to go through and look at this watershed.

Two years of opportunity for investments in a number of fronts and not just the areas that are going to be discussed today, and take a look and see if there's anything legislatively that might feel it needs to be caught up with. I think some of the things we're going to hear today and we've already heard from my colleagues have fit into those areas, whether that be on the environmental side, on the labor standards side, or whatever.

We have some of what I'm going to say very quickly because I want to obviously defer to the presenters here, but Senator Durazo is speaking, of course, from a lot of experience policy wise, budget wise, because she chairs our Subcommitee Five which deals with the specific areas on the legislative side that she was just talking about.

I chair the policy side of some of those same areas and as it turns out, she, in conjunction with Transportation, and my Policy Committee in conjunction with her Committee, held those hearings with an eye toward trying to as fast as we can with the same kind of notion that folks should want to go fast, we want to be ready to go fast, but we were uncertain as we went through Interim Recess last year as to whether or not we were getting aligned with federal requirements quickly enough.

In some cases, it felt like those might not even be available yet. There were notices being written, there were things that were just unavailable. Even with outstanding Committee staff here, it's a lot, drinking from a fire hose to try to take those federal requirements and translate them here and make sure that as we try to go fast and as we try to take care of other priorities, many of which would be the jurisdiction of this Committee, that we don't inadvertently create a negative trade off where we go fast, we match up, but we don't match up enough on the labor standard side, for example.

The good news is that work got done. The UC Labor Center, you know, put together a report for us. I think, you know, I see some nodding heads that there was extensive testimony. Folks that came forward with their expertise to present, just as you will be doing today, understood that it wasn't going to help us to have them come in and say, 'we could do that work.'

We needed them to actually show up with that work done, and so as things have been moving quickly here, I'm making sure today that we get hard copies of the Labor Center report distributed today so that that's available, but what I'd like to hear--I'm not trying to make a speech here about all the good work that's been done--but I would love to hear today what's been done on the finance side, what's been done on the administrative side that's similar or that's in effect, in kinship with this work that we've done. I don't think we know that, and we understand that.

And I think we respected boundaries, and we said, 'look, we'll stick to our knitting on the legislative side and we'll call for our own studies and our own reports and our own alignment data,' because it's probably not fair back at Interim Recess to ask the Administration to do that work or to direct that work to our Committee. So we did our own. We don't know what you've done.

We'd like to know that, and we'd like to make sure as we go forward that all this work that probably all of us have been doing over the last six or seven months is going to result in 100 percent maximum return on the federal investment. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Senator. We have right now Senator Padilla and then Senator Allen. Anyone else? I know we're all eager to hear from our Administration witnesses, so go ahead, Senator.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and my thanks to the Members of Administration. Certainly I'll be general and try to be brief, and I think we all appreciate the absolute sensitivity and need to be strategic, focused, and nimble as a state government to achieve some of the critical outcomes that we need with respect to critical and strategic infrastructure. I don't think there's anybody that would disagree with that.

I'm not so certain, to be candid, that this approach which seems to be becoming more and more common in recent cycles, one that lends itself to a quality and iterative and truly deep sort of partnership that is going to be required to make fundamental, structural, procedural changes that are required to achieve quicker outcomes, going to be something that's lasting or is only going to last during the life of this Administration, the life of this Legislature.

And I think, frankly, just to be candid, we need to be a lot more strategic than that as a state government. We need to create structures that are lasting, go beyond this Administration, go beyond this Legislature that are going to allow the state to be able to identify, act, leverage, and finance and implement critical infrastructure projects. An example here would be the availability for more than a year of some of the last round of federal funding that can be leveraged to do capacity building.

We've had time to have that conversation. We've had time, to be candid, to do that coalition building. We've had time, for example, to try to design an architecture to be able to decide how do we prioritize from a strategic and statewide sense where we need to go first, second, third, fourth, and so on. We didn't take advantage of that time. We're sitting here in the budget process.

I want to express my gratitude to the pro tem and to leadership to be able to create some kind of framework for the Legislature to weigh in in a very, very short period of time. Hopefully that's quality. I'm looking forward to hearing what some of that detailed approach will be and how we actually identify priorities, how we build capacity building that is long-term and not just this term, and that is going to be able to assure that we achieve the outcomes that we need.

So I'm looking very forward to hearing the details about that approach, and I think finally, I want to really associate myself with my colleagues, Senators Smallwood-Cuevas, Senators Cortese and Durazo, with respect to standards. On the one hand, we're clearly articulating that we have a unique and imperative opportunity to take that should be taken advantage of here and now in this process. Well, if that's the case, then we can't overlook addressing issues of equity or labor standards and we can't just have one without the other. So with that, thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks to all of you.

Thank you, Senator Padilla. Senator Allen.

Like everyone, I'm eager for the hearing to start. As the Chairman of the Environmental Quality Committee that oversees CEQA, I did want to say that the Committee has really tried to demonstrate flexibility over the past few years on CEQA, certainly much more than before. We just, in fact, passed out of our House, out of our Committee, SB 420 which is Senator Becker's bill on expedited CEQA review for transmission lines, but the core principle that we've always brought to this question is the CEQA is in there for a reason.

It's all about environmental quality, and one of the key questions we continually ask is if we're going to give flexibility under CEQA, is that flexibility being narrowly tailored in a way that's really going to meet our broader environmental goals? And that's going to be the lens, I think, that we're going to continue to.

To bring to this. We had a good meeting a couple of days ago. We talked about court capacity. If everyone's at the front of the line, then nobody's at the front of the line. I know that continues to be an issue. A lot of issues have been raised by my colleagues, and I know we're going to continue to discuss intensely. But I do want to make sure that if we are giving SQL flexibility, that there be a really discernible and narrowly tailored focus on environmentally beneficial projects.

Senator Eggman.

Thank you. And I'll see, like everyone else, I'm eager to hear more. But I guess first I just want to express my extreme disappointment that this comes at this time, so late in the process.

And as somebody who represents the Delta area where I mean, if you want to talk about a third rail in my district and in many parts of California, as evidenced by the voters multiple times, as evidenced by every big piece of policy we do where we say as long as it remains delta neutral because we know it's a much bigger issue, when you're talking about tunneling under 40 miles in my district and to have it come for a special Committee right before the budget.

It feels disrespectful to the process, to all the work that we've done. I've served in this Legislature 11 years now and have worked to maintain we maintain neutrality. And to have something come at this late date and want to be rushed through that has such an impact on my district and the state and the 4 million people who reside in that area to the animals that reside in the area to that beautiful delta I commute through every day. And the flyway and the birds and everything else we're talking about. To be able to just come at the last minute and think we're going to get this done feels disrespectful.

Thank you. Senator Eggman, do we have any other opening comments? Okay with that, then we will get to our first panel, which includes the Newsom Administration and the LAO. We have here from the Newsom Administration sitting in front of us, Gayle Miller, senior Counselor on Infrastructure and Clean Energy Finance; Secretary Wade Crowfoot of the California Natural Resources Agency; Toks Omishakin, Secretary of the California State Transportation Agency.

Behind them, for questions, we have Chris Calfee, special Counsel from California Natural Resources Agency; Mark Cullison, undersecretary for CSTA; Jessica Pearson, Executive Officer of the Delta Stewardship Council; Michael Keever, Chief Deputy Director of the California Department of Transportation; and, last but not least, Chuck Bonham, Director of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

We also have with us Rachel Ehlers from the Legislative Analyst Office to provide the LAO's perspective. We will give the Administration approximately 25 minutes to present your package. My understanding is that Gail Miller will provide an overview, followed by Secretary Crowfoot and Secretary Omishakin, and that the others are available to answer questions. I will provide time checks at 10 and 20 minutes or so. To my colleagues, we'll wait until after the Administration and the LAO have made their presentations before we entertain questions. Welcome, Ms. Miller.

Thank you. And thank you sincerely, Mr. Chair and Senators. And we obviously really appreciate the feedback, are grateful for the opportunity to be here and I will try to answer some of your questions as we provide this overview and look forward to just answering them in more detail and have had communication from your staffs or continuing to speak to them and look forward to that opportunity. So I do want to talk about clearly, I think it's God's work. Thank you to your committees.

I know how much work this was and really appreciate the background and learning more from you. So thank you for that. This idea of lasting change, I think is exactly how the Governor set up this infrastructure project.

So first you have these bills before you. We also have an all of government approach through this infrastructure Strike Team and I do hope you'll hold us accountable in the same way we have for broadband or Imperial County where you come to us and we give you the data.

We show you exactly where we're building, where it is in the districts, what the equity goals are. So you will continue to hear more about these dashboards that Secretary Tong and GovOps is taking the lead on in terms of making sure that you have complete transparency into everything we're doing, how we're building, and all of the equity goals.

So, one, on this idea, Senator Allen, on the surgical way in which we're treating CQA here, so the overarching piece and Secretary Grofoot will go into much more detail, is that we are maintaining CEQA mitigation and the public process. So I think there's a lot of sort of misconception out there about what this is and isn't. And I do want to make that clear from the start.

Second, on the labor standards, obviously all of Public Works have really all of the Legislature, the apprenticeship requirements, the certified payroll reporting, enforcement of Public Works by Dir, and the awarding body labor compliance programs, prevailing wage requirements, and all of the ways in which contractors have to register. First with Dir. So everything we ever do on Public Works, those are always, always maintained.

And then obviously there are specific ways in which we're requiring skilled and trained labor for the Chips program and the energy projects over 20 then just to the urgency and I know this question is probably the most important one for us to answer today and I do hope that we are helpful with this question. One, to Senator Becker's point, and in Imperial County we have the world's most, the richest source of lithium. We did not get a single dollar of that 2.8 billion in batteries.

And the feedback we got from the Federal Government is California does not move fast enough. We can permit in 24 hours, sometimes in Arizona, right across the border. The same thing is true for the debt limit package that just passed. In those 72 hours, they put $295,000,000 on the table of transportation funding that were going to be cut unless our Cal State Agency and Caltrans, who is here today, managed to encumber every single one of those dollars within 72 hours.

We took on the responsibility of the local governments to ensure that those dollars could be encumbered and we didn't just give them back to the Federal Government. So not only do we need to maximize the dollars by having applications that show our ability to permit and build, but we also can't take any of these federal dollars for granted at any time.

And obviously, part of what you're hearing today and the reason this is the package is that this is not only about these individual projects we speak to in any of the bills, but also how we create the infrastructure necessary for housing to Senator Sayarto's point and other developments. So we have the water and the roads and the ability to support every type of infrastructure we want in the state.

And finally, and I know time is short and I really want to turn it over to the secretaries, but just on the question of equity, and really sincerely grateful, Senator Smallwood-Cuevas, for your specific point, I want to speak to what we're doing within that strike team just so it's clear how seriously we take this. We have an equity bridge. So there's sort of four big components to this one. And all of this will be measured and shown to all of you in these dashboards.

One, that more than 40% of the community benefits will flow to disadvantaged communities. The justice 40 program at US EPA is actually modeled on California's Cal enviro screen. Senator Allen, the work you did in your Committee and the work Senator Laird, you did its secretary.

So you'll start to see how the dollars are flowing and then how they're mitigated of the direct and indirect 400,000 jobs we anticipate, we will actually be able to tell you how they're actually increasing in each region by sector and by region. So you'll start to see a map of this. The total new contracts will exceed state goals, and you'll start to see actually how we're working within our government operations agency on this procurement process.

And then you'll continue to see these community engagements with tribes and historically disadvantaged communities so that the equity bridge can really not only move forward these goals within infrastructure, but take into account everything that we've done in this Legislature and this Administration in terms of the pieces of equity that are really important. So it's something that we've absolutely taken so seriously. And you'll hear more about that final point on pieces like the job order contracting.

It's actually to allow more folks into the contracting in the state, which has been so important. So I can't emphasize enough that what you're going to hear about today, there's three broad categories. I know we talk about the number 10 bills. We're talking about things you've spoken about before you've done for housing as recently as the SB 423, which went so much farther than this. It's alternative delivery methods, it's expedited permitting reform, and it's also this expedited environmental review.

So we do need to make California more competitive. Secretary Crofet will talk about the urgency and the weather whiplash, and we do have to save dollars. And we do have to recognize federal funding isn't guaranteed. And every single day we delay the idea that inflation really will affect us is very real. So we obviously will continue. We're here all morning, happy to answer as many questions as we can, hope that addressed some of them, and look forward to the conversation. Thank you again.

Thank you, Gayle. Chair Min and Senators, thank you so much for the audience today. Secretary Omishakin and I will do our best to summarize proposals in a fairly concise format and then provide an opportunity to answer your questions. But given your opening comments, I think it's important to address the question of why and why now as it relates to these proposals. I lead the Natural Resources Agency, so I'll talk a lot about water and energy, and Secretary Omishakin will talk about transportation.

So I think we all recognize that climate change has become a crisis. I've been working on this issue for 30 years, and we used to talk about the impacts of climate change as a growing threat. I think that evolved to becoming a problem, and now it's a crisis. October ended the driest three year period in the state's 172 year history. We went into the winter with 6 million Californians under water rationing, dozens of rural communities out of water.

And frankly, had we had another dry winter, that amount of Californians underwater rationing could have easily grown to 20 million. Just weeks after that, we ended that third dry season. We experienced more rain and snow in a three week period than we ever have in our state's history. We deployed the National Guard into your districts in an effort to save lives and property, massive destruction, and, of course, presidential focus as a result of that flooding.

Broadly speaking, our scientists tell us that hotter temperatures mean we're set to lose 10% of our water supply in the next 15 years, not by the end of the century. In the next 15 years, seven to 9 million acre feet. And lest we forget the extreme heat, during September, we experienced the longest and hottest heat wave in the history of the American West. Not only did that almost disrupt our power grid, but that had a less visible impact on vulnerable communities across the state.

That encountered days, a couple weeks of extreme heat, particularly communities that had been historically redlined and don't have the tree canopy or air conditioning homes or community infrastructure to last through that extreme heat. Coastal sea level rise and impacts are here. Now, many of you know that whether it's threats to communities like Oxnard where there are toxic sites or Barrio Logan in San Diego or even Crescent City, I mean, these are impacts.

Now, we clearly need to take all actions that we can, and we are working to do that. Thanks to your partnership, we've taken remarkable emergency actions. The Governor has issued proclamation upon proclamation to take very near term actions. Right now, though, from our perspective, we need to treat this as the sustained emergency that it is and take durable actions that actually not only protect us into the next season, whether it's worsening drought or flood or heat, but into coming years.

Let's be clear, this climate crisis impacts many communities disproportionately. And it's the most vulnerable communities, frankly, the underserved communities that are on the front lines. So I want to be clear that we have a priority within our Administration that's articulated through our state adaptation strategy to prioritize the most vulnerable communities.

So you should hold us accountable for ensuring that a disproportionate amount of funding go into those most vulnerable communities, whether that's South La on extreme heat, whether that's rural towns on drought impacts, or whether that's underserved communities for flood protection. We have to conclude that we are around the corner next season from the unexpected, something worse than we've already experienced. So you've asked about the urgency.

The urgency is we have hundreds of projects across the state in your districts, community wells, groundwater recharge projects, dam safety improvements, canal upgrades, recycled water facilities, floodplain restoration that are getting done right now in planning and permitting. And if we can help them get in the ground and working in coming months, we will better protect communities from what's around the corner. And something is around the corner. We have been very clear of the state's long term plan, sustained emergency plan on water.

It's called our Water Supply Strategy for a hotter, drier future. And we're very clear about the numeric targets that we need to hit as a state. And we need to support your water agencies, your local districts, on achieving their projects on energy. Thanks to your leadership, the Governor's leadership, California has the strongest energy clean energy transition goals in the country. Carbon neutrality is law, 90% clean energy by 2035, protective setbacks from oil production. And that's powerful. The world is watching.

If we can meet these targets, we show the world that we can successfully combat climate change. I think we all recognize that. But I'm here to say, as respectfully and directly as I can, we are not positioned to meet those targets. Those targets are simply not realistic unless we change the status quo, unless we allow the projects that we need on energy to happen more quickly.

So likewise, there are hundreds of projects across the state, whether they're solar, wind, geothermal, energy storage projects that are in planning and permitting that this package addresses, helping get online more quickly. We know from the FARC discussions with the Federal Government that and you know, of course, thanks to your diligence, there is a generational opportunity to secure federal funding to make this a transition on energy, but also on climate resilience. And this complements your leadership, securing almost $50 billion on these priorities.

But we also know from candid conversations with the Federal Government that the Biden Harris Administration wants to see this funding turn into projects now and in the next two years. And there is a perception based on reality that California moves too slow to get these projects in the ground in a way that can demonstrate productivity on the federal funding. We need to change that and we need to do it with an equity lens.

And I think, and I believe, and we're working towards exceeding that justice 40 target of 40% into those communities most impacted. And I think it's important for you to hold us accountable to that. So from our perspective, delaying changes by six months, one year, two years on what we're proposing is meaningful.

And it does mean across the state the real possibility of less protection for what's around the corner on weather whiplash and falling further behind on the targets that we know we need to meet on energy. In the broadest of terms, the proposals before you are offered respectfully, they come out of agencies like mine that are charged with delivering these projects. They're based on a year of input that Mayor V. Ragosa facilitated on behalf of the Governor.

So let's then now shift into what we're proposing and I'll briefly summarize them first, is obviously related to sequoia or the California Environmental Quality Act. We recognize CEQA is an important law that assures that any environmental impacts are either avoided, minimized, or mitigated and impacted communities have a voice in the process.

And we heard over the last year, including from some of the folks you'll hear from today, that for us not to make any changes to the substantive CEQA process around environmental review, around mitigation requirements, around community input. So that remains untouched in the proposals. What we're simply trying to do here is condense or streamline the length of time for CEQA litigation.

Hundreds of CEQA lawsuits are filed every year across the state that significantly lengthen the up or down decision on projects and in some cases make it very hard to have finality on whether a project happens or not. So there are two specific changes that we're suggesting. One is that we bring a set of projects that we believe are critically important for climate action under a 270 day period for streamlined judicial review if or where feasible.

So the idea is, apply the framework that the Legislature has passed for sports stadiums and certain priority projects into these critical climate projects and where they fit under clean energy and water and transportation and chips manufacturing, that that would be a streamlined process. Not curtailing the ability to sue on CEQA, but getting these lawsuits done more quickly. That's proposal number one. Proposal number two is addressing what we believe is a lengthy, time consuming part of litigation, and that is the administrative record.

And what we're suggesting is changing the standard that now says all emails, all internal electronic communications in a public agency, even those not shared with the decision makers, need to be part of that administrative record. In our experience, both the collection of those emails, but more importantly, the review of those emails by lawyers takes months of time. Importantly, we are not suggesting that those emails, those electronic records, not be subject to or be used in a lawsuit.

There is still the opportunity to file Public Records Act requests for those emails if the litigants prefer it's simply not defaulting to a very lengthy and onerous requirement on administrative record in all cases. And those are the two CEQA changes. And again, no CEQA exemptions, no curtailment of community input or environmental review or mitigation, simply trying to streamline the time frame of litigation. The third change is addressing how we continue to protect our Fish and Wildlife and allow projects to go forward.

In 1984, the Legislature passed the California Endangered Species Act, which is the nation's strongest emergency protections on imperiled species. 14 years before that, the Legislature assembled a list of species that they wanted to protect. It's called the fully protected list. It includes 37 species, and over time, we've maintained both the science based Endangered Species Act and the process through the Fish and Game Commission and this artifact of 37 species, many of those species have been added to the California Endangered Species Act list.

Some of those species that are still protected in law as fully protected folks recognize as common species that don't require protection anymore. What we're talking about or what we're proposing is to bring that fully protected list into the California Endangered Species Act and allow science to determine whether we need to do more to protect these specific animals or less important. To note that this also allows for proactive mitigation to work to recover these animals that would be brought into the California Endangered Species Act.

The fourth proposal regards our Delta Stewardship Council, and it's important to reference that this proposal came directly from the Delta Stewardship Council. I know so much around the Delta gets interpreted as driven by this question of conveyance or a tunnel. But I have to say that these proposals or this set of proposals from the Delta Stewardship Council is all about helping that council adjudicate its work more effectively, which includes floodplain protection for delta communities and habitat projects.

So you'll hear more, if you want, from our Executive Director or Executive officer of the Stewardship Council. Jessica Pearson. The fifth and final proposal that I'll briefly mention before I turn it over to Secretary Omashakin regards our eligibility for a new program of federal funding called the Federal Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which is colloquially known as the Federal Green Bank.

Our infrastructure bank known as our Ibank, and our Department of Water Resources want to position themselves in collaboration with other agencies for federal funding, but in order to do so, need some enabling statute to be able to develop the proposals to do that. So, again, we have experts here to share more as you desire. And now I'll turn it over to my colleague, transportation Secretary Omishakin.

And you're just under 20 minutes.

We still have good time.

You have six, but we'll be a little flexible.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Ms. Miller. Secretary Crowfoot as well, for the intros there. Mr. Chair, thank you. Members, Senators, thank you as well for accommodating us this morning to share on the urgency and the importance of this proposal, this Bill from Governor Newsom, not only to us as state leaders, but to the

People of the state as well. Secretary Crowfoot covered five components. I'm going to cover the other five components of this bill, but before I get to those five, those other five components of the bill, I'd like to share a little bit more about what drives us today in transportation in California. Transportation systems are about all people and improving their quality of life. Our work is driven by four priorities that we call the core four safety, equity, climate action, and economic prosperity.

Transportation done right, creates, well-paying jobs, is a good steward of the environment, and powers our economy. The state has already made many steps in the right direction, beginning with the adoption of the Climate Action Plan for Transportation Infrastructure. Some of you are familiar with it. We call it CAPTI. By adopting CAPTI, the state committed to investing billions of formular and discretionary transportation dollars annually to aggressively combat and adapt to climate change while supporting public health, safety and equity.

Therefore, it is imperative we continue to make progress on this front. The Governor's infrastructure package represents another ambitious effort and aims to maximize taxpayer dollars and deliver results while creating hundreds of thousands of good jobs and working towards achieving California's world leading climate goals. This package would expedite a number of transportation projects, from routine highway maintenance and safety projects to innovative, complex transportation improvements that take years to implement and require costly, timely, consuming, permitting and mitigation.

Accelerating projects will also allow Caltrans to obligate funds on more projects through earlier contracting opportunities and will avoid the inflationary impacts of delay. Contracting out more quickly, accelerates projects shows the state's readiness and makes them more competitive for federal grant funding through notices of funding opportunities. There are at least a dozen federal grant opportunities available now and dozens more to come, creating hundreds of millions of dollars of opportunity for California infrastructure projects and even potentially billions.

For example, billions are expected to be made available nationwide this summer through mega, infra and rural surface transportation programs. In addition to federal programs to reconnect communities, create great separations, and rehabilitate aging bridges across the country and in our state. This package from the Governor would make the state more competitive for these upcoming grant opportunities from the Federal Government. Moving this package through the budget would allow Caltrans to get contracts out this year and avoid the risk of potentially missing the upcoming construction season.

If we wait to pass this package until later December or even the end of the legislative year, we will risk delaying projects by at least another year. These delays will increase project cost and delay the creation of good paying jobs. For example, with inflation currently around 5%, a one year delay on a $100 million project adds $5 million. A two year delay to a $1 billion project at 3%, inflation would add $61 million.

Thanks to the Governor and this legislature, the past two budgets made unprecedented investments in our state's infrastructure, including $12.8 billion in clean transportation. Combined with funding from the IIJA and the IRA, California will invest up to $180 billion over the next decade in clean infrastructure, which will create or help sustain 400,000 good-paying jobs while helping us to meet the state's climate goals. These investments will add to the continued revenue made by the Road Repair and Accountability Act of 2017, also known as SB One.

I'll now very briefly go over the other five components of the proposal.

If I could just you are at 25 minutes, so if you could start just wrapping up, that would be great.

I'll get to them very quickly. Mr. Chair. Number one job order contracting. The proposal would allow Caltrans to use job order contracting for routine highway and facility maintenance, safety projects, and repair of transportation facilities. Progressive design build is another key component of this proposal. It would allow Caltrans to pilot the progressive besign build method of contracting on up to eight projects through the year 2030. Accelerating environmental mitigation also is a key component of this bill proposal. It would allow Caltrans to directly purchase environmental mitigation.

Environmental mitigation credits direct contracting authority for the I 15. Wildlife Crossing is the fourth one. This proposal would allow Caltrans to directly contract with Brightline to develop, design and construct three wildlife crossings as a part of the project on the median on I 15 and finally, with NEPA. This proposal would allow the current sunset provision and permanently authorize the California Secretary of Transportation with the performance of certain federal environmental responsibilities under NEPA.

So, to conclude, these proposals will maximize taxpayer dollars and accelerate timeliness of projects throughout the state, all while maintaining the state's robust nation leading environmental standards and ensuring appropriate environmental review. If we are serious about our climate goals, the time to address these issues is now. We have an opportunity to maximize taxpayer dollars and receipt and deliver results while creating hundreds of thousands of good paying jobs. Mr. Chair, thank you for the additional time and allowing us to address these key components.

Thank you, Secretary. I apologize for rushing you. I know we took our time here on the dais and you clocked in at just under 27 minutes. So thank you for being timely. With that, we are going to move to the LA office and Ms. Ehlers, you have 7 minutes, but you could take a little longer as well.

Thank you, I will be as brief as I can. I know you've got a lot to talk about. Rachel Ehlers from the Legislative Analyst's Office. Good morning, Senators. I am going to speak from a handout which you should all have in your green packet. It is also available on our website and the Committee website. For those watching audience in here, I have copies for you all too.

So, just to start with, I think in our initial assessment, we think the Governor's proposals really seek to address some very important issues. Really important policy concerns. There's pretty widespread agreement that there are barriers to undertaking projects, that we have very ambitious state goals, whether that's increasing our energy reliability, responding to the impacts of climate change, as Secretary Crowfoot really eloquently laid out the case for the challenges we are facing. Certainly building more housing has been a really important state goal.

So we think the administration deserves a lot of credit for identifying these issues and kind of putting before you some concrete proposals to address them. The proposals are really wide-ranging, as you heard in the presentations, from something kind of as narrowly scoped as changing the number of members of the Delta Stewardship Council who need to be present for a vote.

Now, that could have some trade offs with it, but it's a pretty narrow proposal as compared to something like changing the record requirements for all projects under CEQA. So really wide range of proposals here before you. These proposals have a lot of trade offs associated with them. In some cases, they may really expedite projects, but they could also reduce some environmental protections, legislative oversight, opportunities for public input.

So these are some of the trade offs that you are being forced to kind of try and weigh and understand. Similarly, even around costs, if a proposal moves more quickly, as the Secretary mentioned, that could save a lot of money from inflation. But there could also be costs associated with these proposals, particularly around courts. If they are faced with increased workload, there could be costs associated with that that certainly, from a fiscal appropriation perspective, is going to be important for you all to consider.

I think our biggest concern about the package before you, and this was mentioned by many of you as well, is the timing and the timeline that you are being presented with this package for action. As was noted, and as the Governor spoke in his press conference releasing these proposals, the administration has been working for over a year on this package and they're asking you to make a decision within a matter of weeks.

Now, you may not need a year for some of these, maybe you do, but we think that you deserve the same benefit of time to take what you need to make the decisions and to weigh these trade-offs, particularly for some of the more kind of far-reaching proposals that are before you.

So as we look at this, we've been spending a lot of time over the past week or two since we got these, and we have not yet seen the compelling evidence that you need to act immediately on these. Yes, there are federal grants available. Yes, there is a portion of these applications, as we understand, where there is a narrative portion that the state talks about how quickly it's going to move on some of these projects.

But we haven't seen kind of how specifically and quantifiably these proposals will truncate that timeline that we would be able to make that case to the Federal Government, or how specifically that might translate into, for example, more points on our application or what kind of additional funding we would get. So that specificity, while it's hard to again quantify, we think is kind of important in making the case for you all and how quickly you need to move, what would we get from taking these actions?

But then similarly, there's lack of clarity on what would we give up. And that's what we think you need to take whatever time you need in order to figure out that kind of cost and benefit as you move on these proposals. So turning to page two, as you follow along with me in the handout, we also think that you don't need to think about these proposals as one big package.

And thumbs up, thumbs down, there are a lot of different pieces in here and we think that you should think about them individually. Maybe some you are more comfortable with and you could move more quickly, and others, maybe you need a little bit more time. Maybe some you feel like need more changes than others where you're kind of comfortable as they're being presented. So we think you should think and consider each proposal kind of individually on its own merits.

Another overarching point we really wanted to raise for you is that some of these proposals address issues with CEQA or with current law and kind of address them sort of in a piecemeal way, kind of carve out individual types of projects or individual projects to give a special treatment to.

And there may be some rationale for that, but you also might want to think more holistically, that certainly might take you longer, but we think it's worthwhile to think, are there underlying problems and barriers with our existing laws? And do you want to think about that across all types of projects? Not just energy projects, water projects, but what about housing? Are there other types of barriers that you might want to take a broader look at?

And then finally, as your staff, we of course want to raise for you your role in the process and opportunities for legislative oversight and decision-making. And we do see instances across many of these proposals that do delegate quite a bit of authority to the administration to decide which specific projects are going to be eligible for some of this special treatment. Even with the judicial streamlining, it's highlighted that these are similar to the AB 900 process that was recently modified by SB 7.

But those processes in those previous bits of legislation have a role for the Joint Legislative Budget Committee to review those projects before they are approved for that streamlining process. And they also have specific criteria that identify which projects, types of projects can be eligible for that. And that's missing from these proposals. So there may be places you want to look for making sure that you're comfortable with your role in the process.

So, finally, turning to page three, just some high-level questions we would suggest you might want to think about both today. But as you're thinking about these proposals over the coming timeline, whatever timeline you decide you need. And the first is, really what are the problems you're trying to solve? What are the barriers with the existing laws? Do the governor's proposals address those problems? Are there other problems that these proposals don't address that you think should be addressed?

Are there different solutions that you think might address the problems in an even better way? And then, as I noted, do you want to think kind of more comprehensively and holistically in some ways for some of those problems that you identify? And secondly, what are the goals that you want to achieve? In some cases, some of these goals may be conflicting, whether it's expediting projects, making sure that environmental protections are as robust as you want them to be, public input, transparency.

How do you balance all of these goals? And do you feel that the governor's proposals, before you balance those goals effectively, are the types of projects that are being proposed for some of these treatments that the projects you want to be focusing on, or are there others or are there some included that you don't think should get this type of treatment? So making sure that your goals are reflected in this package. This issue of urgency, as many of you raised, also an important question.

Certainly, as Secretary Crowfoot mentioned, there is a sense of kind of broader urgency to address our kind of underarching problems and issues. But the question before you is, how quickly do you need to work and act on these specific proposals before you? And I think that's probably the lens right now that are important to focus on. Turning to the last page, what are the impacts consequences, implications of the proposals before you? Are you comfortable that you understand them?

And are you comfortable with what they may be? Whether that's in costs, whether that's in environmental impacts, whether that's in trade offs, about the amount of public input and transparency? Are there other opportunities you want to seek to make sure that you are comfortable with your role not only in overseeing how these kind of proposals are implemented, but also helping guide how they're implemented? And this could be both kind of on a short term basis, but also thinking longer term.

Our office has long recommended that you may want to establish a kind of a permanent committee on infrastructure that you could use as a way to help deliberate with these issues on a longer-term basis. And then finally, this issue of timeline, how much time do you need and do you want to adopt different timelines for different pieces of this proposal. With that, we haven't, as I said, had a ton of time with these proposals.

But I'm here with two of my colleagues, Helen Kirstie and Sonia Pettick, to answer any questions.

Thank you, Ms. Ehlers. With that, I'm going to see if any of my colleagues have questions. I'm sure there'll be no questions here from any of my colleagues on this. Senator Becker.

Thank you. A couple of points I think that probably worth amplifying. I think when you mentioned in the outset is that these are really about streamlining, I think, right, this is not really massive CEQA reform so much as streamlining, even though we have done blanket exemptions for CEQA reform in other areas where we've said there is a crisis.

I guess the energy projects on my mind, a number of us here toured CAISO yesterday and they were saying we built out, I think in last year about eight gigawatts of renewables and storage, which was terrific. But then they were also saying we need to do that for the next 20 years, each year for the next 20 years to hit our goals and we will then also have to have the transmission concomitant along with that. And so I also look at these proposals in that sense.

But getting back to the IRA and just want to clarify a couple of things because if the projects don't have to be delivered until 2033, some people might say, hey, well, we do have time. But when we met with the working group, I think you talked about a battery plant, they're saying, hey, we can't go ahead if we don't have this.

Because of sort of the timeline, we can't go ahead unless we know we're going to get those credits and we can't get those credits if we're in the ground by that time. So I don't know, maybe you could share us some more details. What are you hearing from project developers and other things that you think this proposals will help.

Thank you, Senator Becker, and Tyson Eckerly from the Governor's Office of Business Development is here as well. Just briefly on, I think the energy question which will literally power the future and everything you learned yesterday at CAISO. So the need to build clean faster, we started that with your partnership in AB 205 from last year with the opt in permit streamlining and this is really a continuation of that.

So these types of projects really take an amount of time that we don't have and that was only a first step and I think many of you said that last year. And I also think that the legislature and the Governor have really doubled down on meeting our SB 100 goals of 100% clean electricity by 2045 and then that interim target of 90% by 2030 and 95% by 2040.

We're on our way, but there are huge different challenges and we've done some on solar, some on offshore wind. But to your earlier point, the piecemeal approach is no longer serving us for the ability to really meet the climate crisis, the weather whiplash, our ability to electrify everything like Secretary Crowfoot was saying. And what we did to get to 59% shows what our track record is, now we're at 59%. And so now the question is, what do we do to go further?

And what we're hearing from developers specifically is that every one of the decisions, and I hope some of the supporters speak to this, they are making location decisions every single day based on the ability to get the projects moving. So we have I can think of two specific storage projects right now that are going through the CEC process that are begging us to move faster. And again, in Arizona, in Nevada, we have redwood materials that made a decision between California and Nevada. They're in Nevada.

So the idea that we can manufacture California's recovered lithium while protecting the Salton Sea, while protecting the area of the highest poverty in the state, we have manufacturers, three developers down there are producing the lithium and then every single one of the manufacturing decisions they're making. So there's control, thermal resources, energy source, and Berkshire Hathaway Energy all down there having conversations as to whether or not they can do that manufacturing in California, in Imperial County, or if they're going to go across the border to Arizona.

And then the same is true for every single one of the storage and offshore wind projects. It's how is California going to work with us to make sure that we go faster? Again, we can go into specific details of specific companies. We're happy to send you. We have two tracking devices right now. One is a crowdsource, just where developers are asking us questions all the time.

How can you guarantee us, if we make the investment in jobs and infrastructure in California, that we will get this project built? And I'm sure so there's a whole strategy in California that AB 205 is part of it.

The memorandum of understanding between the Independent System Operator, the Public Utilities Commission, and Secretary Crowfoot's California Energy Commission, where we're working together to literally connect the bulk transmission that we need at the very top of the chain all the way down to the distribution that our utilities are responsible for and the procurement that the PUC needs. But what we know more than anything is that we don't have the capacity we need in order to do clean energy.

It's why you'll see peaker plants fire up during a reliability challenge. So I think to answer your question specifically around developers, this is absolutely a crisis, and we hear from them all the time that California's challenges are great. I have so much more. Just really, really briefly, I do want to make sure that this point about the battery storage is really specific we've taken. And Senator Padilla, thank you for joining us.

Every single level of Federal Government to Imperial County to show them the clean way, the only clean way in the world that we can capture lithium. And nevertheless, we got zero of that 2.8 billion in that initial battery grant, and we continue to really fight for that, and there'll be a second round of those battery grants. We're hoping to make the case. Narrative like this, and I really can't emphasize enough how important narrative is. Narrative like this is super important to that. So.

Thank you, Senator Becker. I hope that answers your question. Sorry to go on too long, Senator Min.

No, you're good. Thank you. So I'm going to have Vice Chair Seyarto, speak next. Then it'll be Senator Caballero. Senator Smallwood-Cuevas. Senator Mcguire. Senator Durazo. Senator Limone. Senator Allen. Senator Padilla.

All right, thank you very much. And Secretary Crowfoot, my question is for you. And first, a real quick, brief comment. The sudden crisis that we were talking about has been a crisis for the last 30 years and building, and we have done nothing along the way but put obstacles in the way of people trying to deal with these crises and mitigate them. Now we have a crisis on top of a crisis, which was just from a forest health perspective.

I was in the fire service 35 years. For 25 years of those we've known that there is a real issue in there, and yet nothing was done. And everything we tried to do was met with obstacles. And so now we're trying to now we've realized this is the now crisis. We've realized that we've got a problem, and so we have all these different things that we need to do.

But you talked about CEQA and how basically that's untouched, except for we're going to do something about the lawsuits and the judicial system. What part of the judicial system is going to be adjusted and how are we going to adjust that, given that we're not really investing anything into the judicial system?

Thank you, Senator. And I defer to Secretary Crowfoot on the judicial system specifically. We do have funds for training. We continue to work with the Judicial Council. How each court in the state is set up to deal with CEQA specifically. It is statutorily a civil priority. So we have that. And then, as you know better than anyone, and then we also are continuing to work with the Judicial Council to understand the current capacity and capacity needs.

Our understanding is that there's sort of multiple ways that they can make this work, and that's part of our ongoing conversation with them. First and foremost, and part of what is under consideration in the budget for you is this additional training, not only not so much for the judges, but the research assistants. And Mr. Kelfie can answer some of the specific questions on the administrative records app, for example.

But that's where we need to make sure they're fully educated and trained so that they're able to go through this. The other piece I'd mention is that some of the reasons for this package. We do have the where feasible language in the expediting CEQA at the back end.

So that's important to the judicial counsel to be able to make their own choices and then the training that will allow them to actually spend less time potentially on each case, because there will be fewer materials in some cases that are not part of the record.

And then, Senator, I'll just take an opportunity to agree with you. I think a lot of our challenges are decades in the making in terms of forest management, landscape management. We weren't proactive enough for decades, and we were on borrowed time. And now conditions have worsened and we're seeing catastrophic wildfire. Likewise, California has always had the most variation in water year over year.

And so we've known for a long time that we've needed to diversify our water supplies and modernize our infrastructure, and it's been hard to do. But again, now the conditions, along with those problems, decades in the making, have come together in this crisis.

And thank you for that acknowledgment, because it is something that's very frustrating for people out there, especially water. This year, it's lots of water, and they're watching it not get captured. They're watching the wells that have been for years, water districts have been trying to work on positive recharge and things like that, and they keep running into hurdles, and they're all permitting hurdles and environmental hurdles and agency hurdles. And the same thing with transportation. So I'm not going to belabor that.

But the areas that need to grow can't grow without more transportation in streets, not just in the green transportation area. And so those are the frustrations people are having out there, and it's hard for us to deliver for them.

Thank you. I will ever so briefly respond on this question of groundwater recharge and to emphasize the need for a package like this. We have taken emergency action to modify rules to recharge groundwater, to use all those floodwaters underground. The governor's used his emergency powers to enable that, and that's generated over a million acre feet of recharge. The challenge is that's a temporary emergency that's allowed for that.

We need more durable streamlining to let projects like that happen that frankly, are good for the environment and people.

Thank you, Vice Chair Sarato, Senator Caballero.

Thank you very much. Mr. Chair. Well, I want to thank the panelists for being here today and giving us this presentation. Really appreciate it. Some really important information has been presented, and I want to apologize to the next panelist. I'm going to have to leave because of other commitments that I made a long time ago.

But let me just say that I really appreciate the last comments about the need to expedite projects and the opportunities that are lost if we don't do this, because I think it's really concrete. Examples are really, really helpful in the legislature. And while I'm not exactly thrilled with the need to deal with all of these so quickly in this process. Let me just say that I also visited the ISO yesterday, and the obstacles that we have in front of us to make sure that we have a reliable energy source that is not cost-prohibitive is really daunting.

We got an opportunity to see it firsthand. And what we understand is we've set the legislature and the Governor have set some really ambitious goals, and if we're going to meet those goals, then we've got to figure out what are the things that are standing in our way.

And so when I look at the 10 proposals before us, the reality of the situation is six of them have been presented in the legislature before, so they're not new things. We've been looking at them. We just couldn't get them done. For me, I looked at these and I said hallelujah, because I tried to do a couple of these and couldn't get them through the legislature. If we delay, then we're not going to meet our goals.

And we have some really serious challenges, whether it's water infrastructure, transportation infrastructure. I think from my perspective, the two items that are the most problematic are one is the Delta Reform Act streamlining and the other one is the species reclassification. Just from a political standpoint, I understand where you're going with this. I'm supportive. That is the bottom line.

What I worry about, frankly, is that my district has some of the hottest summers has studies that say that up to a million acres of AG land will be lost because of the lack of water and drought. The impacts will be tremendous on disadvantaged communities. We've seen a hospital closing because of economics, and so we've got to move in a way that sets some real priority for disadvantaged communities.

And as a footnote, well, actually, this is my question, is that some of these progressive design, the job order contracting, and the direct contracting authority are all current things that the state currently does. They're just being used for something else.

Can you tell me if the labor protections are in there in a way that would make us feel like we're doing what we need to do to ensure that they're good jobs and that we're going to actually have the workforce in the region that can take care of it?

Yeah, I can get you Senator, I think it's a very good question. I can get you more specifics on that as far as the labor protections, but you're absolutely right that these tools already exist. We just use them in different formats or different venues. Right now, for example, job auto contracting, we use it for broadband in Clean California. We want to expand that and be able to use it on other projects like safety projects or active transportation projects or maintenance projects.

We just need to make sure, to your point, the labor protections are there and we can confirm.

That actually, may I, Senator, confirm that now? So because these are all thank you, Secretary. Because these are all in the public works code and they're public works what I said, that comes with it. The protections for apprenticeship requirements, certified payroll reporting, enforcement of public works by DIR, and the awarding body labor compliance programs.

And so, for example, the trade's ability, the laborers ability, that their people can monitor themselves, prevailing wage requirements, and that all contractors have to register with DIR to bid on public works and submit CPRs. The reports continuously are all embedded into it. The benefit of job order contracting. We have an example of that in broadband. Thanks to Senator McGuire, that timeline is now 11 months from 33 months. So that's a specific example.

And another benefit is that it allows us to be more equitable in terms of who we allow to actually bid on these contracts. So it's actually expanded the number of contractors available. So those are all the protections already embedded in because this builds on our existing public works program.

I would have expected that, but I just wanted yeah, no, I really appreciate it.

Thank you. Thank you very much. And then I do just on the specifics to energy, as I'm sure you learned yesterday just from CAISO alone, we need 45 electric transmission projects. So we're in constant communication. They just approved two substations, which doesn't get us to our goal. And then in 2021, the joint agency report projects the needs for 148,000 megawatts of clean energy capacity by 2045. So that is on us to develop.

And that means they need to be online in 2045, not kind of going through the process still. So the urgency is very real to your point on that.

And I'll put down a marker because I think most people, well, people come into the Valley and they say, well, you can just convert agriculture to solar arrays. That doesn't do anything to protect the environment because they're chain link fenced. That doesn't create the permanent jobs. That puts land out of production that we depend on for our food source. But just as importantly, it displaces entire communities if we have to follow a million acres, that will have a tremendously bad impact on the Valley.

And so we're interested in things that are actually going to create jobs. And so I'll leave it at that. So thank you.

Thank you, Senator Caballero, Senator Smallwood-Cuevas.

Thank you very much. And my question kind of is a dovetail, and I'm glad we're going to get more on the labor standards component, but also the equity standards were not lifted up in this discussion. I'm also curious, and I appreciate the acceleration and the need to accelerate to compete with Arizona and other places, but I just heard Dr. King's words, "Why we can't wait."

And we also can't wait in terms of the economic disparities that are happening and how do we ensure that we are embedding those protections so that we are creating good jobs and access to those jobs? There is a good jobs initiative toolkit that the Federal Government has issued along with these federal infrastructure dollars to advise the state on how to build packages that actually get to the job quality question and the racial and gender equity question.

I'm coming from lived experience of sitting across from federal contractors.

--who said that they did not have any real incentive or mandate to hire women, that they did not have any incentive or mandate to hire immigrant workers. They did not have an incentive or mandate to hire black workers in their process. And part of those experiences of folks historically left out of traditional infrastructure projects, the Biden Administration has tried to address that through the Good Jobs Initiative toolkit to Inform.

I'm curious, what elements have you pulled from that toolkit, again, to ensure our competitiveness, to also ensure that those historically marginalized, left out groups get access to these jobs and that they make a difference in terms of careers? I don't know if there is going to be more discussion on the equity bridge. I didn't see it in any of the packages, information that you shared with us. But have you looked at those tools and are you overlaying? I don't see any overlay of some of the recommendations in what was discussed.

Yeah. No, I was sort of a two part question. One on the question of Senator Caballero on labor standards, my question around the equity standards, but also are you using these tools to inform your--

Absolutely. I really appreciate the question, Senator. So a couple of things on the Good Jobs Toolkit from the Federal Government, we are not only using it, but we're working with Harold Mitchell at the Regenesis Foundation Institute. That's really working. He's on the Cali PA Justice 40 board. So we are actively engaged in how do we combine justice 40 with the Good Jobs toolkit? So it's really specific and they're helping us figure out how do we make these measurements, how do you hold us accountable?

This is part of our administrative action at the task force. The Governor has said the entire government has to be focused on building faster and better through its Administration. I'm happy to get you more information on the equity bridge. We have the California Environmental Protection Agency involved, the Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development. All of the cabinet is involved. Secretary Crowfoot's agency and Secretary Omishakin's. So we're doing it administratively.

I think obviously it's not included in the legislation so that you will have it there forever. But what we're doing now is making sure that every single goal is explicit. And we're measuring and that's the number one piece that you're seeing from the Federal Government is measurement and then capacity building. And the thing we're doing on capacity building, because I think some of these applications are really complicated for these communities, is we're partnering with not for profits like the Irvine Foundation and the Endowment.

They're all actually helping us go into specific communities and grow that capacity building so that folks can actually engage and make people find out about the jobs, help get people hired, help get them through this pre approval process. And I know Joe Cruz from the Laborers will be here later, can speak specifically to your very questions about how are we actively bringing people of color, women, Second Chancers, into the labor force and really building these middle class jobs. That's obviously a huge part of this package.

So I think what we owe you is more information on this equity bridge, how we're measuring it, and then how we're actively working with the good jobs toolkit. In part, they took some of the work from our labor agency and all the ways that we're partnering. So I'll follow up with you in writing, but know that we're actively working on all of these things because some of them are really important.

I don't see the opportunity zones. I don't see the advisory and implementation committees. I don't see the targeted local hire that really focuses around communities that are facing disparate conditions in terms of formerly incarcerated single parents. We can set aside the resources. And I was a part of building, you know, the the MTA expansion of 12 rail lines in Los Angeles, and the whole process of trying to figure out how do you do these massive federal projects.

How do you also engage disadvantaged communities. But how do you also bring folks in and retain them so that this is an actual career that we move folks? And I've seen workers go from sleeping in their cars to buying homes on these projects. And to me, if that's not our goal in California, then we have a real problem in terms of our priorities.

But that will not happen unless there's an actual direct call in and requirement for those individuals to be on the project and that there's oversight and collaboration at the community or project level. So I do want to see those details. I know that the toolkit calls for opportunity committees. It uses the Megaproject language that brings in the civil rights enforcement components as well. Again, these are metrics that I'm not seeing, but I look forward to more detail.

Thank you. And Secretary Omishakin can speak more to the Megaprojects and some of the specifics. And then local hire is a requirement of the federal funding. So that is embedded in everything we're doing, but secretary--

Thanks, Ms. Miller. Senator, I would love to at some point have a chance to engage more directly on all the things that are happening in the equity space in transportation specifically, because it's quite extensive and I know it's multi layered. You make some very good points about being more intentional in this effort.

But I'll say the Governor set a theme for the state that we're a state that's going to be a California for all and not just set a theme, but also you mentioned an Executive order that's directed Secretary Crawford and I and other secretaries and directors of the state to be more specific about goals in the equity space throughout our agencies.

But two things that I think are of significant benefit to us that are going to impact how we lay this out as we add more equity components. Number one, from the federal level, there's a requirement that we did a study in California. See what are the specific disadvantaged business enterprise numbers that we need to have. For California. It's 22.2%. That's our goal for every contract today. We're at 25% for that.

So we're above the target that the Federal Government has set based on a study that we did. If you look at the details more clearly, of that, nearly 25% that we're at, Hispanics, Native Americans, and Latinos are falling short despite the increases within this Administration. 37% increase for African Americans, 21% increase for Hispanics. As far as being certified to do business with the state in transportation, so there are increases, but still they're not getting enough of the targeted dollars that they should get.

So we're still falling short, but there is a federal requirement. Just want to make sure that's clear. On the state side, you all passed just last year, AB 2019. That requires that we have a 25% goal for small business across every single contracting opportunity in the state. All departments, all across the board, we've exceeded that in transportation. We've exceeded that 25% already in the past. But we still, again, in this area, fall short.

When you start to look at certain demographics a little bit more specifically, they're falling short in helping us to reach that overall 25% goal. So there's a lot happening here. There are requirements we need to double back and make sure that, as Ms. Miller mentioned, the toolkit you mentioned that those things are highlighted in here.

But there's a baseline now that didn't exist before with state funding, with AB 2019, and on the federal side, with DBE requirements from the Federal Government USDOT that we cannot fall below. We'll be penalized. But even beyond that, there's so much more that we're doing in equity. I would love to have a chance to engage and have a conversation on those details later.

I appreciate that and I understand the analysis in the aggregate, but I live with the workers and they live in my district. And many of them and our analysis shows far too many of them do not have access to these opportunities. And we have to spell out in ways and be very intentional about the disparities within the disparity and how we're going to reach them in this once in a generation investment in our infrastructure. So I look forward to hearing more of the details and you and I having that conversation.

Absolutely. Couldn't agree with you more, Senator. Thank you.

Thank you, Senator. Smallwood-Cuevas for those important points. On my list I have. McGuire, Durazo, Limon, Alan Padilla, Eggman. So, Senator McGuire.

Thank you so much. Mr. Chair, and first and foremost, Mr. Chair, thank you for your work on this today, to your fantastic team as well. But Mr. Chair, really, really grateful for the engagement. Want to say thank you to the pro team as well for bringing this together. I just have some brief remarks and before I get into them, I just want to say that Gayle Miller is truly one of the best, and grateful for all of her work over these past many years.

And the secretaries that are here today, I know that we all have tremendous respect for their leadership and for everything you have advanced and really grateful for the two of you as well. And to the entire team from the Administration. As we've heard, it's been said today by the representatives from the Administration that they spent over a year working with stakeholders across the state on this proposal. And I think that many of the items, speaking for myself, that are in front of us have merit.

And now there seems to be an expectation that the Members of the Legislature move less than four weeks, less than four weeks after the Administration has taken 12 months to draft a proposal. And just being honest about it wouldn't be acceptable if the shoe was on the other foot. And there are some really good and incredibly strategic proposals in this package and there are some massive policy, infrastructure, project and governance proposals that this branch of government must weigh and evaluate. That's the way this system works.

And here in the Senate, we have Members, as you've heard here today, that have their own priorities that they're going to want included. We have Senators who are elected by a million folks who want to be able to potentially expand the scope of the package. And we have Senators who are here today and on both sides of the aisle who have policy bills that they may want included in this package or have the same scope of their policy bills in the package.

So I'm saying all this with incredible respect to this Administration, great respect to this Governor and for the work that he does. But the bottom line is, what I think what we've heard today is that, number one, as a co equal branch of government, we need to evaluate this proposal that would advance tremendous policy change, some's really good, some may not be, and there may be areas where we could strengthen.

Two, the Senate can't speak for the Assembly. The Senate is going to want to advance our own ideas to be able to strengthen the proposal as we've done with climate, as we've done with broadband, as we've done with windfall profits. And we have heard eloquently from Members here today about where we need to focus as we move forward in the weeks and potentially few months ahead.

And then lastly, I do think that we're going to need to be able to provide our own direction and take some time in the same time that this Administration has to be able to strengthen this. And this is what partners do, by the way. The conversations aren't always easy, but at the end of the day, we're always able to come out and we're always able to look back and know that we have a stronger, stronger state based off of working with the Legislature and the Administration.

I'm just going to say this last piece that's just a non starter for me is the Delta Tunnel proposal. There is just no way in hell that I could ever support a proposal like that. That's just me speaking. Know that there's a lot more discussion to come, and I just say that is just one large item that I think we're going to need to be able to have further discussion.

And again, we absolutely love the secretaries and grateful for your work. Truly and to Ms. Miller, to the Chief of Staff of the Governor, who is just fantastic as well, but wanted just to be able to say that and just my own belief on where we should go. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Senator Mcguire. Senator Durazo.

Thank you. I too want to say thank you for all the work that's gone into this. I totally agree with one of your comments that the approach is not to do this piecemeal, that the approach is to really dig in there and I really appreciate the push for big things. I think that's great. We should not sit around and just relax while so many things are happening to this.

I think at the same time, a number of issues I made in my opening remarks about the labor standards need to be addressed in a much more specific way, not in a broad way. And the same thing goes for the equity, by the way, on the transportation funding. The case was made for the urgency, which is why we want the 2 billion back in the budget. I totally agree with everything that you said. My concerns are with regards to the labor standards that you all mentioned.

Prevailing wage and apprenticeships are the minimum and the federal Administration is looking and demanding more. They will give higher marks for when we put more and higher standards into our proposals. With all due respect, not all of these projects come under public's works. There's a point where, for example, in the lithium that that's no longer construction, that's operations and that doesn't come under. So I want to make sure that we don't just broaden the scope without having enforceable language in our language.

We want to make sure that we have non construction jobs covered. And so that is clearly not being covered. There is no language that addresses that. We have an extraordinary opportunity. I can only envision the massive breakthrough about creating clean manufacturing jobs, the operations of them. I mean, there's so much that can be done. We could really lead the nation and we are far more used to labor standards in the construction industry.

We have a sense we have prevailing wage public works, but we don't have on non construction jobs. And that's where billions of dollars more are going to be invested. Again, we need and we have examples both at the federal level about what the Federal Government has done. The US Department of labor has an MOU with the Department of Energy that creates these very explicit pathways for construction, maintenance, manufacturing, and operations jobs.

We have in our own state government, between the California Workforce Board and the CPUC, an infrastructure MOU that is very explicit. And so we have the opportunity here because we have experience. I don't mind going outside to other organizations, but we have it here. We have the language here. We have the examples. High road standards is what we're looking for.

High road standards that create the jobs, bust out of not only construction, but all the other jobs, make those jobs available to communities that have been excluded. I mean, this is an extraordinary opportunity, and we will not achieve it if we just have superficial reference to references to this fluff. Language does not get it. Maps are not an enforceable mechanism. We have to have explicit language. We do have explicit language. We've proposed that asked you to include that.

We don't have to waste any more time of going out. So maybe you can just in all of that commit or to use what we now have, the mechanism, the tools that we now have, and apply it here on high road standards for training, for the jobs, all of that. And then after you answer, I just have one small question on CEQA.

Yeah, thank you. I think just to two points. One, the public works have the requirements embedded that we spoke to. On the energy and chip side, there are two provisions. Everything over 20 IBEW can speak to this specifically, and all the work they're doing have the PLA and the skilled and trained requirements for both of those. So we've taken care of the public side, as we've always done in California, and I apologize for not making this clear.

And then on the energy and chips, again, energy over 20 MW, which makes it industrial. That is all required. A PLA and skilled and trained. And then on all the other manufacturing that could be ancillary that's not actually a part of this package yet, but point taken on that.

And then just one, how does the secret provisions of your proposals differ compared to SB 423 that was just passed?

Yeah, well, I really appreciate that question. SB 423 makes permits for huge mixed use projects. This was Senator Weiner's bills of unlimited size ministerial accepting them from local approval and CEQA completely. So this is none of that. This is what we're talking about, is maintaining all of that. That 423 exempted. And we are actually maintaining it, maintaining the public process. We're just saying at the back end, we're going to cut time, cut costs, move faster. So appreciate that question.

And this is not that complete exemption whatsoever. Thank you, Senator.

Okay, and I just look forward on the high road standards and the explicit enforcement language. Thank you.

Thank you. Senator Durazo. Senator Limon.

Thank you. And thank you for the information, the presentation and the work that's gone in. I just want to start off by saying that this is not the first time in the last 12 months where we've had to address a number of really substantial policy issues that come to us and we're doing so through a shorter process, in some cases affiliated with the budget, in other cases through a shorter policy process.

And while I respect the need to address important issues in a fast way, it is starting to feel like we are being jammed by design and that is hard. I think we have a role as legislators to play and certainly there are big policies and big concepts that are being put forward.

And as has been stated here and also in the Assembly hearings, there have been legislators in both houses, both sides of the aisle that have proposed some of this in the last years to try to move the ball forward. And we've not seen a level of engagement on some of these policy bills. So I think that that raises just a general concern of how we think of these bills moving forward.

I worry that when we move a process forward in this manner, one of the things that we lose out on the most is stakeholder input. And I think that that is something that is missing. Certainly we as legislators are the stakeholders, but our communities that are impacted are also stakeholders and they don't have time when things are truncated, whether it's a legislative process or CEQA they don't have time to come.

They are people very often who work full time jobs, who need help in trying to decipher how and when and the best method to provide input. And so I think that that's something that continues to be missing from this process, real stakeholder input, and particularly for some of this that is going to impact different regions in different ways. I don't think this is little. And certainly in the seven years that I've been in the Legislature, some of these conversations have come up every single year.

And some of the reasons we've not moved on them is because we've not actually found the right balance to move forward. Not because there's not a desire, but there's just not the right balance and we've not been able to move that forward from a policy perspective. I think one of the reasons that you are hearing a whole lot about labor standards and what is or is not is because that's not explicitly said.

While you have all said what is, you've all verbally shared with us your definition or interpretation of what's in the labor what what which labor standards you believe are in. It's not in the documents that have been provided for us explicitly. And certainly there are times where we reference federal language as a way to say, well, this is what the federals say. But we all know here in the Legislature that we can do more.

We can do more than what the Federal Government is suggesting or we can do the same. And that's just one example of why I think some of these questions are coming forward and why the language that has been presented feels like it's not enough as we're moving forward. And I don't always agree with the LAO, but I do in the case that I'm still struggling with trying to find and determine what criteria and evidence is really being used for the statements to be made.

That this has to be moved forward in such a quick timeline just to get the money is one piece of evidence. But what else are we using as piece of evidence for why this needs to be done in such a fast way? I think that the LAO lays out real concerns know we probably need more than just follow the know if we're going to have these trade offs.

And I do think there are a lot of trade offs and I know today I won't have time to go through I mean, I can go through each of the proposals and give you questions and comments on each and I know there's not enough time for that, but there are real trade offs.

And one of the trade offs, I'll give you an example is when I hear that we are going to spend less time on cases because there is less material and that's specifically to the judicial streamlining piece I think of the fact of how many times in history reviewing less material in a judicial case is the equivalent of evidence.

And when we don't allow our communities to present full evidence that impacts the outcome and I'm not sure it's always impacted the outcome in the way that we want. We've created a judicial system that I think encourages more evidence, not less evidence. And so I think that that is one example of a place where that's a real trade off in order to get speed you're telling some communities but we're not going to take and review your evidence. And I think that is very hard.

I think it's particularly hard on our EJ communities that have very often been the ones whose evidence is not presented in a way whose voices are limited and sometimes silenced in different ways. And so I think that that is not, I want to be clear the intention of the Administration. I know that I've worked with you all. I know that that is not the intention of the Administration. But it is again, one of these trade offs that's talked about through the LAO's analysis.

I think when we talk about justice 40 program, giving money to a community that's been impacted is not enough. And it is not the same as mitigating the impact. And I think that is what CEQA has helped us do. It has also helped us to mitigate impacts. So yes, providing funding for communities that are impacted is key, but also mitigating that impact, different process, different thing is also key. And I don't think one replaces the other.

I think both need to happen along the judicial streamlining process. We've had AB 900 projects go through Nat resources all the time and those move fast. I've not liked all of them, they move fast, but they do still have some environmental goals. And so one of the questions I have is why is this being abandoned for this particular proposal? This particular proposal is not the equivalent of AB 900. AB 900 moves forward fast, but still has environmental pieces in place.

This proposal or these proposals, as we see, eliminates that. So that's one of the questions. I'll throw this all out and then you can all decide how you want to react or respond. But I think that judicial Streamlining, the Administrative Record Review, and I think fully protected species are among the hardest pieces here for me, not for others. I think we're already on record on the delta. I don't know how we move on this. It's not like this is new.

I almost feel like the delta is universally, I think, going to be felt as one of the hardest pieces. And I'm not convinced that jamming it is the right way to approach it. But aside from that, that's already been established, I do feel judicial streamlining and the fully protected species is also we've had the fully protected species lot in place for 50 years, and I don't understand what projects are specifically benefiting from eliminating that or merging it into one.

I think that endangered species and fully protected do different things and to move in our state to lesser protections, my question would be, well, why? What projects? I think overall, a lot of these proposals talk about projects that could benefit. In some cases it's 10, in some cases it's 16. But we're not explicit. And we're not explicit in seeing which projects they're not named or called out. And that also, I think, is part of the hesitancy.

You're hearing from folks that if we knew here's what we're talking about, whether it's transportation, housing or water, in some cases, as district representatives, we've been following a lot of these. So if you say which one you're specifically looking at, it would help us understand whether it merits streamlining or fast forward. And I do think that there is a difference between streamlining and expediting. For me, expediting means you're going to do all the process and all the steps in a faster way.

Streamlining is a decision to say we're going to have to omit pieces of it. And that, I think, is why we're having this discussion and this challenge. Because for some, omitting some pieces works better than omitting others. But I think that generally, if we were keeping a lot of the pieces in place but expediting them, you would have probably a different take on this, not completely. So those are some of my comments, questions.

Like I said, I have so many that I can probably take up this whole thing, but it's not appropriate to take up the entire time. And I want to leave you all with that.

Senator, thank you so much, and I'll do my best just to briefly and at a high level respond to what I think are your questions. I also want to invite our Department of Fish and Wildlife Director, Chuck Bonham to the table, just to briefly explain fully protected, because I think he does a really good job of explaining why and why now, first of all, generally speaking, there is a tension between process and action. And that's what we're trying to navigate.

We have in place in California through CEQA, a remarkable process to ensure that we're reviewing our environmental impacts, as I said, working to avoid, minimize, or mitigate those impacts, environmental impacts, community impacts, allow for community input. One of the challenges we have. And because that process is so important, we're not suggesting removing that at all. So in contrast to one of the legislative bills that was referenced, we're not suggesting exemptions to CEQA or curtailing community input or the require to mitigate.

What we're simply doing is saying that in too many cases, environmental litigation on CEQA drags on and on and on, and ultimately delay is denial. So what we're hoping for is a thumbs up or thumbs down, a faster process to get thumbs up or thumbs down on critical climate projects. So that is fundamentally our goal. And I appreciate I think we do have a same North Star of doing much more to address disproportionate impacts on communities and ensure that they have a role.

You asked why now? The federal funding. Yes, but why now? And I think you'll hear later from water agencies across the state that are supporting this setup proposals, in part because there are hundreds of projects that are underway that may very well get delayed under the status quo. And they're focused on projects to get in place before the next season.

Whether that's the drought season or the flood season, I can tell you on the wildfire side, you all, thanks to your leadership, have provided us almost $3 billion of funding. We work very intensely to try to get each of these community protection projects in place before the next fire season. And so as it relates to water, we're doing the same on water. And the challenge is, and I can understand that there's help in sort of limiting, accelerating, or streamlining to specific projects. The challenge is scale.

We have hundreds, if not thousands, of water agencies that are doing these projects across the state. So from our perspective, it's trying. To figure out what's an appropriate way to change the process so that ultimately we can either deliver projects more quickly or if they don't deserve to be delivered because of effective lawsuit, then they're not. I'll mention too briefly that Secretary Mashakin talked about the eight design build projects that one of these proposals would allow on the transportation side.

There's also a comparable pilot on the water side and Department of Water Resources. And one of the reasons why we want these projects or this progressive design build in place right now is these are critical projects for DWR to get in place. In some cases dam, safety, spillway infrastructure. These are projects that if we are able to get progressive design build authority this summer, we'll be able to move that much more quickly.

Can I ask you something? It sounds like you know exactly what projects. Could you give us a list of the exact projects that you are talking about for water, for transportation, for housing.

I'll say this that's comparable to a question that got asked in the Assembly. In terms of more specificity and working through the Governor's office, we will do our best to provide that.

Okay, thank you.

Chair with.

For the record, my name is Chuck Bonham. I'm the Director of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Senator, I'd like to discuss fully protected species for a moment.

Subsequent to that date 50 years ago, with no scientific analysis, our constitutionally created Fish and Game Commission has actually listed under the California Endangered Species Act many of those species. They have put 18 on the Endangered Species Act as endangered. And let me just make sure I get my number right. Excuse me. 19 on the Endangered Species Act as endangered, eight on the Endangered Species Act as threatened.

They took three and put them on the Endangered Species Act and then delisted them, subject to scientific analysis and public process. There are today seven species on the fully protected species list, but are not yet on the Endangered Species Act list. This produces a confusing, conflicting, and untenable situation for two reasons. On one hand, every project proponent faces an unnecessary risk for project planning, financing, and construction. It is a zero-take standard.

On the other hand, there is no conservation gain through fully protected species like exists under the California Endangered Species Act. Under the fully protected species statute, the Department has no ability to do anything. We can't stop a project under the fully protected species statute. But over under the Endangered Species Act, you have five-year mandatory reviews of the status of species. You have science, you have research, you have access to federal funding for landscape-scale conservation.

And as a matter of law, the Department can require, by form of permit, the condition of avoidance, as a matter of law, can require minimization through a permit condition, and as a matter of law, can require full mitigation of any impact. None of that exists under the fully protected species dynamic. So the proposal today is not new. Experts have been debating it for quite some time. It shows up in law review articles.

Indeed, just last year, the legislative Committee process in analyses indicated the Legislature should look at statutory options to eliminate the fully protected species statute and consolidate everything under the Endangered Species Act construct. There's a lot there. I know it raises questions about how we handle our species management in California, and I appreciate your focus on it, but I want to be very direct. It's not new. It's not novel. People have been debating it for 15 years or more. It's not a repeal.

It's moving things under the Endangered Species Act construct for these three reasons. From where we sit, there is no Department in the State of California that will be more front and center dealing with housing, transportation, critical water, and renewable energy than our Department. It comes straight through us for permitting all of it.

The Large-scale Solar Association and I don't endorse the number, says to meet our 2030 goals, which, as Senator Caballero pointed out earlier, the Legislature and the Administration said, we're looking at 2800 permit packages a year at our Department to hit the 2030 goal. If you cut that number in half, that's 1400. Take half of that 700 permit packages a year on solar, where a lot of that build-out happens, where we have fully protected species.

Water. The Department of Water Resources, San Joaquin field division manages, I think 14 might be 24 miles of the California Aqueduct in an existing right of way. They have to deal with subsidence and levee maintenance right now because of catastrophic flooding. What exists in the middle of that right away? Blunt-nosed leopard lizard, which is a fully protected species statute animal. No take prohibition. And on roads, Caltrans has received, in the last 10 years, carve-outs from the fully protected species statutes for specific road projects.

The mammoth up the grade they need to do on roads and bridges, I would say reasonably predicts, if we don't figure out a way to reconcile and reclassify, you're looking at year-over-year carve-outs from fully protected species anyway, so I appreciate the chance to kind of lay that out.

Thank you. Thank you, and I appreciate that. And I certainly agree that we've been talking about this. I think that the uniqueness of this is that this is all paired together. And as you said, in the spirit of directness, when this is paired also with the delta, I think of the sandhill crane, this is where we're grappling with it. I think if these were standalone policies, right, we wouldn't make this connection.

But certainly, this has been brought to us as a package, so it gives us both the benefit and the limitations of thinking of it, not just as a singular policy area, but in the context of what's been brought forward and why it may be brought forward. So I appreciate that.

And Senator, thank you so much because I too, am aware of the sandhill crane, and there is a lot more work that plays out underneath that project ahead. Earlier versions of that project, which you're referencing, are different than the designs as I understand it today. All power lines are underground, and new power lines that aren't underground are planned to be coexistent with current lines. That's the risk to sandhill cranes. But I appreciate the comment, and I look forward to continuing the discussion.

Thank you. And thank you to everyone. Look, you're all doing a great job. These are hard conversations, so they're going to generate difficult comments and strong comments. But nonetheless, I think it's an important conversation, and I'm grateful that you're all receptive to the feedback.

All right, so the Chair has passed the gavel to me before you leave. Thank you for your comments. I guess part of the flip side of your arguments are why do we have to do it this way, given everything you just said. I know this because I serve on this Committee. We routinely authorize waivers for taking of fully protected species with safeguards like monitoring. They pass on urgency. They're done on consent. I mean, they're done immediately.

Has there been any problem with the Legislature's responsiveness when there's a discernible need associated with flexibility under fully protected species? I hear you, and yet we've always been very real. I've never heard of a situation where the Administration was unhappy with our responsiveness to this issue and providing you with greater flexibility as long as we have a chance to look at it and we immediately pass it.

Senator, thank you for the follow up question. And I think I have three thoughts in response. Many of the Senators already this morning, perhaps most, have noted we can't keep piecemealing how we handle the dynamics to achieve all of our goals that have been set in the Legislature and the Executive branch. We have energy development goals that blow the world's mind, that workload in the solar context alone, terrestrially, will be going right through these challenging permitting situations.

I'm not sure whether the most effective way to handle that would be to open up carve-outs to fully protected solar project by solar project through the legislative process. Point two, in the Assembly Committee analysis earlier this week on this same topic. That analysis said endangered species lists are intended to be maintained according to best available scientific information, whereas fully protected lists were codified by the Legislature and have not been updated. The scientific status of most fully protected species are not known.

If we move under the Endangered Species Act, we have public process through the Fish and Game Commission that's notice and comment rulemaking, which is required Department scientific analysis that plays over multiple years per species. That strikes us as a more comprehensive species-protective way to handle a historical artifact, which is my third point. It is good government practice to look at your policies and procedures and laws and to update them. It's been a half a century, and so that's my response.

Have you brought this issue to us? Maybe I missed it, but has this come? If this has been kind of in the stuck in the craw of your administrative of your Administration for a while, how come nobody's proposed a Bill? How come we've never had this discussion? Maybe I missed that hearing. I've been serving on this Committee every year since I've been in the Legislature for nine years now. Why are you giving us two weeks to discuss what seems to be a pressing issue you've been dealing with for a long time?

I understand your question, and I appreciate it.

Well, and I would just say let me try to answer it directly and constructively, which is the charge that we've had over the last several months is we need to move faster than we ever thought we did as it relates to climate resilience and our energy goals. And in fact.

Are we going to limit this just to the energy projects then? The specific climate energy projects?

No. But I'd like to just be able to explain. And so the charge to us in agencies was what will inhibit us from reaching these targets? In the case of energy that were just set last September, we just accelerated and frankly, all the stuff that I work on, resilience and water. So what you're seeing before you is a set of proposals that agencies have identified, including Fish and Wildlife, as really getting in the way of achieving what the Legislature and the Governor have passed.

And so that's what our focus is. And I thank you for your leadership, the Legislature's willingness to do these one off carve outs on this fully protected question. But I think, as Director Bonham notes, if we're really going to actually move at the pace and scale that we need to, we ultimately think that's untenable. And so that's why we're trying to bring a more holistic approach.

Okay, I hear you. But as you acknowledge just now, this is all being done justified on the basis of our need to expedite our climate-related energy projects. And yet this change seems to go well beyond the energy project. So once again, I'm coming back to this issue that I raised at the beginning. Are we really being narrowly tailored when we're rolling back environmental protections?

I think there is a general sense here that we need to act quickly on our climate goals, and that's a discernible environmental goal and environmental benefit. But this goes way beyond I'm sorry.

Thank you, Senator. If I may, Mr. Bonham. Just part of the reason this is this all of government, all of infrastructure approach is it is almost impossible to build a clean energy project if it doesn't have the transmission and doesn't have the water. So they all end up being part of the same question, unfortunately.

But are we going to ensure that the projects that are covered actually do have a nexus to the energy goals, as long as there's along the lines of what you're saying? Or is it going to be every project, including projects that don't have to do with?

Senator, the Department of Water Resources needs to do California aqueduct maintenance in a right of way to deal with subsidence and levee failure. Caltrans needs to build roads and bridges. Energy goals are large. This is narrowly tailored this way. The proposal could have just repealed fully protected species and left it at that. The reality is 18 are already listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. Nine are already listed as threatened. Three have been on the list and taken off remain as fully protected.

Seven are only fully protected. It's a confusing space. Let's reconcile it. Come out with a conservation uplift. That's the proposal. I appreciate your leadership and I like the exchange, and I know it's been a back and forth of mechanism and substance.

Okay I mean, I'm certainly going to want to dig in a little deeper on this particular question, because as I say, we've worked well together on these kinds of questions in the past, and I'd never been in my time on the Committee. As I say, I may have missed some discussion, but in my nine years on the Committee, I'd never known that there was this problem.

And so it was a bit of a shock, I think, for a number of us when this proposal was thrown in there. Let me just ask a few other things that relate to.

Just a reminder that we have another panel. Sorry, just a reminder to all.

I got it. I literally just started. Everyone else has had lots of time now.

Just a reminder for everybody. We have another panel. We've gone about 2 hours and 20 minutes. This was supposed to be 1-hour panel. So just FYI.

Okay.

We still have public comment as well.

Yeah. Okay. So on the Brightline West High-Speed Rail Project, which by the way, I think is very exciting, potential project for a lot of reasons, there seemed to be some ambiguity about well, maybe to defer to the Chair, I will want to follow up with you on some language relating to wildlife crossings. Previous commitments were made that they were going to pay for the wildlife crossings.

There seems to be some ambiguity in the language as to now whether we're going to pay for them, even though that was not part of the deal, at least from my understanding. There's some questions about May rather than Shell. That was all part of the deal, at least from my understanding. I want to make sure that we get those issues addressed. We can talk about that in private, if you like.

Similarly, I'd like to do some follow up on the whole question of the Highway System Management Plan. I think you know that there have been some questions about the language in the trailer Bill with relation to accelerating environmental mitigation for transportation and this whole question of the finding of adequate funding.

And I think you can understand that there's some concern on the environmental side that the way it's structured right now, we may be shortchanging habitat as currently protected under Section 2081 of the Fishing and Game Code. I'm sure you're aware of this issue, but I'd like some follow-up on that as well. I know that my colleagues will ask a lot more about the Delta, so I won't bring that issue up.

Thank you very much, Senator Allen. I apologize for interjecting. We are really running short on time because we were supposed to take public comment as well after the next panel. So I would just make that note to my colleagues. And there are 10 proposals here, and they're fairly hefty, and obviously, we don't have time to get into details on them.

But I know this is the beginning of a longer conversation we're going to have with the Administration. With that we have and I just want to give the full list here. Senator Padilla is next, then Eggman, Cortese, Dahle, and Hurtado.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, I just want to say at the outset this is a distinguished panel, a patient panel, in fairness, relatively patient panel. A couple of you I know personally, have worked with personally in the past. I appreciate that. Due respect to the yes, thank you, Gail. Due respect to the Chairman's characterization, it's not the beginning of a long conversation. It's the beginning of an all-too-short conversation.

And I recognize that you're here doing, as you always do, amazing work on behalf of the people of California. And in large part you are messengers doing your duty. I think that should be said out loud as well. That said, I'm just going to put a couple quick clarification requests in the record and Mr. Chairman, in the interest of time, I would just perhaps request that Administration respond to the participating Members of this panel or the Legislature as a whole.

But with respect to the administrative record and the changes, exclusions, or what the composition of that may look like, I think it's important just remember that oftentimes certain internal electronic communications in the timeline or other elements of what typically constitutes the administrative record for SQA purposes, access to that information benefits often environmental justice, community-based organizations. Some of the unintended consequence here may be to add cost for those that seek petition or review or access to information as the baseline for a future petition.

So I think it's important to just note that I would like to know what specific exclusions or changes beyond what's described sort of at the 100,000-foot level here. Also, I think the real issue on fully protected species, I understand the long conversation, I think the Director describes something that's been a long debate, but a little bit more information about what specific projects we're thinking can more in the near term benefit by that clarification and how we've strategically arrived at that ranking.

And then, not to beat the dead horse, but I think it's really, really an issue of the governance practices in the state and the health of the relationship between the Executive and Legislative branch. I think it's important to be said again, and so I'll say it, we are being jammed by design. I think that's the elephant in the room. I think there's anybody in here who's paying attention, doesn't know that.

I think that what really is important, having said that, is understanding the reasons why, the presumptions that underlie that, the frustrations that underlie that. And I think that's what's relevant here. And that is a sense perhaps from the Administration and I'll probably describe it more strongly than the Administration would, a sense of frustration exasperation whatever you have that the Legislature in the past has either refused, failed, or is incapable of acting in a comprehensive, strategic, and swift manner, such as is demanded by the circumstances. Okay.

That said, the reality also is that most of the content that underlies these trailer Bill propositions in the budget by the Administration, it's not new information. 95% of this is not new information. The Circumstantial description is not new. The sense of urgency is not new. Most of this content is not new. Some of it is in terms of opportunity, but most of this is not new.

And that would mean then, based on the assumption, I presume, that underlies this approach, that prior administrations and prior legislatures would have to be included in that presumption, that there's been a failure, unwillingness, or inability to act on the part of the Legislature and administrations. If we find ourselves in this situation that is so critical that we have to do it this way, and I would respectfully submit you can't have it both ways, this information is not new.

Therefore, this process does not and should not be happening this way. In the olden days and yes, I'm not new to this building. I may be a new Member and I'm not new to government. But in the olden days, the way things used to happen is in the intercession. You'd have coordinating conversations between an Administration and Legislative leadership. You'd have bills moved in both houses. You'd have cooperation, collaboration. We would do a series of bills, but the big ideas around policy would be introduced early.

They would be thorough, they'd be complex, and they would be appropriately reviewed in the Legislative process. The cost for expediency should never be our process of government and the checks and balances of government.

Here, the Administration, while well-intentioned and a lot that I agree with in the content of the proposals, frankly. The cost here is you have the Administration more and more engaging in the Legislative process directly and legislating for us essentially by folding it into this process because it puts the Legislature in an almost untenable situation. Pick your poison, take this trailer Bill, amend these policies, and have your budget or not. And that's just not good government for the people of the State of California.

We have known these issues. We have known this urgency. This is not new. And I just have to add my voice to the leadership and to the colleagues in the interest of the future legislatures. This is not okay and it shouldn't be done this way. And we shouldn't accept the premise here that we're incapable of acting because all it takes is that communication. I represent Gayle's comments earlier, and they know this. In my district, we are told 30% of the global demand for production-grade lithium.

I've been here a few months. It's been thin on communication, coordination, and collaboration, to be frank, and I'm not in the loop on stuff and decisions that are being taken and initiatives undertaken, and that, to put Senator Eggman not to find a point on I, is more than disrespectful. And so this isn't a way to run a railroad.

And I feel an obligation to the institution to say that in the record, my respect and admiration for you individually and your work and your work history and where you need to go notwithstanding. And I appreciate it and to the best of my ability, because we both serve the same state, I'll roll up my sleeves and be a partner with this Administration to the degree I can.

But I'll be damned if I'll be silent in the face of a pattern that is not good for the people of the State of California. And I thank you.

Thank you, Senator Padilla. Much appreciated. Senator Eggman.

Thank you. And thank you all for being here today and thank you for the work that you do every single day. So like I don't know if it's come through yet, but there's some concerns about the Delta being included in this. So I just want to go back to that again and again, I've also served on natural resources almost my entire time here and we move quickly. I've passed AB 900 and we get through things and I'm all for speeding things up.

I voted for most CEQA bills that come along. I'm from the Valley. I want to get things done. And some of these, like as people have said, are not new concepts. And okay, at the last minute is again, the Director was talking about we've known this for 15 years and here we are on June 7 and asking us to do this rapidly but just to go back to the Delta one more time.

I hope there's been enough heard that don't tie yourself down to that because I don't think it's going to go well. I think there are so many unanswered questions like the cost. I mean the last time there was a cost analysis, I believe it was about 16 billion. That was a few years ago, right? So what's the cost now and who's going to pay? And because when construction starts, the folks in LA don't even have their Bill yet, right? And that Bill could continue to grow.

So who's going to pay besides LA water users? I think Senator Smallwood-Cuevas is talking about her constituents. They're going to pay for that Delta tunnel. 16 billion, 20 billion, 40 billion, I don't know. But the user are the ones who are supposed to pay for it. You get water from the California Water Project, the user should pay. So who's going to mean the environmental impacts? I had a piece of legislation. Somehow it didn't make it through appropriations, although it passed pretty easily through this House.

That said, before we can talk about construction of a new conveyance that we had to make sure the Delta Plan and the water quality was in place because we still haven't determined how much water needs to go through the Delta to meet the goals of the Delta Plan. Right? So that quietly died. Okay? But now we're coming back.

We're still going to do know we're going to get going, and we still don't know how much water is required to be in the Delta to keep it healthy. That is part of the Delta Plan for the co-equal goals. So until we have that, I don't know how we begin to think about drilling underneath that, sucking water out of the so there are so many unknowns on that. So I just hope it's become clear that the Legislature has been willing partners with you.

This doesn't feel like a partnership, the process, but if we really want to get some things done, take the Delta conveyance out.

Thank you so much. Message delivered. If there's one, take away it's. The concern that you and others have raised about the inclusion of Delta conveyance in various proposals, I do want to just share two top-level thoughts, and I do this toward working to find common ground. I'll say respectfully, I believe the status quo is not a victory for anyone. The status quo is broken. The Delta is facing huge challenges in the future.

I think we all recognize sea level rise and saltwater intrusion, the growth of harmful algal blooms, the continued challenge of species to actually survive in the Delta, as well as the safety of our water delivery system for three-quarters of Californians. So we have been working hard over two administrations, and I say that because I was in both to advance a proposal that we think can work.

And I concede that there are major questions that need to be answered about what are the parameters of infrastructure like this? How could it be operated? I will note that we have the largest pumps of their kind in the world right now exporting water from the Delta, but those pumps do not run at full capacity because we have laws that protect the species and water quality. And likewise, we believe that a tunnel would be constricted by those laws.

But all that being said, I think our earnest request is to make progress on this proposal. So it's either accepted or rejected, and we identify what is the future, because from our perspective, we are on borrowed time for the environment, for water quality, for harmful algal blooms, for safety of our water infrastructure. So while there is strenuous disagreement and will remain strenuous disagreement on this proposal, our goal is, or I think our common goal can be let's get to the question once and for all.

And ultimately, if it's not the tunnel, what is it? Because the status quo, I think, is untenable for everyone.

The five Delta counties that represent have put out ideas. People have put out ideas. We keep coming back to the underground tunnel when we already have a Delta conveyance right through Delta conveyance. Improve our levee system, improve the conveyance. There's all kinds of things we can do to keep that water flowing through that does not involve drilling 40 miles. I mean, just think about dig a hole. Think about where are those pilings of 40 miles of dirt going to go besides in my community?

Thank you. Senator Eggman. Senator Cortese.

I think I can be concise. I won't be speaking to the Delta issue. Although I'm sympathetic with what I've heard from my colleagues. I just want to try to state clearly what I think some of us are concerned about, including some of my colleagues that spoke earlier with regard to the sequence of things. And that is, just to use an example, we heard you talk about integrating the federal jobs kit with equity standards and we heard you are working on it.

We're hearing that this wants to go forward quickly, this being trailer Bill language. So it's really in short, what I would say just to get to the point is codify that it needs to.

Codified in the Bill. If you're not there yet in terms of every detail, you at least need to codify in the Bill. This is what the commitment is in the Bill. We're worried about gaps between federal standards and state standards. Codify language that says you'll use a more stringent standard, for example.

And where there's no standard, tell us what the standard is going to be so that we know that the work that we would normally do or the work we're trying to process through our normal legislative process that's behind your pace, essentially gets, as Senator Mcguire said, gets bootstrapped in, at least to our satisfaction. At least we know there's a codified commitment to that. When Senator DeRoza was talking about beyond construction, manufacturing and processing and we heard lithium come up a couple of times.

There's a Bill right now because there's no prevailing wage on the handling of lithium. There's just none. And so what happens with new and emerging interests? So there's a Bill in the Legislature that's moving. We don't know if it'll get to the governor's desk or not. We do know that it won't get there until probably September, October, when he's able to look at it. This has been at least presented to us as something that wants to go more quickly than that.

So I do think, even though you can say over and over again, look, this is infrastructure, CEQA on infrastructure. If we say, go ahead and build those plants and let's do it in a hurry, you're asking us to run on hope, hope that a Bill gets signed that applies the standards for the workers who are going to fill those plants. And we've learned our lesson, some of us, that when we operate that way, we end up either redlining communities or creating Low wage jobs.

After we did this great service to a developer by waiving CEQA and telling them, here's the red carpet move. We're clearing the decks for you, only to find out they're paying people $15 an hour to handle lithium batteries. Which really isn't the California for all statement that we're trying to live with here. But anyway, it's about sequence. I'm just trying to get not pontificate on values because we don't even all agree on exactly these values.

Okay, but whatever they are, I'm going to turn it right back at you. You want a rejection or an approval? And I think what we're saying is don't just talk about what you're committed to working out. Just codify it. Just codify it. And then I think people can start delta si can start making those decisions that you want. I just got a letter. I haven't talked to them. I think we all got distributed letter from the building trades.

That is kind of an example of both not wanting to piecemeal any of us, but also just the kind of gaps that can show up that are gaps between what would ordinarily be legislative values that would a majority vote work through this Legislature on job order contracting and a couple of issues that they raised here. And I know you have this. The chair has this. Everybody has this.

I don't want to get into a lengthy discussion about progressive design build or job order contracting only to say, seems to me this is just one last example of what I'm trying to talk about here. We can fix this. The Governor can say, hey, if you want to fix job order contracting and progressive design build, go ahead and do it. You're the Legislature. We're saying we're absolutely willing to tackle that issue. But you're saying you want to go faster than us.

So if you want to go faster than us, then you have to tackle this issue. You have to codify it up or down, one way or the other. In fairness. That's all I'm saying. So the sequencing issue isn't for me a matter of although I totally sympathize and empathize with the comments of so many here, including Senator Padilla, but I'm not going to call it disrespectful or anything else.

It's just a pragmatic issue we have that our policy process is going, things that we can fix and we have the political will to fix, no problem. It's just this government was set up in a way that doesn't allow us to move as quickly as your trailer Bill Language. So we've got to ask you then to take the time to figure out what the majority of this Legislature needs to see in these areas you've heard about and codified in this trailer Bill Language.

I don't know how long that will take. I don't want to slow you down, but I think that's what's required by a lot of us. Thank you.

Thank you. And do you have any comments you want to make to that?

Just briefly on two pieces. One, all of this is contained within the Executive order close to Codification. Agree with that point. In terms of the pieces we've spoken about, we'll absolutely follow up. In terms of labor standards, there's a much longer discussion to be had here. Public works, including all of the broadband work we've done, is protected by all the pieces we've discussed before. And then, as you all know, skilled and trained, attached to a project labor agreement.

That is what is contained in the energy projects. IBW is here, can speak to that today. And Chips. And then the third piece, just really briefly, Senator Min, I apologize on manufacturing. There is nothing in manufacturing in this Bill. Certainly that absolutely agree is a conversation to be had later, but there are no protections and no exceptions. So manufacturing does not qualify. It's energy specifically. So all the lithium manufacturing we're talking about separate and apart from the recovery. That was part of last year. So I know we're...

If I may, through the chair, all I'm saying is we're happy to handle the manufacturing side. But what right do you have to go so much more quickly than us that we don't have an opportunity to do that? That's the rep.

Thank you, Senator.

Give us the chance or slow down and give us the chance or put that language in your Bill and say we're going to deal with manufacturing.

Thank you, Senator Cortese. We'll move to Senator Dahle.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Members. Good to see all you folks I'd normally see in sub two. And I appreciate you having the hearing, Mr. Chairman. I think and the pro tem, I think is rightfully spot on on this issue. I'm going to be as brief as I can be.

I'm not going to say I'm going to be that brief, but I want to say I'm going to be equal at laying out at least my frustration as somebody on our side of the aisle who participates fully and engaged in all my committees. I come to these committees and I think the future of California is on the line for the environment, for what we see in business. What is the future? I'm the third generation. I want my children to stay in California for generations.

I love California. But I think we're on the cusp of making some really critical decisions that are going to be looked at. We may look back in later years and go, wow, we have to get this right. That's what I'm trying to say. We cannot get this wrong. And I take Senator Mcguire had a Bill up with offshore wind and I've challenged it, fully challenged it, that we're moving too fast and we can't get this wrong. And so here we are today.

And to the criticism of the Legislature, we've set goals without a plan. And I got up on every one of those bills and said, hey, whoa, maybe we should how are we going to get there? And we're just going to do it because we have to do it. Well, here we are today, we just have to do it. And the word jammed has been used twice. I actually made a note here because I think that I feel that way a lot of times.

I feel like I'm being jammed. Earlier today, we had a Bill on the floor that we're going to do our budget bills and our budget Vice Chair stood up and said, how's the public going to play in? And we're getting jammed because it's going to be a budget Bill and it's going to pass. So I want to say one thing. We should never do policy because about money. We shouldn't do something because there's money in a pot, which I heard about the Federal Government.

And I'm not asking for you to all respond to me because I'm just going to make some quick statements here. We cannot get this wrong and we are setting ourselves up for failure when we don't bring the public along and we don't have a plan of where we're going to go. And this process is. And that's why I think that Pro Tem for having this hearing because I think you've heard I could align my comments with Senator Lamone and Senator Mcguire and Senator Perdilla.

Senator Allen, we sat on these committees together and we would be happy to look, I did a one off take built to build a bridge, the Sculpin. And it's not a beer in San Diego. It's a fish in Fall River. Yeah.

So my point is that these are real critical things and we would be happy to have those conversations. So for those reasons, I thank you for coming. But I think we need to slow down and get this right. It's critical for the future of California and I do not want to give full power to this Administration who has failed, I think in many areas. Edd, I could point to I can point to our hospital situations where things have happened and we're seeing different areas.

We need to have the good Senator and her counties for the Delta folks. We need to have the folks up north who unfortunately we have gravity, we can't hold our water. It flows down to you no matter what. But I'd like to capture some of that. I did the exact same thing that the Senator from Stockton did.

I ran a Bill, no, no votes got held up in appropriations to do the same thing that the governor's asking to do a 270 day process on a project we know has already been vetted sites reservoir and it got carved out in the Committee. And so I said, okay, well, I'll.

Do conveyance in Senator Eggman's district and it got held up in approps. So I think we should slow down. That's my point today to all my friends who make all the decisions and don't count us in, slow down. Because the future of California is on the line and if we get it wrong, we're going to pay the price. We got it wrong. When it comes to high speed rail, we've got it wrong.

And there's a lot of debate that we're expending billions when we were told it was going to cost. Nobody talks about the cost in here and nobody talks about who's paying. I toured yesterday the ISO and we're going to need 40,000 gigawatts.

Yes. Do we need a master plan? Hell yes, we need one. Because as Senator Carburetor who was there with us yesterday, talked about, not thousands of acres, tens of thousands of acres that would have to have solar on them in California. So slow down. We have time to get it right. We have no time to get it wrong.

Senator Hurtado.

Thank you. And thank you for being here. I'm just going to get straight to it and ask the questions that I have and I know there's still another panel to go so the first one is, I know there's more than likely a lot of money involved with many of these projects. And with that, I know that last year, just as an example, Caltrans contract manager pleaded guilty to bid rigging and bribery.

What are the agencies doing to root out bid rigging schemes that cheat the competitive bidding process? I want to make sure that we're accounting for every dollar and that it's not being wasted in any kind of way. I have some concerns when it comes to releasing a lot of money to those types of projects, especially with some CEQA exemptions. I just worry that we'll have less oversight. That's one question.

And then also in 2021, there was an Executive order that suspends CEQA review for certain recharge and infrastructure projects. How is that different from the current CEQA exemption? Or are there any changes? If there are, why so? Or is this kind of building on the existing Executive order? And then the last question, how much water are you expecting to add to our state water system? And specifically, how is the Delta Tunnel project going to add to the statewide need?

Senator, thanks for the question. I'll try to answer your concern about you mentioned Caltrans employee and bid rigging. And also here with me, Mark Teluson, our undersecretary and Chief Deputy Director of Caltrans. They may be able to have a little bit more information, but we've got a zero tolerance policy on anything related to issues around bid rigging. And I'm sure you're aware that we went through a process to try to address that particular case.

These proposals that we've laid out here are not susceptible to issues like that, like bid rigging, and it's something that, again, we have a zero tolerance policy on. I don't know if anyone else from our team will have additional comments, but to your other questions, I'll defer to Secretary Crowfoot and Ms. Miller as well.

Thanks so much. Just in reference to your first question, agreed with Secretary Omashakin, I mean, we're proud that the Legislature has allocated billions of dollars for us to spend on critical infrastructure, and the vast, vast majority of that has gone through the public contracting process and is getting out there and making a difference. And where there need to be criminal prosecutions of any state employees that don't abide the letter of the law, we fully support that.

In answer to question about the judicial streamlining provision of our proposal, I believe you were asking to compare it to what is being provided as an exemption to CEQA for certain groundwater recharge projects.

Yes.

Okay. Yeah, I think here I would just emphasize that we're not suggesting or proposing exempting any project from the CEQA process. Our proposal is narrowly focused on judicial streamlining. In other words, if possible, if feasible, adjudicating finalizing deciding on that litigation within nine months. And as we talked about not creating a situation where in every situation we have to have as broad of an administrative record as possible, allowing for internal communications to be provided if a litigant wants them, but not defaulting to the administrative record.

All emails always. And then as it relates to the delta, I think this is an important question. Delta conveyance is not about expanding the amount of export from the Sierra Nevada through the delta. It is about ensuring that the export is resilient both the sea level rise in saltwater intrusion and to earthquakes. And we believe that actually we will reduce conditions that exist right now where endangered species are actually sucked back into pumps.

Now, there's vigorous debate about what this will be, but just know that from our perspective, there's a lot we have to do to expand storage of water when it comes. It will improve our conveyance of that water, but it will not year over year, mean the wholesale expansion of water to those places that are served by the state water project. And I'll just say, as a General matter, we're going to have less water over time.

As I referenced, scientists tell us 10% less water by 2040, year over year.

Just to follow up on one of my questions. So the 2021 Executive Order that suspends a certain CEQA review that's still in place, I just want to confirm.

I want to make sure to answer your question accurately. So if it's possible, I would take that specific question and then respond to you directly. Your office.

Thank you.

Thank you, Senator Hurtado, and I think I am last and maybe least, but I want to thank you for appearing here today. Obviously, we had a lot of robust debate around the infrastructure package. As I said at the outset, I've heard a lot of concerns, both substantive and procedural. And I think you've convinced me that we need to make some major changes to our law to try to attract federal funding. But I think there's still a lot of unanswered questions.

There's 10 major proposals here that we're considering, and we really didn't have the time to get into the details on these. But I was listening very closely, and the devil is in the details. And I did hear that you would commit to giving us a list of projects that might be benefited from this. But I also asked previously, when we met privately, for a list of which particular funding might be tied to which particular projects and which particular changes in law that you're asking for.

Because that's important for us, because I agree with many of these proposals, maybe all of them, that case needs to be made. But I'm still not convinced that all of these need to go through the trailer process. And I look forward to you making that justification to us on each of these projects. Why is it urgent? Where is the funding?

What particular funding ties to each particular change in law, and what projects will benefit because those details matter to us because you're asking us to make some really sweeping changes. I thought the Lao's analysis really hit on a lot of the concerns that you heard today. And so I just look forward to continuing that dialogue with you around the specifics, because that's going to be important to us.

If we're being asked to basically go around ordinary policy process, to go around the concerns of the stakeholders we'll hear from next, we need to be able to justify that why is this important? What are the Dollars we're talking about? And what's the certainty that we're going to get those Dollars? And I look forward to hearing those answers from you all and having the beginning continuation of what may be a short or long conversation, depending on your point of view.

But with that, thank you very much for your time and patience and appreciate those of you who can stay to address any questions that may come up during the stakeholder Panel.

Thank you for the opportunity. Thank you very much.

Really appreciate you.

Thank you. Now we'll hear from a few stakeholders, and they can make their way up. And that was just for the record. That was scheduled to be a 1 hour panel. I think we went about what we started at 1015. So 2 hours, 45 minutes, that's not too bad. But our next panel will be from stakeholder participation. We'll welcome Kim Delfino for Earth Advocacy and also on behalf of Defenders of Wildlife, Doug Obegi from the Natural Resources Defense Council and Jennifer Pierre from the state water contractors.

And I just want to make the mention at the outset that I know that there are many other stakeholders in this debate. For purposes of this panel, we limited it to just a few for purposes of time, which clearly we're failing at to try to get some representative perspectives from views that fall under the purview of this particular Committee, natural Resources and Waters. But with that, thank you very much. And, Kim, I think you are the first panelist. Each of you have 8 minutes, so please go ahead.

All right, well, I was going to say good morning, but now it's good afternoon, Chairman Min and Members of hopefully not. Good night. My name is Kim Delfino, and I'm here representing Defenders of Wildlife. Defenders has been an active champion of moving aggressively to meet California's climate goals and achieve climate resiliency against impacts that communities and ecosystems are already experiencing. We know very well that California is facing a climate crisis and must act rapidly.

We can see the impacts of climate change in the ecosystem where we work and in communities. However, I would urge that while we are working with urgency to address this crisis, we are not acting in haste. The Administration has put forward a package of 10 proposals that purport to be necessary to rapidly deploy infrastructure. However, as we have seen in the past, three hearings, and as we've heard today, many of these proposals raise more questions than the Administration can answer.

And one of the biggest is what specific projects? I was going to say more on that, but I think that we've heard plenty on that particular point, and I look forward to hearing what the Administration says. I'm going to speak to the fully protected species issues, the accelerating the environmental mitigation and direct contracting proposals. Mr. Obiji will be covering the two CEQA related proposals progressive design build authority, and the Delta reform proposals.

Turning to fully Protected Species as you already heard, fully protected species laws were enacted 50 years ago prior to the state Endangered Species Act. Basically, what the laws say is you cannot take or kill any of the fully protected species, which means that when projects are moving forward, generally, you are designing the projects to avoid impacting those species. So there is a benefit to fully protected.

Since that time, the Legislature has acted many times to amend the fully protected species laws and has chosen not to repeal them. The 37 fully protected species are found in many areas of California and include such critically imperiled species as the condor, golden eagle, southern sea otter, Sandhill Crane, California lease turn, and bighorn sheep.

In fact, I would submit, contrary to what was stated, we actually know quite a bit about the species that are on the fully protected species list, and a lot of them are racing towards extinction. Previously, the Legislature has allowed the take or the killing of fully protected species only when it relates to recovery, or it results in a higher level of protection than a fully mitigated standard under CESA or the California Endangered Species Act.

And the Legislature has passed bills that grant blanket exemptions, as in the case of SB 618, which was authored by Senator Wilk many years ago, which allowed for the take of fully protected if they're covered under a natural community conservation plan. The legislatures also allowed for the take for specific projects, but only when they've met a net conservation benefit.

They've met a fully protected species standard I mean, sorry, a fully mitigated standard with additional protections, or if it's to promote recovery, such as the removal of the Klamath dams, or to promote the reintroduction of condors in far Northern California. In the trailer Bill proposal, the Administration has given no justification as to why the take of fully protected species should be allowed for anything less than providing for a conservation benefit.

For example, why should the Legislature allow for the killing of condors, a species that is barely hanging on for survival, for anything less than an outcome that moves that species closer to recovery than closer to extinction? Indeed, part of the reason why advocates have resisted shifting all of the fully protected species to the endangered species list is that while the Endangered Species Act is a very important law, it has deficiencies, namely the mitigation standard.

While I defend the fully protected or fully mitigated standard, it is not a standard that is designed to move a species towards recovery. It is a do no harm, don't make anything any different. But the fact remains is those species continue to slide to extinction, and we do not do enough to promote recovery of endangered species. The point of getting them is off the list. So if we're going to be discussing the fully protected issue, we want to talk about the endangered species issues as well.

Unfortunately, we're not talking about that today. We're talking about a proposal that reduces impacts to imperiled species. Which leads me to the other problematic part of this proposal. The Administration is proposing that once fully protected species are legislatively moved to the Endangered Species list, the Fish and Game Commission can remove them using a process and a standard that is different than what is already applied to species on the Endangered Species list.

Under current law, when you're going to remove a species from the Endangered Species list, you have to apply CEQA. What the Administration is proposing is that you do not have to apply CEQA when removing fully protected species off the endangered Species list, and they've given no justification or explanation why we should be creating a dual standard for fully protected species that are on the list versus not fully protected species on the list.

How does this have any relationship to projects that need to receive funding under the IRA or the IIJA? The other question, and I think was raised in comments by I can't remember which Member because it's been a robust conversation today, is that why are we changing a law that has been in effect for 50 years? The fully protected laws have been on the books since 1970, and infrastructure projects have moved forward.

We have lined canals, we have done maintenance, we have built roads, we have done all the things that are being asked to do here today. And I've worked on a lot of renewable energy projects. Not a single renewable energy project has ever been stopped from the Fully Protected Species Act. So the question is, why here? Why now? Why as part of a trailer Bill proposal? And I don't think that that has been adequately answered.

Turning to the Direct Contracting Authority proposal, this is about the proposed brightline high speed rail project that would run along I 15 between Las Vegas and Southern California. Defenders has been part of the many organizations involved in this project, and we have significant concerns because what essentially is going to happen is we will have I 15, which right now mountain lions and bighorn sheep are able to cross.

If you put a high speed rail down the side of I 15, you're going to be building walls, which essentially cut off all movement of wildlife. That in an area where we have a lot of protected lands, and we do have wildlife moving. So we have said to the Federal Rail Authority, because this is a project that is a federal project that is subject only to NEPA and not CEQA, we think you should build wildlife crossings into your proposal as a mitigation.

And the federal and state agencies have agreed with us. However, Brightline has said, no, we're not going to do that. We don't want to do that. The Rail Authority thus far has resisted it. So instead, a site agreement has been negotiated between Caltrans, the Department of Fish and Wildlife, and Brightline. And in that agreement, they have said, we're going to look at creating three crossings across I 15, which is great. We're very supportive of that.

However, I would point out that we were not consulted at all in this proposal that was brought forward to you on the I 15, and we do have some concerns. And we also would note that after five months after the agreement, we didn't realize the Administration didn't have the legal authority to do the things that they said they were going to do in the agreement.

The biggest issue I want to flag here is that this revelation confirms that we do not believe that we have enforceability or assurance that the three wildlife crossings are going to actually happen. So if the Legislature is going to act on this proposal, we believe that the Legislature needs to put into the law, into statute the requirement that the state construct the three crossings prior to or during construction. We think that's a simple ask, finally, for accelerated environmental mitigation.

Since we don't have a lot of time here, I'm going to make this very brief. It is a proposal that has merit. It is a proposal that needs some cleanup. In particular, we want to make sure that Caltrans will be doing endowments to maintain habitat on the wildlife crossing structures themselves. And that's just a clarification we need. And I'm not going to say more about that because I think I'm standing between you guys and lunch at this point.

I want to close by thanking the Committee for this informational hearing, but one hearing does not replace the regular legislative process, and I also think we've heard a fair amount about that today. Many of the trailer bill's proposals will substantially change existing law and negatively impact many communities. Unfortunately, not before you today are the representatives of many of those communities, including the Delta communities and the Frontline communities, that have experienced persistent and historic policies that have resulted in public health and environmental challenges.

Given the many unanswered questions and the enormous scope of the potential projects, it is critical that all potentially impacted communities be consulted up front, not on the back end. And we urge you to resist acting in haste to the governor's sense of urgency around proposals that are frankly not thoughtfully crafted to meet the moment.

Thank you. Ms. Delfino. Mr. Obegi.

Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Doug Obegi. I'm a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. I want to thank the Committee for the robust conversation today. You asked a lot of really good questions. You raised a lot of real good concerns, and I'm really pleased to see this engagement under the leadership of the Protem and by all the Members here to engage on these tough issues. These are not things that are simple. These are not things that have obvious answers.

Reasonable minds can disagree. And the hope is that we have an actual conversation, that this is not just a one off meeting, and we actually make some progress here. NRDC strongly recognizes the need to really advance clean energy development in California so that we can address the climate crisis. And we support efforts to coordinate permitting and to provide the agencies with the staff they need to actually process permits. You hear you heard earlier about the massive amount of permits that are coming. And in order to do this right, to protect communities and to protect the environment, the agencies need to have the financial resources and staffing to do it.

Can't just cut corners. Unfortunately, in NRDC's view, this package of policy bills--of trailer bills proposes significant changes to environmental laws without significantly advancing clean energy development. It really seems to be much more focused on water projects. Outside of the trailer bill process, NRDC continues to engage on meaningful reforms to advance clean energy, but right now we need to talk about water projects, and that's what I do at NRDC.

I work particularly on the Bay Delta, and I really want to focus my testimony today about the effects of these trailer bills on those water infrastructure projects, particularly both the Delta Conveyance Project and Sites Reservoir. These two projects, and particularly Delta Conveyance, are opposed by a wide range of stakeholders: Native American Tribes, Delta communities, frontline communities, fishermen who are potentially losing their livelihoods, conservation groups around the state.

In addition, the Delta Counties Coalition, representing five of the Delta counties opposes the inclusion of the Delta Conveyance Project in this trailer bill proposal, and I think you've heard several of the Members also have very strong feelings about it which we greatly appreciate. Unfortunately, the trailer bills also don't seem like they're actually going to significantly advance the speed up permitting of a lot of water infrastructure projects, and that's because CEQA is not the barrier for these projects.

The fact is that the Administration hasn't done its work yet, its homework to get these projects ready to be permitted, and so we agree with the LAO that there is not a rush to try to jam through this in the next couple of weeks, and that thoughtful deliberation is really important. So with respect to Delta Conveyance and other water infrastructure, it's important to note NRDC does not oppose all new water storage.

We've actually proposed a Delta Conveyance Project in 2013 as part of a portfolio alternative with water districts, but we oppose the current iteration of these projects because they propose to take too much water out of the delta, harming fishermen, exacerbating harmful algal blooms in the delta, worsening conditions for Native American Tribes. We agree with the secretary that the status quo in the delta is terrible.

It is awful, and yet the analysis done by the state shows that the Delta Conveyance Project will make things worse, will reduce the survival of salmon, will reduce the survival and abundance of other species, and doesn't meaningfully help address a lot of the issues that are really there, which is that fish and the environment need water. For nearly 15 years, scientists have warned we need to reduce diversions from the delta, but as proposed, the Delta Conveyance Project proposes to increase diversions by 500,000 acre feet a year, and they didn't look at any alternatives that would reduce diversions from the Delta.

The same is true on Site's Reservoir. They looked at one single operational alternative and then they had to redo the analysis when they downsized the project rather than doing it right the first time. They have delays in their water rights proceeding, and both of these projects haven't started their water rights proceeding, they haven't finalized their CEQA documents, and they're years away from getting federal ESA permits.

Neither of them also has major funding at issue here. The Delta Conveyance Project is going to be paid for by the state water contractors, and that's going to have significant affordability concerns for communities in Southern California. The Sites Reservoir project has already been awarded federal funding, and there's no indication that that funding is at risk, and none of the funding for water storage from the IIJA is actually subject to competitive processes. It's fully selected by the Bureau of Reclamation.

So ultimately, we agree that the permitting with the LEL, that there is not a need to rush through this, particularly given that we have several years before either of those two big projects are going to move forward. I just want to talk quickly about each of these five trailer bills that seem to be much more focused on water projects than they are on our clean energy future.

With respect to the Design-Build Trailer Bill, existing law, passed just in 2021, already gives the Department of Water Resources the ability to do design-build for water infrastructure projects, but it explicitly carves out and prohibits using it for the Delta Conveyance Project. It appears that this trailer bill simply is intended to circumvent that legislative prohibition, and we don't see any other benefits and not clear that the Administration has actually used the authority or learned from it.

With respect to the Delta Reform Act Trailer Bill, we're really concerned that the proposal would allow three of the seven commissioners to make decisions on projects and their compliance with the Delta Reform Plan without actually having a majority of the members on issues that affect 38 million Californians.

With respect to fully protected species, you heard from my colleague about the real concerns here, and fundamentally, we've always had this ability for ten years to use natural community conservation plans so that we plan for and coordinate these thousands of permitting projects, whether it's energy projects or projects in the delta, and so that we don't just minimize impacts or avoid impacts, we actually go further and meet that conservation standard.

And with respect to Delta Conveyance, nearly ten years ago, the Delta counties actually filed suit against the state, arguing that the project would illegally take sandhill cranes. Sandhill cranes nest on Staten Island. They're subject of a huge festival. They bring people to the community. Weakening protections for sandhill cranes to make this project move faster seems the antithesis of a sustainable project.

On the CEQA trailer bill, I agree with the secretary. We are not creating new exemptions, but it's really problematic that we've gone far beyond what the Legislature has done in the past. We're now explicitly including Delta Conveyance, all the Proposition One storage projects despite the Senate actually agreeing--as Senator Dahle recognized--that agreeing that we were only going to do that for certain projects and not others, and there's no limit on the number of projects.

In the past, under AB 900 or SB 7, there have been ten, fifteen projects that have been used. We now have an unlimited number of projects on the water side. And second, they're not required to meet the substantive requirements that were required, like net-neutral greenhouse gas emissions, actually having enforceable mitigation agreements, exceeding CEQA requirements for construction or greenhouse gas emissions.

And as the Delta Counties Coalition noted, the Delta Conveyors Project has huge greenhouse gas emission problems and huge impacts. So we encourage the Legislature to significantly narrow that trailer bill or reject it. Finally, I take great umbrage at the Administrative Records Trailer Bill.

Fundamentally, when the courts review agency decisions, they're supposed to review the whole record. There are so many decisions that are made before you get to a final decision that are the product of lower level staff making decisions and doing that through email. It's frankly kind of crazy to think that all of that information or so much of that would not be included in the administrative record. Everyone wants other things included in it. No one wants to have their work be held accountable.

So we're at eight minutes, if you don't mind starting to wrap up. Thanks.

Absolutely. I'll just say that effectively, this proposal will allow lead agencies to cherry pick what goes in the record because they get to decide which emails get sent to decision makers. That's not good governance. It's not consistent with the approach in federal law, and I hope that California doesn't want to do something that is less transparent than federal law.

In conclusion, Mr. Chair, you're well aware of the climate crisis and that the biodiversity crisis is intertwined with that. When we're looking to advance our clean energy future, we need to protect the environment and these five infrastructure bills would undermine government transparency, limit judicial review, and weaken environmental protections, and we urge the Legislature to not agree to that.

Thank you, Mr. Obegi. Next we'll hear from Jennifer Pierre from the State Water Contractors. Welcome, Ms. Pierre.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and Members. I'm Jennifer Pierre, State Water Contractors. As a whole, the package of proposals represents an important step forward for advancing critical projects to respond to the need for climate adaptation, and it does so in a cost-effective way. The bottom line is this package saves Californians money on projects we need to do no matter what.

We are appreciative of the governor and his Administration taking the leadership initiative to move infrastructure projects forward in a manner that balances expediency with environmental responsibility and stewardship. By way of background, there are 29 public water agencies that contract with the State of California for water supplies from the State Water Project, and 27 of those agencies are my organization.

These agencies are tasked with delivering costs, affordable and reliable water supplies in their service areas, and the costs of these public water agencies incur are then passed on to their ratepayers who receive water from these agencies. Any cost savings to the State Water Project is a cost savings to ratepayers, and three quarters of all of California's disadvantaged communities reside within the State Water Project service area.

The increasing costs to maintain existing infrastructure, urgently diversify portfolios through recycling, desalinization, storage, et cetera, combined with conservation that leads to reduced water use and associated revenues are all combining to significantly increase cost pressures on water agencies and ratepayers. Water agencies have to do all the above to ensure water reliability for the future. The State Water Contractor member agencies have collectively invested over 29 billion dollars in the State Water Project since its inception.

These costs are passed on to the 27 million Californians who rely on the State Water Project for drinking water and to farmers who irrigate 750,000 acres of farmland. As a reminder, California supplies 33 percent of the nation's vegetables and 67 percent of its fruits and nuts. I had a video I wanted to show you that provided some context. I'm going to skip that. It's only two minutes.

It's on your website, but it does provide the big picture of what are the State Water Contractors trying to do as it relates to a water strategy in the state. So I'd really encourage you to take a look at it. It's mesmerizing to watch. The bottom line is that water infrastructure is climate adaptation. Completing the projects that will ensure our ability to responsibly capture, store, release, deliver, recycle, and desalinate water throughout California is a climate change imperative, and it is an all-of-the-above approach.

I've been fascinated with the focus on the Delta Conveyance today because that's not the focus that we have when we read these bills. In terms of the Fully Protected Species reclassification proposal, I just want to say that it does help with facilitating infrastructure development, but it allows for all projects to mitigate. Right now, if you have a Fully Protected Species, you cannot mitigate. It does create a hurdle.

The proposal before you is making the processes for permitting and mitigating impacts clearer for both Department of Fish and Wildlife and for permittees while likely also increasing protections for species and saving permitting time and money. In terms of the Progressive Design-Build authority for DWR, this is actually a new kind of delivery method that wasn't authorized in the previous bill, and there's really no good reason that DWR shouldn't have access to as many delivery mechanisms as exist.

They are completing hundreds of projects a year, hundreds across 700 miles of canals, dams, pipelines, pump stations. This is a huge system. It's the largest state-owned water utility in the world and having as many delivery mechanisms as possible for cost savings, again, those cost savings are passed on to 27 million Californians and ratepayers. I don't understand the disagreement to a different delivery method. One thing that hasn't been touched on today that I want to highlight is the Green Financing Proposal here.

There's a huge benefit to ratepayers as well. Right now, only tax paying entities have access to those funds, but this would allow for the state to actually tap into these federal dollars. The State Water Project is already a 70 percent renewable project, and with the passing of SB 1020 last year, we'll have an expedited need to get to 100 percent renewable, so we have a lot of costs coming to us in order to meet those goals.

Any investments that are made in the State Water Project that we can have the full value of that tax credit are going to just be passed on to water ratepayers throughout the state, so we support that component of the bill as well. We're also supportive of the remainder of the package, including those related to expedited judicial review. This is not a CEQA exemption.

It is expediting what is typically years and years and years and years of CEQA, and CEQA is about disclosure, streamlining the administrative record procedures, and the Delta Reform Act streamlining, none of which reduces public process or input or reduces the mitigation required for these projects.

The State Water Project is undertaking a significant number of infrastructure projects right now to improve water resilience, water supply reliability, repair aging infrastructure, and even improve the electricity grid reliability which--we were 20 percent of the grid's ability to stay online back on September 6th last year, and all of this requires us to do these things efficiently and safely and in a cost-effective manner.

We believe the proposals outlined by the Administration will go a long way toward moving infrastructure projects forward in a manner that is still environmentally responsible. Thank you for the opportunity to participate this morning or this afternoon. Thanks.

Thank you very much, Ms. Pierre, and you came in way under time. I also just want to say that the video is actually very fascinating and it's well done and it is on our Senate Natural Resources website, so I encourage folks to check it out. Thank you all for your testimony today. We will now move to questions for this panel. Do any of my colleagues on the dais have any questions? Okay, no questions. Going once, going twice.

I have one question for you, and Ms. Delfino, you mentioned that the Administration had not reached out to you, I think, about the California Endangered Species Act changes they'd made. And this is a question really to all of you. Had the Administration reached out to any of you about any of the proposals in this trailer bill?

So I'll start and in full disclosure about--let's see--the governor had his press conference on Friday. We had a half an hour conversation with the governor's office at 4:30 on Thursday, and to be fair, we've had a couple of conversations since we sent our letter signed by 75 organizations objecting to the process, and then that followed up with over 100 organizations objecting to the content. So we have had a couple of conversations with the Administration but no--

Primarily on the endangered species?

No.

What have you discussed then?

Oh, oh, I'm sorry. On the endangered species, so we walked through our concerns with the Fully Protected Species changes, and that was it. It was sort of basically kind of the same conversation you had here. As the Administration said, 'this is what we're doing,' and then we said, 'well, these are what the problems are,' and then they were kind of like, 'well, thank you very much,' but this is a conversation between the governor's office and the Legislature.

Mr. Obegi?

The same. You know, we were not really meaningfully consulted over the last year as this package was being developed, at least as far as I'm aware.

Okay. And Ms. Pierre?

Same. I think I got a briefing after you that Thursday afternoon. I was completely surprised.

I think we were probably all right around the same time, but thank you very much for that and thank you for your testimony. Really appreciate your time today and your immense patience and being waiting to get up here. With that, I'd like to invite public comment and you all can leave. Thank you, and I appreciate the many perspectives that were not included in the stakeholder panel, and I know a number of you are here to provide those comments.

Given limited time, I would encourage folks out there to submit written comments to the Committee, but we're going to begin with witnesses here in Room 1200, and you guys are well healed, so you're already lined up, but please line up at the front or in that line if you have not already if you'd like to comment, and just for purposes of time because we're running very late, I'm going to limit this to 30 seconds each, and I will be fairly strict about that.

Mr. Chair, please. We've been sitting here for hours. This is our only chance to respond.

One minute. All right, we'll go one minute with you guys. Thank you. All right, thank you very much. I'm sorry. We're already at like three and a half hours, so I apologize. Okay, yeah, no, I appreciate your patience. Thank you. Please proceed.

Good afternoon. Neal Desai with the National Parks Conservation Association. The recent debt ceiling negotiations could have completely gutted all of the federal funding that we have access to, and so we need the state to act quickly in submitting applications and getting that funding.

But let's be clear, there has been absolutely no evidence presented that the Federal Government Grant Application will be more competitive if the state silences its scientists and its public health experts as the Administrative Record Trailer Bill could do or CEQA litigation may or may not be limited to 270 days as a judicial trailer bill would do. Same with the delisting species.

So the bottom line is that the claim sense of urgency to pass these bills now versus two months from now or three months from now: it doesn't add up. The Administration needs to give us the list that they're in possession of, of all of their projects. Let's take a look at them. Let's see which ones they want to benefit now versus two, three months from now.

Thank you very much for your testimony. I do apologize, and I would encourage you all to submit written comments, but we have flights to catch and this hearing obviously is running very, very long, and so I am just going to ask you to submit the rest in written comment. I apologize. Thank you. You many begin.

Susan Jordan, California Coastal Protection Network. I agree with Senator Padilla. You are being jammed. It is not inadvertent. It is deliberate. You're being pressured to hastily approve a sweeping package with massive policy changes that will have the worst impacts on historically marginalized communities, and were those communities actively consulted? They were not, despite what you've been told. It is your responsibility to carefully vet these proposals. I really consider this a Pandora's Box. Unfortunately, it's been put in your lap.

You need to take the time--you need to push back on this Administration. What they're doing here is wrong. I've been working in this building for 25 years. I've never seen behavior as egregious as this, and I really urge you to be responsible to your constituents. They deserve it. They deserve to have this whole package carefully vetted. It's completely inappropriate and you have to stop it. Thank you.

Thank you very much for your comment.

Mr. Chairman and Members, Scott Wetch on behalf of the IW sheet metal workers, Pipe Trades' utility workers. The hypocrisy in this room is breathtaking. I don't remember any of the environmental groups or their allies complaining about process last year when we were talking about oil well setbacks, when we were talking about accelerating environmental decarbonization. So I guess my old boss, David Roberto, is correct and that consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.

SB 423 which passed this Senate almost unanimously was a complete elimination of CEQA. Okay? And this is a very modest approach to what we're talking about vis-a-vis that I imagine that you all voted for that because housing is a crisis, okay? Climate deserves the same attention as housing does. You can't continue to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

If you do, if you can't pass these types of measures, then let's just roll back our 2030 and 2045 goals, to be honest with you. And lastly, the threat of Republican-led Congress, climb back every penny of this in just the next few years is very real and I'd ask respectfully that you consider that in your deliberations.

Thank you for your comments. Appreciate it.

Mr. Chair and Members, Joe Cruz on behalf of the California State Council of Laborers. Appreciate the opportunity to be here. I too, want to stress the sense of urgency that these provisions have for disadvantaged communities. I represent disadvantaged communities with workers. 85 percent of my workforce is people of color.

These are environmental projects. Water quality, flood control, climate resiliency, transportation, transit. These are all projects that will improve the quality of life of all Californians, but in particular, in areas that need it most, and to move these projects forward will create great opportunities for people of color, for women, for second chancers, for all the folks who need to be pulled into the middle class.

And that's why the Laborers support this package of bills right now, and we also want to stress that there is equity. We work with the pre-apprenticeship programs at every level to pull these people into middle class jobs, and there are labor provisions.

There are labor provisions on the public side which allow for prevailing wage, apprenticeship, compliance, enforcement. 90 percent of the work that's being done through Caltrans and DWR on the industrial side is done by a unionized workforce, and let's be clear. Thank you, sir. I appreciate it.

Thank you for your comment. Appreciate it.

Good afternoon. Christina Scaringe with the Center for Biological Diversity. Good jobs shouldn't cost you your health or your family's health or your children's future. We'd align our comments with those made today by Defenders and NRDC. We also would like to note that we're very concerned about the wildlife crossings.

We need explicit language to show that they will actually be built on I-15. We oppose the proposed changes to fully protected species laws. We agree with Senator Limon. They do different things. It's a lower standard. CESA is about cutting your losses, preventing extinction, whereas Fully Protected Species is about recovery and restoration.

We also oppose the trailer bill to allow the agencies to cherry pick what they'll disclose. The California Constitution lays out clearly that the writings of public officials and agencies shall--not may--shall be open to public scrutiny. So these are very important issues. We need time. We need engagement, which we've not had. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Appreciate your comment.

Thank you, Chair and Committee Members. Alex Leumer on behalf of the California Native Plant Society, the Planning and Conservation League, and the Environmental Law Foundation in opposition to this package of bills in both process and policy.

On the judicial record and administrative record, on the judicial review and administrative record pieces, I'll note that the Environmental Law Foundation is a small, nonprofit law firm that works with at-risk communities and Tribes to enforce environmental laws and ensure access to safe, affordable drinking water and protect culturally and commercially viable ecosystems in their communities.

In our experience, internal agency emails are critical to demonstrating agency policies and practices and have actually proven instrumental in making our cases. We operate on a bare bones budget, and anything that increases the cost to litigation directly impacts our ability to help those most at risk. We're grateful to a number of you for raising the impacts to these communities and your comments today, and we ask for you to move these bills through the policy process. Thank you.

Thank you very much for your comment. Next.

Hi. Samantha Samuelsen for Audubon California. We're in opposition to both the proposals and the process, and we've shared a letter detailing our concerns with the Fully Protected Species proposal, specifically that's been sent to all Members of this Committee. Thank you.

Thank you for your brief comment.

Manny Leon, California Alliance for Jobs. The alliance is in support of the infrastructure package. We'll align our comments with Mr. Cruz and the California State Laborers. I just want to stress that the proposed package will provide significant economic benefits for those throughout California, and this will result in the generation of well-paying construction jobs that will support strong, vibrant middle class to our state. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Chairman Min and Members of the Committee. Paul Mason for Pacific Forest Trust. There's a lot to find troubling about both the process and the contents of the proposal, and I can't stop thinking about the comment that Governor Gray Davis made shortly after he was elected that 'the Legislature exists to implement my vision,' and that's kind of what this feels like as well. It's like: 'here. Do it,' and I think that it's important for the Legislature to actually exercise your authorities here as well.

I want to just focus the rest of my comments on the administrative record changes, and I find it just deeply problematic that the Administration, not just this administration, but any future administration for all CEQA cases would be able to construct the record that they want to see by limiting access to all of the decisions that are made along the way towards that final document, and I strongly urge you to reject those changes. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment.

Thank you, Chairman, Members of the Committee. Barry Nelson with the Golden State Salmon Association. Golden State Salmon Association represents a salmon fishing industry that contributes over 23,000 jobs to the state's economy, reaching from the Central Coast to the Oregon border, through the Bay Area and up California's rivers.

I mentioned that industry in particular because our industry is shut down right now because of poor water management during a drought, fishing, men and women can't catch fish this year. Those fishing families are worried about losing their businesses, losing their homes.

They're worried, in some cases, about being able to put food on the table. There is a desperate need for us to increase protection for our salmon runs, our salmon fishing industry, and for our rivers in California.

Unfortunately, what we see here is at least five bills that you heard about today from a number of speakers that trailer bills that threaten the future of our industry, threaten the future of our industry in terms of the health of rivers, threaten our ability to fight for the future of our industry. We urge you to reject those trailer bills and consider them through the policy process.

I appreciate your comment. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Honorable Chair and Committee Members. My name is Artie Valencia and I'm speaking on behalf of Restore the Delta and environmental justice communities. I want to echo Kim and Doug's comments as we also oppose the proposed trailer bills. The Delta Conveyance Project will not solve drought, nor does it have any environmental justice mitigation for water, air, or climate impacts embedded into its plan or current environmental reports.

Restore the Delta has advocated in the past for the EIR and IES to include water, air, and climate impacts, but this document still falls short. Do right by environmental justice communities who already deal with past negligence when it comes to environmental review. Thank you.

Thank you. Appreciate your comment.

Good afternoon. Julia Hall with the Association of California Water Agencies. We actually really want to thank the Administration for bringing these proposals forward. We want to reiterate the urgency of moving forward with some of these infrastructure projects. Climate change, as we all know, is really impacting our system. We go from these weather whiplash, from extreme dry to extreme wet, and we need to really move forward on a lot of these projects.

These proposals would help the state build infrastructure at the pace and scale needed to help address climate change. Thank you.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and Members. Genesis Tang on behalf of Clean Air Task Force in support of the administration package, specifically the CEQA judicial streamlining for clean energy projects. Clean Air Task Force transmission analysis identified permitting delays under CEQA and Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity, regulatory reviews that increase project development timelines and cost.

Legislative proposals like SB 420 by Becker and SB 619 Padilla provide a specific and promising solutions to these permitting delays, and we see the governor's proposal as a complementary measure in addition to these bills and for topics outside of clean energy infrastructure, we are deferring to those experts. Thank you.

Thank you. Appreciate your comment.

Good afternoon, Chair and Members. I'm Brenda Bass on behalf of the California Chamber of Commerce, and we are in strong support of the governor's--the governor's infrastructure package. We thank the Administration for bringing it forward. It's critically important that we make water and other important infrastructure upgrades and invest in facilities that can ensure that water gets where it needs to go safely and efficiently.

Projects like canal repairs, water treatment facilities, and new water storage options, including groundwater recharge, will benefit from the streamlining provided for in this proposal. Additionally, this package appropriately balances the need for environmental review and protection with the need for projects to move timely to save taxpayer and ratepayer money. We support this infrastructure package because it's needed to ensure our water and other important infrastructure will be climate resilient. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment.

Hi, I'm Gail Delihant with Western Growers Association, and we align our comments with the State Water Contractors, ACWA, and the Chamber. Thank you.

Thank you.

Mr. Chair and Members of the Committee, Louis Brown here today on behalf of the American Council of Engineering Companies in California, California Citrus Mutual, California Fresh Fruit Association, the California Grocers Association, and the California Walnut Commission in support of the proposal, and we align our comments with that of the California Chamber and ACWA. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment.

Mr. Chair and Members, Beverly on behalf of the State Building Construction Trades Council of California. Thank you for this hearing today. We would also like to thank the Administration for their work on the infrastructure package and maximizing federal funds to come to California. We'd like to just briefly highlight the work of Senate Budget Sub Five this year. There were four hearings.

We participated in it, made sure that for the funds that are coming in, we're competitive in receiving these funds and that these funds ultimately go to quality jobs that protect workers. We support the vast majority of the infrastructure package as written. We have flagged potential amendments specific to job order, contracting, Progressive Design-Build, and CEQA judicial streamlining that merit existing labor protections in statute.

We appreciate Senator Limone's comments, Senator Cortese's comments around the need for explicit reference for codification of labor standards, and Members, including Senator Caballero and Senator Durazo and others who uplifted the need for labor protections. We've submitted a letter detailing the language that we are seeking here, and we look forward to working with the Committee Administration and the Assembly as well, Senate too, in terms of addressing our issues. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment.

Aloha. Mitchell Bechtel on behalf of the District Council of Iron Workers. In theory, we're support of the governor's package. We do have concerns about the lack of skilled and trained language in job order, contracting, Progressive Design-Build, and the CEQA streamlining. I just want to highlight something very briefly. Going after government federal funding, if we include additional labor protections, that's only going to make our applications look better to the Biden Administration, so I don't see how adding skilled and trained would be worse to get those funds. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment.

Good afternoon. Erin Woolley on behalf of Sierra Club California in opposition to the proposed trailer bills and all sharing in the concerns that were raised by Defenders and NRDC. Additionally, lithium was raised several times during this discussion, and I would just like to note that the Lithium Valley Commission submitted a report to the Legislature in December of 2022 regarding lithium development in the Salton Sea region and detailing some of the questions and comments that were shared by community members during that two year process, and I would encourage you to consider that related to those proposals.

Thank you very much.

Mr. Chair and Members, Alex Torres, Director of State Government Relations for the Bay Area Council, here today representing over 330 employers in the nine county Bay Area. We'll align our comments with the Chamber and some of our other business coalition partners here, but the reality is we can't let this death by delay status quo continue for projects. Our ambitious goals are too large.

We have too much of a shared common mission in meeting our climate goals and encouraging economic vitality in our state to not act now. So proud to be one of the many business voices you'll hear in support of this package today. Thank you to the Administration. Thank you for hearing today.

Thank you.

Chair, Robert Oakes, Policy Director for the New California Coalition. We sent a letter with 88 signers on it. We also represent approximately 80,000 everyday Californians. We are in support of the proposal and for the reasons that we articulated in our letter. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. Cara Martinson on behalf of the Large Scale Solar Association here in support of these measures, but we just want to be clear not to overstate the actual value to expediting the needed transmission and clean energy projects, the 86 gigawatts that we will need by 2045 to meet our climate and energy goals.

We need more meaningful change beyond what the Administration has proposed that are inside and outside of CEQA, including addressing land use constraints, working with local governments rather than necessarily circumventing their permitting processes, outreach to the public about this infrastructure that's needed, and we appreciate the conversation today and look forward to working with you. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Melissa Cortez on behalf of the California Wind Energy Association in support of the proposal. I want to echo the comments of the previous speaker with the Large Scale Solar Association. While we appreciate these efforts, we hope that it's part of a larger package to expedite development of clean energy. If we're serious about meeting our goals, there's a lot more work that needs to be done. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment.

Mr. Chair and Members, Mark Watts representing Transportation California, long-standing coalition of contractors and labor. We're here in favor of the package with record federal and state infrastructure funding on the table. We're on the precipice of a building boom that will create hundreds of thousands of jobs while achieving our ambitious climate goals, but this can't happen unless our state passes the reforms that Governor Newsom is proposing.

We have a long record in our organization of fighting for innovative delivery mechanisms, and we're pleased to see the package includes Progressive Design-Build. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment.

Good afternoon. Erin Norwood on behalf of the Almond Alliance, representing 7,600 growers and over 100 almond processors in California. In the interest of time, would just direct you to our written comments that we submitted to the Committee and emailed to each of you and align our comments with the Chamber and ACWA. Thank you.

Thank you for taking advantage of the written comment process.

Good afternoon. Osha Meserve here for Local Agencies of the North Delta. I've also represented a lot of different groups and entities in the Delta, including some of the Delta counties, and we're very glad to hear that there is concern about the calling out of the Delta Conveyance Project in the so-called leadership or gutted leadership proposal that's in this package.

I would just also say it's going to take more review and a longer conversation to take the advantage that is in this package for the Delta Tunnel in various aspects of it, such as in the Admin record piece, in the Fully Protected Species piece, as well as the design-build and potentially in the Delta Stewardship Council piece as well.

So there's a lot of things in here that appear to advance the Tunnel Project in a way that it really shouldn't be, given how controversial and destructive it would be and how much opposition there is to that project. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment.

Good afternoon. Annalee Akin on behalf of the Family Business Association of California in support due to increases in good paying jobs, as well as Santa Clarita Valley Water Agency and San Gabriel Valley Municipal Water District echoing the comments of the State Water Contractors in support. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment.

Hello. Melissa Romero with California Environmental Voters. I just want to thank the Committee for holding this informational hearing and airing some of the concerns that we share with the process and both the substance of the policy. We're particularly concerned about the two CEQA-related proposals, and I do just want to say that our movement has been pushing for accelerated climate action for many years now.

And we are very ready to consider and talk with all of the stakeholders involved in the Governor's Office and all of you on ways to do that, and these infrastructure proposals are really missing important policies that should also be examined and discussed, like improving planning and sighting of projects, more robust upstream community engagement, increased investments in permit staffing at agencies, and more coordinated and efficient approvals of transmission and other really key infrastructure needs that are essential for a climate resilient future.

So I just want to note that the environmental community has not been engaged in a genuine process in these and we would really like to be. We really do want to see accelerated climate action. I don't want that to get lost. So thank you.

Thank you very much for your comment.

Good afternoon, Chair and Members of the Committee. David Nelson here with California Forward Action Fund, representing California Forward in full support of the package that's been presented to you, but I want to take a very quick 16 second step back and say one of the biggest reasons why we're here outside of the governor's leadership is the work that California Forward was asked to do on behalf of the State of California, and you all have a copy of that report, and it's been informed by Californians from every corner of this state and over 1,000 stakeholders.

None of this has happened under a rock; it's been very public, very inclusive. While there are 40 million people in the state, I think a thousand stakeholders is worthy to be considered when the Legislature has had advance notice of this report, it's been publicly shared, and our comments are iterative in our support letter that was sent last week that this is what the State of California is asking for. Thank you very much.

Thank you for your comment.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and Senators. Jason Bryant on behalf of the Western United Dairies and the California Cattlemen's Association and the Mountain Counties Water Resources Association. Appreciate the Committee's hearing today and allow us to hear the governor's proposal. We're in support of the proposal, and thank you for the time and opportunity to speak. Thank you.

Thank you very much for your comment.

Good afternoon. Jennifer Fearing on behalf of Leadership Council for Justice and Accountability, an environmental justice organization that works with communities in the Central Valley and the Coachella Valley. We, like others, object to the process or lack thereof, associated with these proposals. Community members working on the very issues at play are simply not able to clear their calendars and engage at the speed demanded by the release of these bills at the 11th hour.

Substantively, one of our greatest concerns is fast tracking development that could and very well may harm communities. No streamlining should attach to projects, including transportation or energy projects that could harm people who live near those types of projects. We are also extremely concerned about the arbitrary exclusion of potentially clerical documents from the administrative record. This will have a chilling effect on government accountability, and it will hamper environmental oversight. Thank you.

Thank you very much for your comment.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and Members. Tim Cremins, International Union of Operating Engineers in full support of the project. I'd say two quick things--for obvious reasons, make them quick. First of all, I think those of you who think about just transition or what to do with the workforce and kind of a modern energy environment, this provides the opportunity to do that. With the labor standards currently in the package, now you have a chance.

For instance, our members working on a refinery project can now go work on a transformative project, same wage rate, same health and welfare, same training program, same pension, and not miss a day's work and not have a gap in funding. So I think that's a unique opportunity for something for you all to think about. Also, I'd say we had the opportunity within the last month to go back to Washington, D.C. and try to secure some federal funding for other projects, maybe over the span of ten, twelve congressional visits.

Not a theme, but to a person almost was the ask, 'can California speed up the permit process?' And the notion was both political and policy, I think, from Members of Congress. They put their vote on the line, raise taxes, but want to see something for that and the notion was, California is one of the worst or worse in the nation in permitting times, and this is among both sides of the aisle so I think there's a notion back in Congress for this also.

Thank you very much for your comment. Is there anyone else in the room who would like to testify on this package? Seeing no one in the room, we'll move to individuals waiting to provide public comment via the teleconference service. For those who are just joining or who have not yet called in to participate, please dial this toll free number: 877-226-8163, and when prompted, please use the following access code: 3308805.

Moderator, if you could please prompt the individuals waiting to provide public comment and if you could provide for me the total number of people on the line, I'd appreciate it.

Thank you. If you'd like to have public comment, you may press one and then zero. And that is one and then zero for public comment. And Mr. Chair, we have about 20 in queue.

Thank you. Next.

20 in queue. Just for purposes of time, I'm going to ask anyone wishing to testify by phone to limit their comments to 30 seconds each, and I will be keeping track of time, Ms. Moderator. Thank you so much. You can start when ready.

Thank you. We'll go to line 43. Your line is open.

Good afternoon. Kristoff Maier with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, AFSCME. We share concerns that others have expressed around process. Also, we would like to see trailer bill language that establishes the Equity, Climate Resilience and Quality Jobs Fund in the Workforce Development Board by investing ten percent of all qualified federal infrastructure monies from IIJA and IRA. We'd also like to see a Climate and Quality Jobs Advisory Board to ensure transparency and accountability to workers and communities. Thank you.

Thank you. We'll go to line 17. Your line is open.

Hello. Thank you. My name is Elaine Ogawa, and I am a graduate of the Women in Non Traditional Employment Roles, WINTER union pre-apprenticeship construction program supported by the Los Angeles/ Orange Counties Building Trades Council with support from California Workforce Development Board.

Currently, I'm working with Boilermakers Local 92. I am calling today to urge you to require strong labor and equity standards for any money California will seek from the Federal Infrastructure Bill. Participating in a high road union pre-apprenticeship program helped me find a career to take care of my family.

Thank you very much.

For supporting high road programs like--thank you.

Thank you. Next, we go to line 51. Your line is open. Line 51, your line is open. And one moment.

Next we're going to go to line 53. Please go ahead.

This is Carolyn Jensen with KP Public Affairs on behalf of the Mojave Water Agency and Western Municipal Water District, in support of the administration's proposal. Thank you.

Line 49, you are open.

Hi, this is Nairi Bagdasarian with the San Gabriel Valley Economic Partnership calling in support of the package. Thank you.

Please go ahead line, 46.

Good afternoon, Chairman and Members of the Committee. This is Connor Medina, Government Affairs Manager with the Orange County Business Council. We strongly encourage the Legislature to approve the Governor's infrastructure streamlining package, which will help accelerate critical energy, water, and transportation projects in Orange County and throughout the state. Thank you.

And we'll go to line 50. You are open.

Chair and Members, my name is Chris Wilson with the Los Angeles County Business Federation. We know that climate change won't wait, and neither will the need for safe drinking water, cleaner energy, or more efficient and safe for infrastructure projects. We urge the Legislature to move quickly and swiftly on the Governor's package. Kicking the can down the road on this will only delay and ultimately deny what is needed. Thank you.

Line 48. Please go ahead.

Chris Clarke with the Mojave National Preserve Conservancy. We are concerned about a number of things in this package, but the one I want to speak to briefly is are the major holes in the state's agreement with the Brightline Rail Company, the biggest one being the fact that wildlife crossings are not guaranteed in this package. And I feel the Legislature has an obligation to fill those holes and should amend the legislation to require the state constructs those crossings. Thank you very much.

You are open line 27.

Hi, my name is Julia Sebastian from Jobs with Justice San Francisco, a coalition of community organizations and labor unions. Just want to highlight the need for stronger and more well-defined labor and equity standards specifically on construction jobs. As pointed out by Senator Durazo specifically asking for a trailer Bill language that would establish a fund to invest 10% of all qualified federal infrastructure money for strengthening high road programs and standards and importantly, for developing a displaced worker relief and transition program.

And finally, in order to ensure transparency and accountability to workers and communities, we call for a Climate and Quality Jobs Advisory Board composed of labor and community representatives to oversee the projects contained in this package. Since there was no process.

Thank you very much for your comment.

To really engage stakeholders.

Line 54, please go ahead.

Hello. My name is Brent Lyles, and I'm Executive Director of the Mountain Lion Foundation. I support the earlier comments of a number of my colleagues in the environmental community, especially with respect to process and fuller public review. And in addition, I'm here to comment on how wildlife crossings are handled in the state's agreement with Brightline. Mountain lions play critical roles in California's ecosystems, and in addition, they're part of the vibrant social fabric of California.

I'd like to ask the Legislature to amend the legislation to require that the state construct wildlife crossings as part of the Bright.

Thank you very much for your comment.

Thank you. Line 23, your line is open.

Good afternoon. My name is Norman Rogers. I'm with USW Local 675. I support the language changes for the trailer Bill that would call for an equity, climate resilience and quality jobs fund in the CWDB. Also that there's a Climate and Quality Jobs Advisory Board made up of labor and community representatives to oversee the fund. And in addition, regarding labor standards, that there is language that recognizes both those that are trained via apprenticeship programs and those through labor-management programs.

Thank you for your comment.

Thank you. Next, we'll go to line 18.

Hello. My name is Veronica Garcia. I am a graduate of the Slawson Occupation Center Union Pre Apprenticeship Construction program supported by the Los Angeles County Building Trades Council with support with California Workforce Developing Board. Currently, I'm working to becoming a Member of Laborers Local 1309. I am calling today to urge you to require strong labor and equity standards for any money California will seek for the federal infrastructure Bill participating in the High Road Union.

Thank you very much for your comment.

One moment. Must've lost her, sorry. We'll go to line 35, your line is open.

Hello. This is Dan Bacher, independent journalist. I strongly oppose trailer Bill package. Governor is trying to jam through the Legislature, particularly the provisions regarding CEQA and the Delta Tunnel. Salmon fishing is closed on the ocean in California this year due to the collapse of salmon populations on Sacramento and Klamath Rivers that was caused by terrible state and federal water and fishery management during a drought.

Eviscerating CEQA and other environmental laws as the Newsome Administration is trying to do, will only make the dire situation with salmon and other.

Thank you very much for your comment. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Line 55, your line is open. Line 55, your line is open.

Good afternoon. My name is Elizabeth Burks. I'm calling on behalf of the 28th Senatorial District as constituents. And I'm calling because we want to make sure that black folks and people of color, which are the most impacted by the climate crisis, are not left out of this conversation. Let's complete this process the right way the first time and let's include black people, women, Latinos, LGBTQ and disabled workers in our first rounds of funding and applications. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment.

Thank you. Line 11, your line is open.

Vanna Adams, on behalf of the Greater Bakersfield Chamber in support of the Governor's infrastructure streamlining package, these proposals protect the state and its residents in the urgent manner deserved. Thank you very much.

Thank you for your comment.

Thank you. Line 41, your line is open.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and Members. Tricia Geringer with Agricultural Council of California aligning ourselves with the comments of Aqua and Cal Chamber in support of the Governor's infrastructure package. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment.

Thank you. Line 57, your line is open.

Thank you. My name is Doug Bloch, and I'm a consultant with the UC Berkeley Labor Center and U.S. Department of Energy on federal funding. On the question of how we better compete for discretionary grant funding, let me walk you through the DOE's Community Benefit Guidelines. First, engagement with labor unions, workforce development organizations, impacted communities and tribes. Second, how many construction and operations jobs will be created? Will these be quality jobs? Will disadvantaged workers have equitable access?

Thank you very much for your comment.