Senate Standing Committee on Rules

Well, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you so much for joining us for the Senate Rules Committee. We have quite an agenda in front of us. And we're going to say thank you ahead of time for your patience as we work our way through our lengthy agenda.

Before we get into anything else, we'd like to better establish a quorum. Madam Secretary, can you please call the roll?

[Roll call] Quorum.

Ladies and gentlemen of the Committee, a quorum has been established. As we typically do, we're going to take up some housekeeping items, some administrative items first. We want to say thank you to each of those individuals who are here to appear in front of the Committee.

This is going to take us a few minutes to be able to get through our housekeeping items. And then we'll get right into the meat of today's business. So, first and foremost, we're going to jump to item number two on our agenda. This is Governor's appointees not required to appear.

We'd like to be able to take two separate votes under not required to appear. First and foremost, let's take up our first vote. That would be on items E, F, G, and I. Under governor's appointments, not required to appear. Is there a motion for items two, E, F, G, and I?

So moved.

We have a motion by Madam Vice Chair. Madam Secretary, can you please call the roll?

[Roll call] Five to zero.

That's a 5-0 vote. That motion passes. Thank you so much. Ladies and gentlemen of the Committee, we're now going to be taking up our second item under number two, governor's appointees not required to appear. We'd like to be able to see if there's a motion on item two H. Item two H. Is there a motion?

Senator Laird makes the motion. Madam Secretary, can you please call the roll?

[Roll call] Three to zero.

That is a 3-0 vote. That motion is approved. We're now going to be moving on to item number three, reference of bills to Committee. I'll entertain a motion.

So moved.

We have a motion by Madam Vice Chair. Madam Secretary, can you please call the roll?

[Roll call] Five to zero.

It's a 5-0 vote. That motion is approved. Thank you so much. We're now going to be moving on to Committee appointments. Committee appointments. Is there a motion to approve?

So moved.

We have Madam Vice Chair with a motion. Madam Secretary.

Motion 4, 5, and 6.

Yes, for 5, 4, 5, and 6. Madam Secretary, can you please call the roll?

[Roll call] Five to zero.

That is a 5-0 vote. Next, we're going to take up Subcommittee. Subcommittee ratification. Is there a motion to approve? Yes, we did. Look at that. We are efficient. Goddamn. All right. Now we're going to be going to floor acknowledgments. Floor acknowledgments. We have a request to be able to take up two separate votes.

We'd like to be able to see if there is a motion on our first vote for items 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, and 14.

So moved.

We have a motion by Madam Vice Chair. Madam Secretary, can you please call the roll?

[Roll call] Five to zero.

That's a five.

Chair, I would move number 12.

I'm moving number 12.

You are?

Yes.

Look at that. We have bipartisan support. I think Mister Laird was in first. All right, so there we go.

I get priority.

There we go. So, we have on our vote number one. That was approved on a 5-0 vote. We're now going to be going to vote number two under floor acknowledgments. This is item number 12. We have motion by Mister Laird. Madam Secretary, can you please call the roll?

[Roll call] Four to zero.

That is a 4-0 vote. That motion passes. All right. Look at that. We're done with our housekeeping. Very grateful. We are going to welcome to Committee Regent Lee and Regent Sarris. If you could please come forward. We'll let them come forward.

As they do, we want to first take a moment to say thank you so much to Regent Sarris and Regent Lee. For their commitment, not just to the people of California, but to the students of the UC system. Regent Lee, Regent Sarris, you're going to have one to two minutes for opening testimony.

We'll then open it up for the Committee for comments and conversations and any questions that they may have. In your opening, we welcome you to advance any acknowledgments of guests who may be here in the audience or watching at home or at the office. I'll be keeping time.

As you get close to that two minutes, I'll give you a 30 second prompt. Regent Lee, we're going to start with you, and then we're going to go to Regent Sarris. Regent Lee, welcome. Thank you so much. The floor is yours.

Thank you. Good afternoon. I'd like to start by thanking the Members of Committee for considering my appointment. I also want to thank you for your staff's time. We had some good conversations that I look forward to continuing today.

It is an honor to be considered for the UC Board of Regents, and I'm grateful to the Governor and this Committee for the opportunity. I'd also like to take a moment to introduce my husband, Ryan Graham, and my parents, Won Hoon Lee and Un Won Lee, who are here with me today.

They have supported me throughout this process, and I would not be who I am without these important people in my life. Over 50 years ago, my parents uprooted their lives from South Korea to move to America. More specifically, they emigrated to Guam. They came because this country was full of possibility.

And from Guam, we moved quite a bit to Seoul, Korea, before settling in a small suburban community in Michigan. My parents ran a gas station fifteen hours a day, seven days a week, to provide for my two sisters and me, and their hard work enabled all of us to attend college.

My undergraduate and graduate education was further funded with Pell Grants, loans, and work-study financial aid. Through perseverance, supportive mentors, and good luck, I have been fortunate enough to build a career in law, finance strategy, and media and entertainment.

As a member of the UC Board of Regents, I have been provided the incredible opportunity to contribute in support of key shared values and goals towards addressing important issues facing our campuses and its students.

At the end of the day, we recognize that our efforts at aimed not only at ensuring a positive experience for our students while at UC, but even more important, we are building our future workforce for California. I'm honored to appear before you as you consider my appointment, and I look forward to answering your questions. Thank you.

Regent Lee, thank you so much for being here. We're now going to transition to Regent Sarris. Regent Sarris, wonderful to see you, sir. The floor is yours. You're good to go. If you don't mind bringing the mic a little closer, and then you'll be good.

There you go. Okay. It has been a great honor for me to have been nominated to the University of California Board of Regents by Governor Newsom. I have been a writer, a professor of American literature and writing, a tribal leader and businessman, and a philanthropist.

I have taught at the university level for 35 years, 10 of which was at UCLA as a professor in the Department of English. Before I was a professor. I was a student, an undergraduate at UCLA. As a troubled youth, as someone who did not read a book until the 11th grade, I know what education can do.

And that was and is and must continue to be what the University of California does better than any public institution anywhere.

As a UC Regent, not only can I keep my feet in education, but have the opportunity to play a role in the guarantee of the university's excellence, an excellence that will shape an informed and sustainable future for all. Thank you.

Regent Sarris, thank you so much. We're grateful that you're here. What we'd like to be able to do now is open it up to the Committee for questions, comments. We're going to start with Senator Laird. Senator Laird, good afternoon.

Thank you very much. And thank you both for the time to talk. I really appreciate it. It was great to get to know both of you, and I'm really grateful for your service. I did point out that you just get a few expenses reimbursed. Otherwise, this is a donation. So, thank you for your willingness to do that.

I have a couple of topics and then another question. And the topic of the day seems to be the balance between safety and free speech on the campuses. And UC has been in the middle, with some campuses having just very different situations than others.

How do you see your role as a regent in that balance between safety and, and free speech? And maybe we'll start with Regent Lee and go to Regent Sarris.

Absolutely. Thank you for that question, Senator. It is my belief that there is no higher purpose for an academic institution than to foster a culture where free speech is valued and is allowed to thrive, whether that's through debate or an exchange of ideas, or even peaceful demonstrations.

And, you know, the point of a protest is to bring attention to your cause and to build solidarity and allyship and to change minds. Our motto is fiat lux, let there be light. And so encouraging students to debate and think about complicated and thorny issues is what higher education is all about in my mind.

That said, there is a limit to free speech, and it is not an absolute right. And when it crosses the line into violence or vandalism of our property or harassment of students because of their identity, that's when it's not okay, and the rights of others need to be protected as well.

And so, the balancing of both of those tensions is what I believe our role as regents need to be. And, you know, we haven't gotten it right every single time, you've referenced that. And we had a good discussion about that.

But I think it was good for us to ask tough questions of our administrators and to demand some changes. And so, I was glad to see Chancellor Block, for instance, at UCLA, with a sense of urgency, make some changes at that campus in particular.

Thank you.

Yes, thank you, Senator Laird. As I've said earlier, these protests have created a situation where there's a unique challenge. The University of California has had many protests, a history of protests. This is the first time we've had student against student. It used to be in the sixties.

Of course, we were against Vietnam, and we maybe were afraid of the police coming in or whatever to get us, but never were we afraid of each other. And I think that challenge in particular has raised all these questions about what is the First Amendment and how is it going to be applied.

Very clearly stated, the First Amendment does not protect violence against other people, does not protect vandalism to property, does not protect blocking students from going or professors going to class, any of those things. It allows you to say and organize with others what you think, not to incite harm or violence to somebody else.

And that's where we can, in accordance with university policies on the codes of conduct, can enforce these laws, and they should be enforced.

And it's my job, or I see it as our job as regents to influence and work with other regents to make sure that our administrators, as Regent Lee has said, adhere to these policies and make sure they're enacted.

Well, just a quick follow-up, because we've just been focusing on what's happened lately. But there was vandalism to the house of the President that was racist in nature. And in coming before the regents, how do you feel like you are going to have to deal with that over time?

Well, first of all, I want to, I feel very concerned about him. When I was doing work for my tribe, I've had, when teaching, I had notices on my door. This only good Indian is a dead Indian and all that kind of thing. And it's a frightening thing.

And again, what we're going to have to do, it's our job to make sure that he and his wife are safe, whatever thats going to take. So working with him, he has to be safe. But certainly, if you're asking is there any room for any kind of racist comments on his home or elsewhere? Absolutely not. That's breaking the law.

Yeah, there were definitely incidences of not only the hate speech that was scrawled on his home, but trespassing. And so, like Regent Sarris said, enforcing those laws and making sure that they feel safe in their own home and giving them options if they don't feel safe. I think those are the types of debates that we had as a board.

I appreciate your comments. Then the other major policy question I wanted to ask about, we talked about in our meeting, which is the whole issue of growth and how you allocate students to campuses, how you make sure there's housing for students, how you deal with the impacts of traffic, and just what perspectives do you bring to that as regents? And maybe we'll start with Regent Lee this time.

Yeah. UC is such a unique economic engine for each of your communities and being a good steward of that community and being a good partner for all of you, as you were when you were on the city council, for instance.

Those are really important topics for me to ensure that we are building trust and respect for each other. To answer your question on housing, I know we've had, you know, 37,000 beds that have come online since 2011, an additional, you know, 15,000 that will come online through 2028.

And so, prioritizing these basic needs for our students has been certainly top of mind for us. But even as we think about going forward, what can we do to do more with what we have? And those are some of the things that I wanted to have additional conversations with folks like you.

Is there a way for us to have more online courses, for instance, or be more flexible in scheduling or even encouraging students to complete their degrees in three years instead of four so they have that complete education, but they're able to move on and start their careers so that we have room for others.

I appreciate that.

Yeah. The conundrum is that there's a goal of having 160,000 more students in the next, what, 20 years or so. So, that's going to obviously beg the question, where do they go? And that's going to require housing. That said, I would concur with what Regent Lee said.

It's imperative that we work with communities where the universities are located to reach the best goal of where and how housing can work in a way that works best with the community instead of at odds with the community that's there in our discussion.

You gave a perfect example with Santa Cruz, where it's a community of 60,000 people, and all of a sudden you've got 20,000 more students there. That's going to change the dynamic instantly. How do you do that peacefully and cooperatively? That's the question.

Thank you. And it's compounded by the fact that some of the students never leave. So, adds to the housing.

Then, Regent Sarris, let me just ask you a singular question, and that is you initially filed a form 700 that showed no reportable interest, and then you amended it to show there's these amorphous categories, but at least $200,000 of income. How did that come about?

The forms are all sent to our legal that worked with your legal. And I think initially what happened was they thought, well, they want to know what your per capita is and all of these sorts of things that got into the tribal stuff.

And they said, I was initially told, Greg, don't worry about it. You're from a sovereign nation. You don't have to report transactions or finances that you have within that nation. Within that sovereign nation.

And then, of course, it became very clear once our folks talked to one another that, wait a minute, you do have to report reportable income. So then we went ahead and did that.

And so now your amendment is complete and it's accurate.

It's complete and it's accurate. Okay. Thank you very much. I appreciate the response to your questions and look forward to working with you over.

Thank you.

Senator Eggman, Madam Vice Chair, and then Senator Jones.

Thank you very much. And I'm sorry we didn't get a chance to meet.

My question to follow up on Senator Laird's first one around the tenor on campuses right now, and as a former faculty member at CSU, being able to facilitate conversations where healthy debates occur, I think is one of the key things that one would hope to gain out of an education.

So in light of it seeming like we're losing the ability to have civil conversations, and as the universities, especially the UC, as a premier laboratory, if you will, how do you see the University being able to provide leadership on this issue around civility and a debate of ideas?

I'm so glad you asked that question, because I would like to have been talking a lot about that for the last year.

I must say that having been teaching in the University system for so long and the reason I went into it is for the very purpose of learning to create consensus, the importance of and priority of dialogue.

What seems to have happened, along with the larger things, social situations that are happening, is a polarization, where it seems that some faculty as well as students are more about taking sides rather than dialogue, which was the mission of the University.

And so I think what's going to happen, I'm afraid it'll backfire, because if you have unsafe campuses and all that sort of thing.

The students are going to be uncomfortable, the parents are going to be uncomfortable, and so how are the students protected, and how do we get back to what our mission was, Senator, that's the question.

And I think a lot of discussion, perhaps finances, the President has moved somewhat in this direction, has to go to strategies of consensus and consensus building among faculty and students on all issues, but particularly the current one. As I said earlier, this is the first time we've seen student against student. It's come to this.

And we saw a little bit of this coming with the issues of Proud Boys and stuff, having speeches on the campuses and other students protesting and all of that. And again, people have the right to say their opinion, but they don't have a right to go to the extent where they're breaking the law.

And we must get back to what the mission of this University is. There's countless pedagogies that can help us work wellness in the classroom. I've used them for years. But it seems that we're reflecting, unfortunately, too much of the polarization on campus that is going on outside of the campus.

Just to follow up real quick on what Greg just said, the President has allocated funds to combat and expand programs to combat Islamophobia and antisemitism and other forms of bigotry and hate.

And so can we use this moment to have an educational wrapper around some of the topics that we're talking about so that we can, you know, change minds in a positive way and so working with organizations like Hillel to give leaders resources so that they can equip their own campuses to have a more inclusive atmosphere.

I think those are all the steps that we've taken so far. And so, again, continuing to focus on this and not really having all the answers myself, but taking this moment to ensure that our students acknowledge that this is a time in their lives where they can and should be learning more and being able to debate in a constructive manner.

And if you want to even look at the current climate, Senator, is an opportunity more than ever now to take advantage of the situation, to say, how do we solve problems? How do we do this? What do we do in the classroom?

That was a great opportunity if we use it, yes. And then my second question is just around. I don't have a UC in my area or a CSU or anything, but we are close to UC Merced.

I was out there a couple weeks ago and the quest to get a medical school opened up out there. Can you tell me your plans and your ideas about how do we make that happen, and especially if we're talking about equity around the state? Central Valley is really a place that needs more healthcare practitioners.

I couldn't agree more, Senator. I actually had a Zoom with a few first year prime students at UC Merced just a few weeks ago, and each of them were in their first year of this brand new program. They're the first cohort at Merced, and they all had incredible stories of how they came from the Valley.

They want to serve in the Valley and really want to make this part of their lives. And the UC education allows them to do that. So giving them the opportunity to serve in those communities means that we need those facilities.

And so I'm glad to see that we have the programs in place to have almost like as a first step. But you're absolutely right that more needs to be done to have more equitable opportunities not only for the patients in the area, but the doctors who will be serving there.

Thank you.

Absolutely. It's an area that needs healthcare. And why not have the University medical center there be the nexus of that? It makes perfect sense. I've had some discussions on the side about, well have Davis. Well, Davis has its area.

Merced is separate, and Merced has a large community, the Valley there, that needs this, and they don't have the medical facilities. And Senator McGuire, I have to say, shout out to Chancellor Munoz. He's been wonderful in recruiting the Latino students, supporting them.

He came to Santa Rosa, to Roseland University Prep and talked to students and has offered a bus to take them down there to see Merced.

A lot of energy.

A lot of energy. And that's what we need to see. And we need to see, again, the opportunity for these young Latinos, Latinas. We need to see the opportunity that they have, the option to go into medicine and serve their communities. It makes perfect sense. Now, you said, of course, the question how do you do it?

Well, then we have to come up with the money.

The floor is yours.

Thank you, Mister chair. I appreciate that. Thank you both for meeting with me this afternoon or this morning before the meeting this afternoon. I really do appreciate it. I think you, like my colleague said that it's kind of. You're donating your time, but I love and appreciate all your passion that you have.

Your story is actually, you went elevated higher than me, but in the beginning of our life, being juvenile delinquents, and those things are. We have that same thing. But now you're a Regent in the UC system and will be a Regent again, I'm fairly confident.

I do have a couple of questions that I'm going to ask, similar to what we discussed in my office. And so I'll just. And whoever would like to answer them, that's completely fine. Unless, Mister chair, you want me to identify each person or. How do you want.

Please, Madam Vice Chair, continue. Who knows who you're saying?

So we talked about policies for this statewide. On the UC system. We talked about policies. And. Is there a policy on temporary housing and tenting?

Yes, there is. All the campuses have a version of that policy that prohibits. Some campuses, I believe, call it temporary housing, some call it encampments. But each of the campuses does have a policy prohibiting those things, Senator Grove.

And is there a. You violate the policy, is there a consequence for violating that policy or just.

Finding out that there should be.

Thank you. Thank you.

That there is a process. Yes, that's right.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Regent Lee. We talked also about numbers and what percentage of the numbers in these protests, because that's what we seem to be spending all of our time on. What percentage of the numbers in these protests are outside agitators. Like the one that was arrested at UCLA?

Yeah, well, the one that was arrested wasn't outside. Not associated with the campus at all. Not a student, not a faculty Member. So he was an outside agitator. And as you heard from Chancellor Block's testimony last week at Congress, there are over 100 investigations going on now on campus just to identify who these perpetrators are.

To answer your question, it's a little bit different at each campus. What percentages are from the campus and who are from outside? I think we've heard everything from 50% to 70% could be students. And so, you know, it is a mix depending on where you are.

Okay. And we also talked. And I understand your response, but I just want the public to understand. It's like these outside agitators that have no business being on the campus. They're not going to school they're not educating at the school. They're not a parent visiting the school.

There's no business for University business to be there or student, or student business to be there. How do you keep them out of a public University, which is almost impossible.

I'm assuming you can't keep anyone out, but what you can do is have people arrested for breaking the law. Remember, there's not a fence around a public University. So in fact, many universities, people from the local communities walk their dogs or just walk through and don't have any affiliation, Senator, with the University.

But that is a really good question because there's no way of iding or checking everybody. You have a campus with 40,000 students and another 15,000 faculty and staff. You have a city there. And so it's open.

So the only thing that can happen is if the person, again, is vandalizing, harassing, doing any of those things, they're subject to arrest, they're breaking laws.

And then just a couple of more questions regarding what's going on on campus now, and both of your responses earlier from my colleagues about student safety, but we talked a little bit about the rights of those students, again, not constitutional rights or anything like that.

These parents and these students have paid a high dollar for this education in some of the most prestigious educational, prestigious universities in the entire world. They've paid for their child to be educated there, and they've been denied access to their classrooms to be educated.

And we talked about this in my office, that they've been denied the graduation ability when most of these students were denied ability to graduate from high school because of COVID So we talked about monumental milestones in someone's life.

And those two things, graduation from high school and a graduation from college, again, getting your driver's license and other things, getting married, those things are monumental things in your life.

How do you justify, or how do those chancellors justify shutting down an education opportunity for these individuals to graduate at the behest of protesters that sometimes are outside agitators?

We have an agreement with parents and students to educate those students. They pay for something. We must give it to them. They expect something. There's no justification that I or I think anybody can say that would allow anyone to lock someone out of a classroom or out of a lecture or anything like that.

There's no justification short of a fire being in a building. So I don't know how else to answer your question.

Senator, I appreciate that response. I really do. And I appreciate that. You know, you, Regent Lee, you made the similar statement in the office. And I just appreciate that you guys are going to help take on this challenge to make sure that there is some type of balance we all support.

I don't think there's anybody in this die that does not support free speech. But it can't be racist, it can't be anti semitic. Absolutely.

When I saw what was going on in the UCLA campus, there was another thing on Instagram or one of the social medias, and it was like in Vienna when they were blocking Jewish students back then to go to college. And that was a very scary feeling to look at those two comparisons of both campuses side by side.

And we talked about this in your office as well. Senator, part of the answer here is education. And remembering our history and things like the California Holocaust Memorial Day that you supported so robustly is part of the answer to what we're talking about here.

So as you reference comparisons to the past, reminding people that we can't forget the mistakes that we've made in the past.

Thank you. And I guess my last question is that, and it's very, and I'm going to do a couple of them, but we've talked about it. Can I just add to that?

Thank you, Senator, recently at a regents meeting, it came up where they were blocking the main entrance to Berkeley. Right. And they were saying that Jewish students couldn't go past and all that sort of thing. And then some other, I forget where the comment came. They said, well, they can go around. Well, no, we're equal.

And that's like the same thing in the south, saying use the back door. Yeah. So again, those kinds of things are just completely unacceptable.

I appreciate your comments, again, sir, on that. You mentioned that you recently had a meeting with the chancellors. You talked about a special meeting that you had with the chancellors in my office. I don't have to ask the question. I'm just going to make a statement because I think your responses were very adequate in my office.

If you want to respond, you can.

I just am very frustrated with the amount of time that we are spending on this situation versus making sure that we follow the mission of the UC system that says, number one, to advance and extend knowledge and learning and culture, especially throughout California, to provide opportunities for individuals to develop intellectually, personally and professionally, and to prepare significant numbers of educated, responsible people to make contributions to, to contribute to California schools, economy, culture and future.

You know, that's what you should be focusing on. And you should be focusing on filling vacancies for, you know, educational opportunities that we don't have. We should be focusing on preparing for those additional 160,000 or whatever number of students that are coming in.

We should be focusing on making sure that we have an educational facility in the Central Valley that we lack up in the Stockton or northern part of the area.

Looking at UC Mercedes, those are the things we should be focusing on, not anti semitism, not racist remarks, not blocking students or figuring out how to stop students from being blocked from, you know, going to class and their education that they've paid for. And they deserve to be able to have that education since they paid for it.

So thank you. I look forward to supporting you both, and I think you really appreciate your comments and appreciate your background. And you, too, Regent. So thank you, Mister chair, for the time.

Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. Let's turn it over to Senator Jones.

Thank you, Mister chair. I want to thank the other Members on the Committee and the regents for their discussion regarding the First Amendment.

I think you're catching from all of us that that's an important issue, and I'm hopeful that as regents, you will continue to provide that leadership towards the professors that on some of our campuses have a misunderstanding of what the First Amendment is and how to appropriately apply it, which it specifically says in its own language, peaceably assemble.

I think that's how you strike the balance. You just comply with the First Amendment. One of the things I wanted to talk about to move on the discussion is, Regent Lee, you said something in our meeting, and I wrote it down, majors matter.

And I really appreciated that comment because as I've been contemplating it since we had that discussion. So if I could ask both of you to address two things that I think are becoming a more and more important issue with higher education, not just in California, but in America itself, is as a Regent.

So two questions, I think they kind of go together at the UC system, and I would even argue the CSU system itself, is there. Are we at a point in time where we need to take a look at the majors that are offered and begin analyzing?

Are all of them necessary, and are all of them providing the opportunities to students after they graduate with those, whatever major? And obviously, that would be a debatable topic to maybe eliminate some of those majors that aren't providing the opportunities that students think they're going to provide.

And then kind of in line with that, there's a national discussion now about debt forgiveness for higher education, which to me personally is very, that's very offensive. I'm a graduate of the CSU system.

I graduated from San Diego State now, granted, 30 years ago with no student debt, but two of my children have graduated from San Diego State with under $15,000 of debt. But they made sacrifices, they made decisions. They passed up on opportunities to avoid going into debt.

And my youngest son isn't going to go to a four year college. He's graduated from community college, and he's chosen a career in firefighting instead to avoid that life decision.

There's millions of families in the United States that have made that decision also to not go into debt or to find a way to pay it off without counting on the government to pay it off for them or forgive it.

So is there a point in time where we hold the institutions of higher education accountable for some of this debt, either through their foundations or some other? To me, the institutions are getting off scot free with no culpability in this decision that they're talking these kids into going into this multiplayer.

So, to summarize the question, majors, are we at a point in time where we need to relook at those? And two, just your General attitude towards debt forgiveness, please.

I can start if you'd like. Thank you. Thank you so much for that question. I think they are related, by the way, in terms of what is the value of a UC degree?

And what I mentioned to you in your office, for the benefit of everyone else, was that a UC degree, the ROI of a UC degree has been proven over the course of 10 years. And I just saw a study from Georgetown that proved this. Even as compared to other public universities, a UC degree is twice as valuable.

And so we are getting the return on investment to allow these students to have social mobility for the long term. But majors do matter, and what you major in. And that's why it's so important to get more students into STEM programs, for example, because it is, there are more opportunities available.

There are ways in which you can grow your career that may not be available in other majors. So I'm not sure I have the answer to your question of whether we should be eliminating particular majors. But what I do know is that having that STEM education can be critical for young students starting out.

And then the other part of that is also that internships and first jobs matter. And so, again, how do we provide more resources for career counseling services, as an example, so that once a student graduates, he or she can have that first job and then be put on the right pathway for the long term?

I think in terms of the debt forgiveness, this is the reason why we have been focused on providing a pathway for debt free education at UC. And I know that has been certainly before our time, even been a priority for everyone involved in the higher education system here in California.

I know, again, the value of a UC degree exists, but how do we make sure that our students are provided with all the options and the best options to set them up for success?

I'll take off a little bit from what Regent Lee said, the focus these days is all on STEM, but we have to really be careful because a lot of those text jobs are going to become obsolete very quickly with AI and people are forgetting that and not thinking about looking ahead.

Science programs and all of those are really important. Those are the jobs with the money. We have to always begin make sure that we distinguish between majors and requirements. So are you getting rid of a major or are you getting rid of a certain requirement? Whether you have one.

And I'm a humanities person, so I'm going to argue for the advantage of the humanities. Well, it's first of all the best major for somebody who goes into law and I would argue somebody who goes into politics, because you know how to debate.

So I think that's one of the ways, one of the advantages of a degree, for instance, in English or the humanities, because you have to take a position in all your papers, you write and argue it and defend it based on research. So I think there's real value.

And if you can't, if you're totally focused on STEM and you have not focused on your critical thinking skills, skills using language, you're going to be vulnerable in the political and social worlds. The extent to which you have the facility to use and understand language is your freedom.

And again, so important and imperative of education regarding the debt situation, as I mentioned in your office, for me, what happened is of course their money was offered to students and they're 181920 years old. To what extent were they aware of what the consequences and understanding what borrowing that kind of money meant?

Did they even understand interest rates? But again, who was taking advantage of them? And I think maybe we could leave it right there for now.

Thank you so much. Mister Jones. Yes, please.

Madam Vice Chair, I apologize. I know that we talked Regent Lee about Paga. Yes. And the lawsuit that happened to hit the CSU system. And there is a lawsuit on the docket for the UC system. Now I did get an answer that I wanted to share with you.

It's kind of, there is a dispute going on right now because public universities and public entities like the State Senate and things like that, and public agencies are exempt from PAGA under the legislation. But the California Constitution, under Article nine, Section nine, excludes the UC system. So hopefully that will save us $1.0 billion in taxpayer money.

But we should make sure that our employees are treated right. Absolutely.

There wouldn't be a poga lawsuit to begin with. Thank you. Just for that reference. I wanted to make sure that. And then I just have a comment. I noticed that the honorable lieutenant Governor is here.

And then I also noticed behind that pillar over there is one of the most incredible people that's ever worked in government on amontasaurus. So I'm wondering what's happening today.

Mister chair, we forgot to tell you. No, I'm kidding. Madam Lieutenant Governor will be here to be able to speak in support of the regents here in just a moment. We're really grateful that you're here. Thank you so much. It's really great to have you. Madam Lieutenant Governor, it's good to see you. Thank you for your patience.

Thank you so much. I'm just going to. I just have a few comments, and then just some questions. And, look, I will always abide bias in the beginning. First and foremost, I just want to say thank you to.

I always call him chair Serris, and he really is a trailblazer, not just here in California, but throughout the nation. And what I appreciate, Regent Sarris, is that you wear your values in your sleeve, and you come up from beyond humble beginnings, and you saw incredible struggles as a kid.

What I truly appreciate about you is that when you see and you saw struggle as a kid, you wanted to change it as an adult. And you've spent your entire adult life fixing that for so many others, and grateful that you are here today.

And it is wonderful, Regent Lee, to be able to have Ryan here today, along with your parents, and they must be so incredibly proud and an American success story. And just want to say thank you for stepping up. Thank you so much.

I'd like to be able to talk a bit about the campus climate, and I think it's all been said, but look, in our backyard on the north coast, we have Sonoma State and Cal Poly Humboldt, and I think we can all agree, all students of all backgrounds and all faiths deserve to be safe in a campus community that's inclusive.

And if we're being honest, that has not been the case. And it's not just within the UC system, but we see that the CSU system, and candidly, throughout the nation. And what I appreciate is that your candid response and your commitment to that State Office of Emergency Services.

Been working with President Drake, as we've discussed in the past, and Chancellor Garcia from the CSU on developing the line that whether chancellors or presidents need to be able to take at their campus when they see destruction of school property, individuals blocking students going to and from classes or around campus.

And I think it's been a wake up call. And please, I don't want to put words into the two of your mouths here, but it's been a wake up call, I think, for the University system to be able to be better prepared when and if we see such challenges pop up on campuses.

I don't know if there's anything you all want to mention on this. Again, I know we've talked a lot about it, but I wanted to be able to offer the opportunity.

I think the wake up call is the right term pro tem. And that's exactly right.

And like I said before, I was glad to see that in response to the questions that we had and the demands for changes that we had, that there was, there were already steps taken in order to improve the environment and for us to do better going forward. So thank you for those observations.

I think it was clear, one of the things we learned, I couldn't say it better than chancellor block, that if we had enforced the policies that are in place, for instance, the encampment thing, what followed would not have happened.

And we've learned that deferred maintenance, I like to switch subjects. One of the biggest challenges, whether it's within the UC system, CSU system, is deferred maintenance. We have aging campuses. Any thoughts on that? Because I know that's been an ongoing challenge for the UC system and in.

Particular seismic concerns and goes back to the safety of our students. And I know we're going to have to make some tough decisions coming up and rebalancing priorities and things of that nature. But again, safety being the first and foremost. I mean, that's kind of how I think about prioritizing things.

Yeah, I couldn't, I can't say anything more than Regent Lee. Again, some of the aging structures, I was at UCLA on the big earthquake, and half of the campus was unusable after that 92, I believe, 92 earthquake there. And to think that luckily it happened in the middle of the night. Senator Mcguire.

But if had it happened during the day, there would have been a lot of injuries, perhaps because those old buildings, those brick buildings, couldn't sustain the shake.

If we can talk about student housing for a moment, we look at the number of homeless students, community college, CSU, UC's growing each and every year, and it's obviously the cost of housing, $3 billion that the state has allocated over the last 36 months.

It was sucked up in a hot minute, and the need outpaces truly what the reality is. It's been since 2006, since the UC and CSU system has been involved in the education bond. I think time is of the essence to be able to get additional dollars into the system.

I know the UC system is working hard to be able to come up with unique strategies to be able to Fund it, but I think if we're being honest, there is no way you're going to be able to help Fund those long term student housing needs without additional infusions of cash.

Your thoughts on student housing, especially the homelessness crisis?

Yeah, I think I agree with you. When I was on the Irvine campus, I heard from a student who was commuting 2 hours each way from home because she couldn't afford to live on campus, and that was her decision.

She didn't want to take on additional debt back to the dead point in order to have on campus housing as part of her education. Terrible. How can we provide more affordable housing for our students in a timely manner?

Working with our community partners and others, those are the things that we need to keep in mind always, and thinking about things like the online classes and other creative ways we can try to solve some of these problems, at least in the near term.

You know, we have hopefully long tenures on this board and can think about things for the long term as well. But at least in the short term, how do we sort of minimize the harm here?

And that's the question. Let me take it broadly. The other problem that we're going to face is ultimately, and you all know better as well as me that ultimately you're going to go, it's tax dollars.

And when you see what's going on on campus and you have the value of education questioned, becoming more broad and broad, how are we going to have our public want to keep funding this University and be able to get that money? That's going to be an issue going forward.

And especially when you're talking about what the Governor would like to see in terms of numbers, I think it's approximately 160,000 more students. We have to pay for that.

So, and if you have a constituency, if you have a voting body that has a very negative feeling or increasingly negative feelings about the value of education, or even the professors there, and what are they teaching them all this kind of thing, it's going to be a problem.

So it's, again, our job, I think, my job as a Regent to, once again, and I hate to sound like a saint or anything, but it's our job, once again, to talk about the value of education and to solve the problems that are going on now regarding all the protests and all of that, so that the education, the public can see the value of this great University.

Once again, 100%, I think, the best system in the nation. Candidly, absolutely. Despite challenges that we're seeing, and again, this isn't isolated to the golden state, but despite the challenges, firmly believe that we have the best system in the nation.

All right, we'd like to be able to see, before we turn it over to Madam Lieutenant Governor, who will kick us off here today, we'd like to see if there's any additional questions or comments from the Committee.

All right, so what we'd like to be able to do is we're going to be going to the public comment portion of today's hearing. We're going to take any individual who would like to be able to speak in support. We are grateful that Madam Lieutenant Governor is here. Madam Lieutenant Governor, we welcome you.

Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule. It's wonderful to see you. The floor is yours, ma'am.

Well, thank you very much, Mister chair. Thank you for having me, madam Vice Chair. It's wonderful to be here. I'm here in support of both of these candidates and hope that today you will confirm them as our newest Members of the UC Board of Regents.

I'm very proud that in addition to serving or as part of my duties as serving as lieutenant Governor, I'm the only person to sit on all three boards of public higher education in the State of California. And I spend many, many hours every month attending these meetings.

And I'm here to attest that both of these candidates have already contributed in the last year, in the case of Regent Ceres, a great deal of time in participating in these meetings, bringing their expertise and their experience to the table at a time where we have been working overtime at the UC regents to deal with so many particular issues.

I also would like just to call out the work of both of these candidates prior to even being nominated to serve as Members of the regents. In the case of Regent Lee, she served on the board of API Scholars, the nations largest nonprofit in support of Asian Pacific Islander scholarships.

And, of course, as has been noted, she herself brings the experience of an extraordinary California immigrant success story, immigrant family success story, and in the case of Regent Ceres, I would just like to recognize that if confirmed, he will be the very first Native American from California to serve as a UC Regent.

And in the past, his commitment to this University system has been extraordinary. Chairman Serris was instrumental in setting up the Native American Opportunity Plan at the UC, a program that covers tuition and fees for California students from federally recognized tribes.

And in addition, his tribe, the Federated Indians of Great and rancheria, provide scholarships for California students from non federally recognized California tribes, ensuring access to this benefit for all California's tribal communities.

So with that, thank you very much for the opportunity to say a few words, and I hope to see the confirmation of both of these candidates today.

Thank you, Madam Lieutenant Governor, it's wonderful to see you. Wonderful you see your team as well. Thank you so much. We're grateful. What we're going to do is we're going to now open it up to anyone else who would like to better speak and support what we're going to ask.

If you could please provide your first and last name, the organization that you're representing, please. It's good to see you, sir.

Mister Chairman, Members. Aaron Reed, representing myself. I have known Chairman Sarris for 12 years. He hired our firm when he was trying to get his very first compact ratified in order to build the new, beautiful casino that they ended up building.

When we started, everybody was opposed, but Greg had energy, enthusiasm, and he worked on bringing them around. And through that process, everybody that was once opposed to the casino, and opposed even to the Bill, has now, they now believe that they created it, that it was their idea. That's how effective Chairman Serres is.

I mean, he convinced them of the value, and his energy, enthusiasm, and generosity is above all others. And I just. That's often lost. But I see it on a daily basis because we're able to work with his tribe today. So you couldn't find a more enthusiastic, energetic Member of the regents.

And education for him is every bit the passion that being the tribal chair has been for him. So it's a passion that I admire. Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Mister Reid, it's good to see you. Hey, good afternoon, Mister chair and Members Trent Smith here, speaking on behalf of the Walt Disney Company in favor of Nancy Lee's confirmation.

The Walt Disney company has benefited greatly from her service for many, many years, and they're excited with the idea of her serving the State of California and the students of the UC system, and they wholeheartedly support her confirmation.

Thank you. Thank you so much, Mister Smith. We're grateful. We're going to do a last call. Last call for those who may be in support. Last call for those in support. If you could please advance at this time. All right, here in c nine. We're now going to welcome any individual. Who would like to speak in opposition.

We're looking for those who are in opposition. We're going to do a last call for opposition. If you please step forward here in scene nine. We're now going to bring it back to Committee. We're going to look to Committee to see if there's any additional discussion or debate.

To move both nominees to the floor.

We have a motion by Madame Vice Chair to be able to move. Regent Lee. Regent Serris to the floor. Madam Secretary, can you please call the roll?

[Roll Call]

Look at that 5 - 0 vote. Congratulations. Next up will be the Senate Floor. Thank you so much to both of you. We're really grateful. Thank you so much. Thank you for your time. Thank you so much. Thank you, Regent Sears. Thank you, Regent Lee. We're gonna take a 32nd. 32nd recess. Make sure that we're all good. 32nd recess.

In the meantime, we're going to welcome up Mister. Paulson. Mister Paulson, if you want to come on forward. 32nd. 32nd recess.

All right, welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. We now have item1C Lou Paulson. Louis Paulson, is so wonderful to see you. Thank you so much. Member of the Public Employee Relations Board. One of the more thankless jobs, truly and so incredibly important for the State of California.

Mister Paulson, you're going to have one to two minutes to be able to provide testimony. We're then going to open it up to the Committee for Conversation. Any debate that may ensue in your opening, we offer you an opportunity to welcome any guests who are here with you today or watching online. We'll be keeping time.

I'll give you a 30 second prompt. Paulson, always wonderful to be in your presence, sir. You have two minutes. The floor is yours.

Thank you, Senator. I'll be brief. I know it's a long day for you. I just want to let the Committee know how honored I was to be appointed by Governor Newsom and to serve my first term.

How again, distinctly honored I was to be reappointed, and obviously looking forward to serving another term, if you folks agree with that. I serve with a great group of public employees, and I think it's a lot of times we overlook those folks. But the staff at PERB does unbelievable work.

They could go work elsewhere, but they decide to do public service. And we're greatly appreciative of all of them for the work that they do. And then finally, I'd just like to thank the Governor staff, Senate rules, Committee staff, all of your staff, for taking time for me.

I know rules has a lot appointments, has a lot of work to do, but they made it about me every time that we talked. And I appreciated all that time that they gave to me, preparing me for today. And thank you for allowing me to be here.

Thank you so much, Mister Paulson. What we're going to do is open it up for questions, comments, any discussion or debate. We'd like to be to see if we have any member. Please. Senator Eggman.

Thank you for being here. Mister Paulson. Sorry we didn't get to meet. I had a bail at the last minute, and I apologize for that. But I wanted to ask you just like so you're. I know I've known you for a long time.

You've had a lifetime career in public service and now retired, and now doing this. So what draws you to this? And what's going to keep you for round two? What is it about this that is exciting after being a firefighter?

Well, it. My joke is there's no real emergencies at PERB. So that's one thing that makes life a little easier, but I enjoy the work. It's very challenging.

I think we have a great opportunity at PERB, and we have been doing a lot of work to be instructive to our labor management partners and to our unions to be able to get good labor management relationships. I think the work, again, it's very challenging. We get some very interesting questions.

People rely on us and our expertise and our thoughtfulness. They may not always agree with us. I understand that. But we do deliberate big issues, and it's very rewarding work. And I serve, again. I serve with a great group of people that are amazing to be associated with. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. Please, Senator Laird.

First, it was great to meet with you and have a great chat. And your poor staffer was the only one that didn't have one particular connection in his past life. A good moment.

One of the things you said was you, and I was intrigued because you said, well, we have to really pay more attention to the data and we're upgrading our information system, and when we do that, we will have more of a chance. Could you talk about that a little?

Yes. So one of the things, having served on the UC Berkeley Labor Center, I'm always concerned and done some teaching around labor management relations. I'm always concerned about, it's just not the instant case that gets before us, but really the culture that drives those cases to us.

And so one of the things that we've been working on with our new electronic processing is being able to get some data, some real data that we can look at and maybe do some research on some cases. But additionally, the bigger point is the caseload has always been great.

One of the big consternations and quite frankly, when I was union President, we threw rocks at PERB for not moving things fast enough. But come to find out, are you.

Getting the same rocks now?

Yes, I'm checking. I'm weaving and bobbing a little better these days. But one of the things that we finally have decided since we've gotten the case slowed down from when I came on, there were 92 cases on the docket. We're right at 20 today. We are starting to realize that it's just not the numbers.

Some of these cases are very, not necessarily routine, but don't take a lot of time, but some of them take quite a bit of time. I had a case that took over six months for us to get to a decision.

I've had cases where we came to a decision and the party settled and the whole thing was dismissed. Those are just numbers, but they're not really reflective accurately on the time that we're using to deliberate those.

So I think we need to come back to the Legislature, especially around budget times, as we talk to you about the work that we do, and be real serious about it. It's just not numbers.

It's the amount of time that we're spending on some of these cases and some of these questions are really important to labor management relationships in the State of California at every level. And they take a lot of time to deliberate and get to a conclusion.

The other question, we had a chance to talk about a lot of things, but we had a chance to talk about the fact that in the last few years the Legislature has assigned different transit systems to PERB to be the arbitrator or the mediator.

And I was just asking because a lot of them have been added since you were appointed to PERB. How's that going?

Yeah, we actually, since we talked, we ran the numbers just to make sure we're accurate. So we've had three transit charges filed this year. In the past five years since I've came on, we've had 29 total. So not a lot of work. Transit is a challenge because it's a little different animal from what we normally see.

But we've seen also that it's been able to have a quieting effect, having him be able to come to PERB to deal with some issues.

All right, thank you. Appreciate your service.

Thank you.

Thank you so much Senator Laird. Any additional comments or discussion from the Committee? All right, what we'd like to be able to do is welcome any individual who would like to be able to speak in support of Mister Paulson. If you could please come forward. First and last name organization in 30 seconds.

Thank you Mister Chair, members. Megan Subers. On behalf of the California Professional Firefighters, we would like to extend our great deep support for Board Member Paulson on behalf of our 35,000 Members and our President. As you heard, great union leader locally, but also a great union leader for 14 years of the CPF.

We think he has the wherewithal, the support, good labor voice, but also fair. We were often throwing rocks at PERB over lack of resources, backlog of caseload. We have seen such great improvement over the last 6 to 8 years. Really appreciate the work of all the board Members and would appreciate your support at the right time. Thank you.

It's good to see you. Thank you so much. Good afternoon.

Good afternoon, Mister chair and Members of the Committee, Yvonne Fernandez with the California Labor Federation also speaking in support of Mister Lou Paulson and his reappointment to the PERB board. I echo the words that were mentioned by my colleague Megan Subers from the California Professional Firefighters.

And we are very eager for the effectiveness and efficiency that will continue to be on the board for perp. So thank you so much.

Thank you so much for being here. We're going to do a last call for those who may speak in support. Those who would like to speak in support, if you could please come forward now. We're going to transition to those who may be in opposition.

If you're in opposition, can you please advance at this time. Hear and see no one rise. We're going to bring it back to Committee to be able to see if there's any further discussion or debate. See no additional discussion or debate. Is there a motion? We have a motion by Senator Jones.

Madam Secretary, can you please call the roll?

[Roll Call]

That's a 4-0 vote this far, 4-0 vote. And we are going to be on call, Mister Paulson. And what we'll do is allow for Senator Grove to be able to add on when she gets back from the Health Committee. Thank you so much for sending. Good to see you.

Well on your way to additional confirmation and then on to the Senate Floor for file. Thank you so much.

Thank you very much. Thank you all.

Really appreciate it, sir. Thank you. All right, we have one of the most patient individuals here in the audience, and that's Daniel Berlant. Daniel Berlant is up for State Fire Marshal through CAL FIRE, also known as Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Mister Berlant, thank you so much for the service of the people of California.

We also want to welcome Chief Tyler and so many women and men from CAL FIRE here today as well. Mister Berlant, you're going to have one to two minutes for opening testimony, then we're going to open it up for the Committee to be able to provide any comments or questions to you.

In your opening, we encourage you to be able to welcome any guests that you may have here, either in person or watching online. And then if it works, I'll give you a 30 second prompt as you get close to two minutes. So brilliant. Thank you so much. It's wonderful to see you, sir. The floor is yours.

Thank you, Chair Mcguire. members of the Committee, first I'd like to acknowledge my wife, Kristin, my three year old Jackson, my parents, Mike and Debbie, my stepmom Sue. None of which could make it here.

In fact, my wife is probably busy teaching her class, and so she has her hands full and probably not watching, but they I know we'll watch later. I'm absolutely honored to have been appointed by the Governor to this position and so thankful for your consideration this afternoon.

As mentioned today, I'm joined by CAL FIRE Director Joe Tyler, our Chief Deputy, Annalee Berleu, several retired state fire marshals, local building and fire officials, and then many of the partner organizations that we work with every single day.

And then back at the office, though they are busy working, I know many of our team members from the office, state fire marshal are watching as we speak.

You know, I've spent my entire career working in fire prevention and in efforts to reduce fire prepare people for these type of disasters, as well as 10 years in local government. Government sitting on a City Council for nearly a decade.

And so this combination of these two positions gives me, I think, a unique insight into the challenges that our local communities are facing, relevant to topics like fire insurance, housing availability, and local control.

The experiences, the accomplishments, the challenges, all of these which I have faced during my career, in addition to my personal commitments to communication and customer service, have prepared me well for the important task of serving all Californians as the State Fire Marshal.

So I look forward to answering all your questions, but more importantly, to continuing to work with all of you in making sure California is a better prepared state when it comes to wildfires.

Thank you so much, Mister Berlant. We're grateful. We're going to kick off with Senator Laird, and then we'll open it up for the rest of the Committee. Senator Laird, the floor is yours.

Thank you very much, Mister chair. It's kind of silly to question somebody I worked with for eight years as if I don't know you. And you know, I always appreciated your performance and your good job, with the possible exception of you needing your head examined for wanting to be a City Council Member.

But I think I'll ask about a couple of areas that I think are good. And we talked when we met about just your home hardening retrofit program and the number of people you've served, what you've done. And we are having conversations about fire insurance, obviously, and that is one of the pieces that's on the table.

So could you tell us how that's going, how many you've done, what you sort of see for that program going forward?

Yeah, just taking a step back home. Home Harding has really been around since 2008, when the state passed building code requirements for new construction to be built out of building materials that were ember and ignition resistant.

But in the wake of the nearly 60,000 homes and buildings that have been destroyed by fires, we have found through, unfortunately, that devastation, in addition to our research, that the combination of retrofitting homes with defensible space significantly increases a home's chance of surviving a wildfire.

The challenge, though, that we have are 90% of the homes in wildfire prone areas were built before this code. So how do we retrofit those homes? But more specifically, the vulnerable populations of California?

Those who can't afford to do this work, who can't physically do this work, those individuals need this work done to their homes just as much as anybody else. And so we have been working for the last couple of years with CalOES to build a home hardening financial assistance program.

And while it leverages upwards of 90% federal dollars, there have been a lot of lessons learned and barriers, if you will, that we've worked to overcome. In fact, Senator McGuire, I'm excited to say that the first home to be retrofitted is in Lake County and is under construction in the first couple.

But it's a county that burned 53% over a number of fires in a few years.

Yeah, Lake County has seen its fair share of wildfires in this community that we are hardening.

We specifically chose because, one, it is not an area that saw any of the major wildfires, but it also has a density that we really want to figure out what is the right number to ensure that we harden enough homes so that if one catches on fire or fire embers get into that neighborhood, that if one catches on fire, the rest are still, if you will, immune to a conflagration.

That home hardening program, again, is finally starting to see some success. And we look forward to reporting back to the Legislature on those successes, but also those barriers and then to continue to scale up this program in this pilot that we have to get to upwards of 2500 homes over the next couple of years.

And is that something that you've put together already? You just don't have the report to the Legislature in the next few weeks? It might be of value to some of us that are working on some things.

Yeah. Our legislative timeline is by July, and so you should be getting something here very, very soon that again summarizes the program, the framework that we have built, but then addresses the barriers. Remember, this is a pilot program that was set through statute.

And as part of that pilot, again, we were tasked with trying to figure out how to not only put together this program, but also to identify those challenges and more importantly, access the federal dollars. Again, we're so excited to be able to reach upwards of 90% of federal dollars to match the state investment in this program.

But that comes at challenges. And so the short, there was a very long way, Senator, saying, yes, you'll get a report hopefully within this next month that answers some of those questions.

First to me, are you just in the course of doing this, keeping up with, like, technology improvements or what? You might not have personally through the program retrofitted, but you have seen in some fires with people that might have done it outside the program.

We are constantly accessing the latest research and science and bringing that into one our building codes. So new homes are using the new technologies, newest materials, but also continuously adding that into the retrofit program as well.

And so while it's taken a couple years to get off the ground, some of the items being retrofitted and some of the technologies or the building materials that we'll be retrofitting those homes with has definitely changed, even in the last two years.

Well, Senator Dawley and I led a tour to his district. He didn't need the tour, but when we met to the town of Greenville, that completely burned down. There are two experimental homes being built that are designed to be in the middle of a firestorm and go for 2 hours without igniting.

And it was fascinating to see everything you had to do to do that. And I just wondered if things like that, your following are incorporating into what you're at.

Yeah, absolutely. We work very closely with a number of research groups.

The Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety, the National Institute for Standards and Technology are really two of the leaders in this space, and we are constantly partnering with them to make sure that we're providing that or taking, accessing the results of that research and then embedding it in, working with our building industry, working with our building officials and our local fire officials to, again, constantly update the codes so that they're incorporating these latest technologies.

And so the Greenville examples you give, yes, there's so many lessons to be learned by homes here in California, but also from research that we're doing nationally.

And for my colleagues, because I mentioned it to you in our meeting, when the CZU fire happened, it was still burning over in Bonny Doon, and the sheriff took me up through big basin, and he says, I want to show you something.

And we go up this road where it has been completely burnt, and we get to the top, and there is a home that is untouched. And they did stuff around it. It had different kind of impervious surfaces. That firestorm went right through there, and that home survived. And so.

And I don't think that was through your program or program. They just did it. So I am wondering how you just make sure that you incorporate that.

Yeah. So, obviously, the financial assistance program I talked about is really aimed at those that are low income. But how do we educate all Californians in wildfire prone areas? That education and those resources are also critical in front for us.

Making sure that every homeowner has access to this information, working with our building industry, making sure that contractors are knowledgeable of what steps they can take, making sure that our local fire officials and building officials also know these steps so that they can incorporate them into local ordinances.

It's doing all of these things altogether that will really make us a more hardened state, a more resilient state.

Just an observation on what you said, because in that particular fire, in portions of the Santa Cruz Mountains, those people that bought it a long time ago, it was not an upgraded house. They weren't making a lot of money.

It was a struggle for them if they were to retrofit themselves, and it's a struggle for many of them to even rebuild. And so targeting those that don't have economic resources is probably, I picked up clearly that you said you target the rest for information, but just making sure you target them, then.

The other question I wanted to ask that's sort of related is there were, and I lost track. Time runs together. Two or three years ago, there were fire maps released all over, and they were released for comments, and they were of a lot of the rural areas.

And there was a big pushback from people in my district over the fact that the fire maps did not take into account mitigations that had been done. And so there was this worry that insurance companies would take these maps and make decisions when there had been mitigations or controlled burns or open things or retrofitting.

And therefore they felt. Were you around when that happened? How was that resolved to the extent? How was it addressed as an issue when that happened?

Yeah, I was around. We had been working on that project for a number of years to build the science model that we use, a science-backed, field-tested model. To your point, though, a model that incorporates hazard factors. These are fuel type, terrain, fire history, fire, weather, not necessarily mitigations like defensible space and home hardening, prescribed fire.

Those mitigations are critical. So don't get me wrong, but hazard mapping is looking at longer term factors that don't change over time. Defensible space has to be done constantly, annually. Your point about the earlier home? That a home that was hardened 20 years ago may not have the same hardening effects or materials that we consider today.

And so we don't incorporate those risk elements or factors into our hazard mapping. But also, it's really important to note that these fire hazard severity zone maps that we are charged with creating really are not intended in any way to be used for insurance purposes.

In fact, we work very hard and collaborate very closely with the Department of Insurance to make sure that it is understood by insurance companies what these maps are and what they aren't. Really.

The maps are intended for local land use planning decisions, how and where you build homes, and giving that data in the hands of our local fire and building officials to help make those determinations so that they can build homes and build communities to the right standard to withstand fires.

So kind of separating this risk versus hazard has been a big challenge, not per se on your question, but obviously, the insurance space is weaved into this challenge.

Just a comment to close it. And I think that is that I'm sure that a lot of my constituents are still very skeptical that the insurance companies aren't doing that, and it may well be true that they're not.

But there is, I think, over time, we have to work on that skepticism because that is a genuine concern. Last question, and we talked about it. There had been times when the permit backlog within the fire marshal's office had been extensive. And where are you now? And were there any backlogs or problems?

Yeah, we have worked very hard in our fire and life safety division that does all the plan reviews for state construction, including the building that we are here in today. And we have worked to bring that backlog down and make it to a normal process.

We have reclassified positions, adding specialists that are engineers, architects, so that we could help add the depth of experience, but also fill some of those vacancies that we were struggled with for many decades. In fact, I'm really proud to be able to tell you that as an office, we have a vacancy rate of just about 15%.

And that was as the beginning of the month. Many of those positions have already been filled. And so to the backlog specifically, that has really been worked out.

We've brought in new technologies and embraced the ability to make it easier for our state partners at DGS, at corrections, at the universities to bring their plans to us, for us to easily, quickly review them, make sure they're compliant with the fire code, but then get them stamped and approved so that construction can begin.

And so that backlog is now a normal level of business for our fire and life safety division.

If it ever starts to accumulate, I'd like to hear it from you before I hear it from people that are in line in the back.

Understood. So would I.

Okay. Thank you. I really appreciate the indulgence to ask the questions and the response. I look forward to supporting you.

Thank you, Mister Senator. Madam Vice Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. No problem with the microphone. Thank you. Thank you, chief, for meeting with me. I really appreciate the opportunity to spend some time with you. I know that you had already discussed some of the fire severity maps and how they're not supposed to affect insurance, but they do, and they have been.

And we have a lot of my constituents that we talked about yesterday that are really struggling to be able to find insurance to achieve. One of the American dreams is to have your own home.

And especially in rural areas, you have to actually be so many miles within a fire station reach in order to even qualify for insurance now. There's several cancellations coming through.

Are you working with Ricardo Lara, the Insurance Commissioner, to try to work through some of these things and the intention of what the fire maps are and how's that going?

Yeah, absolutely. Over the last couple of years, I've worked very closely with the Insurance Commissioner himself, but also his deputies to really try to weave in wildfire mitigations into the standards that they're setting.

I'm very proud to say that the safer from wildfires package, the regulatory package that the Department of Insurance put together last year included our input and our involvement and our voice, if you will, to make sure that the mitigation factors, many of which Senator Laird mentioned, defense, world space, home hardening, prescribed fire fuel reduction, all these efforts that they're taken into consideration when insurance companies are looking at setting their availability and their pricing.

Now, you know, as a state fire marshal, I don't necessarily regulate the insurance industry, but it has absolutely been my position and our position as a department to work with the Department of Insurance and our other partners, including the insurance associations, to again make sure that we're aligned in our mitigation measures so that those efforts can take into account.

I'll tell you, I was on a meeting just yesterday with the deputy commissioners talking through efforts that they have underway to ensure that these wildfire mitigation measures, but also the hazards that exist and the experiences our firefighters are seeing every day are integrated into the work that they are doing at the end of the day, making sure that Californians have access to affordable insurance.

Thank you. I appreciate that. I've been in communications with the Commissioner as well, and I really do believe it is his intent to make sure that everybody has access to affordable insurance that will be able to protect their home and to make sure that their mortgage is protected because they're required to have that. I appreciate that.

And I appreciate you echoing those comments, because I think you guys working together will make a big difference in where we have to go with this insurance piece. I do have two more questions, Mr. Chair. I do have, well, probably three.

There's a piece of legislation moving through the building from the Assembly side that just came to over us to kind of remap and revise fire severity hazard zones. I don't know if you've had a chance to look at that legislation. I don't know if you can comment on that legislation. If you can't, I truly understand.

But if you can, what are your thoughts on that? Because I know you, and I'm not attacking or supporting. I'm not doing that. I'm just saying oftentimes I found that we make decisions that really we think sound good at the very beginning, but once it gets implemented on the ground where you're at, it doesn't.

And the people that you have implementing this stuff, it doesn't work out quite like we thought it would. So I'm interested in that perspective and your thoughts, if you can comment on that.

Yeah, we are still analyzing that bill and actually several dozen others that are going through the Legislature right now related to wildfire mitigation.

So yeah, I can't comment specifically on that bill, but what I will tell you is if the Legislature sets up a policy and makes some changes to how we map areas or what mitigations are required, we will work hard to not only implement that, but to make sure that there's science backing into the way that we do it, that we providing education to Californians so that they can be successful at implementing those requirements.

And so, you know, I have to give, I know you asked specifically about a bill that's going through right now, but I have to note that there have been a number of policy changes that you all have said over the last several years that have made significant differences in helping us really inform, but also arm Californians with the steps to make themselves more resilient.

One of those bills actually created an entire division within the department focusing solely on fire prevention. So all of these mitigation that we're talking about, defensible space, home hardening, we have a team just focused on doing that work. And so again, I'll leave it to all of you to make the decision as that legislation moves through.

But note that whatever choice you make, we will stand ready to implement. And again, at the end of the day, work towards truly buying down the risk that exists in California to make sure that we stop the amount of destruction that has occurred throughout California.

So I know that was a long ways of not saying the position, but we will definitely, like I said, continue to make measurable strides to mitigation through your legislation.

Thank you. One of the greatest bills I was able to work on was with the Senate pro tem when he was a floor leader, was making sure that we funded engines and funded CAL FIRE. It was just a great opportunity to work with all of our fire departments.

We are from different parties, we have different opinions about things, but we both represent rural areas, and we depend on you to protect not only our ranch lands and our wide open spaces, but, you know, the communities that, you know, the area that surrounds those communities.

One of the reasons I believe that we both worked on that piece of legislation is not only to make sure it was adequately staffed, but I shared these concerns with you about mental health. Right.

Who works, you know, 20 days on and in that type of capacity where you come across charred bodies, destruction of property, those things that can affect the individuals that fight these fires. I know you've implemented some stuff we talked about it yesterday.

But can you talk about the reduction in hours and things to address the mental health that, you know, I think those individuals that are actually on the ground are suffering with some of the things that where they've been required to work in the past, but with the funding, it's been something that's been helpful to you.

Yeah. You know, I thank you for your comments. Obviously, you know, the mental well being of our firefighters is paramount in the budget that you have in front of you is obviously a significant request to address some of the staffing components of allowing our firefighters the time that they need to get off.

As the state fire marshal setting the standards for firefighter training the last several years, I have worked hard and our team has worked hard to incorporate peer based suicide and behavioral health type of trainings. Not only standalone trainings to, again, get behavioral health type of curriculums out to our firefighters, but also to even into all of the other firefighting academies.

So that as new firefighters, your son included, go through the basic academies, they're getting the beginnings of the importance of mental health, of the cancer awareness and other things that do impact our firefighters every single day. And so again, a state fire marshal setting those training standards, that's going to be a big step.

But obviously, the staffing components that you alluded to and the work that you all have done and again, and what is in the budget that you all have in front of you, those will be very meaningful in the years to come to really make sure that our firefighters get the time that they need to be able to be with their families.

But also when your time, as the fires have been occurring the last several days all around your district, when your time of need occurs, that those firefighters are still available and that they are ready to go and mentally prepared to respond to all emergencies.

Thank you, sir. And my last question is that, you know, I shared with you an experience where my, I was actually on a dais like this, and my husband sent me a text and said, I'm going to the ranch. There's a fire at the ranch.

And within 45 minutes, he texted me back and said, the ranch is on fire. And that's a completely different text. I left here and I went down there, and when I got there, we spent, you know, trying to protect structures and things like that, too.

I shared with you that I love the fact that they're not just people out there fighting fires. And you can be a jerk if you want to, but they're really what I would call retail firefighters. Like, they meet the need of the person that they're trying to help, who's in a pretty stressful situation with losing their property and stuff.

And one of the things that I talk to you about that I have great concern over which you addressed, and I'd like you to address that again today, if you would, is that the firefighters came, did their job, dropped the stuff, the helicopters, the whole, the whole bit.

And then at night, there were these crews that came and they were loaded down with all this equipment and all this stuff, and they stayed at night to go back and go hit the hotspots. And they were second chancers.

They were individuals who'd been incarcerated or incarcerated personnel that were working towards an opportunity for when they got out. The best way to keep them from going back in is a job. Right. And being able to be successful in the outside world, but that program has been eliminated.

But you reassured me that you're still employing individuals like that, but through other avenues. Can you address that, please?

Yeah. Let me note that the program, the joint program that we have with the Department of Corrections Rehabilitation still exists. While we have seen reductions in the number of available inmates due to a whole host of different issues, our firefighting hand crew program has really transitioned.

While we still have, again, a program with CDCR and our inmates, we have expanded with funding from the Legislature and from the Administration, augmenting our resources, hand crew resources, with our own firefighters, with CCC Corps Members, and with the California National Guard or the military department.

And so really now we have a very diverse group of four different programs, all providing hand crews. But more importantly, not only do we have hand crews to fight fires, we have these hand crews from these four different programs to do fire prevention work. Fuel breaks, prescribed fire.

In addition, we have found that especially the CCC program and the California National Guard program have actually been an entryway into careers in firefighting.

The CCC, though they may say it a little differently, we are super proud that over 500 corps members from this program have gone on to careers with us, almost 100 with the California National Guard.

And that's given us just this enormous, diverse candidate pool for us to be able to fill the critically needed firefighting positions, but again, to give a pathway for core members that go through the CCC.

But also to still make sure to your point, that even those individuals that were formerly incarcerated have opportunities to be firefighters through all of these different iterations.

I appreciate that, because being an employer in this state for 30 years, it's very difficult to sometimes find people that are second chancers a job. We used to place 55% of those second chancers that came from all over the state in the oil industry. And that's dwindled down to almost nothing because of policies.

But I appreciate that you're still making sure that they have an opportunity to be employed. Thank you, sir, for answering my question.

Thank you, Senator.

Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. Mr. Berlant, thank you so much for being here. Just a couple of items. First and foremost, grateful for your work. You are way deep in the weeds, no pun intended, and know your stuff. And Chief Tyler and the team is lucky to have you.

I think there's a few areas of frustration do want to share. This isn't your doing whatsoever. When you look at like for example, Kelseyville Riviera, which was grateful to be able to visit with some of the Lake Napa County unit.

Even with $45 to $60,000 worth of home hardening, folks are still not going to be able to get insurance. And where the frustration is, is that Moody's has come out with a report. You harden your home, 40% less likely to burn. Harden your home, do veg management on your property, 75% less likely to burn.

And I think where the frustration with consumers, and again, this is not your doing, sir, and you are doing an amazing job. So please don't take this as throwing stones.

Is that despite the investments that we're making, whether it's $45-50,000 per home in state subsidy, or the billions of dollars that we've invested in dead tree removal, vegetation management, building fire breaks insurance is not taking those into account to be able to start writing in the traditional market.

And I think that's the crisis that we have, are these significant investments that we're making, yet homeowners are still unable to recoup that traditional market policy. I think that's the disconnect where I think there's frustration on that and which we are truly appreciative of your continued work.

But I think that's an item that we need to be able to take up, especially if we look at a community wide hardening plan and a community is doing what's right to be able to reduce risk, and insurance companies are in the business of reducing risk, then we're going haywire.

So I think you're able to feel free to comment if you'd like. But those are my comments. And I think some of the disconnect that we have right now in this state.

I appreciate what you say because it's a shared frustration personally as well, in my own ability to access insurance in a home that's in a Firewise community. We have a fire safe council. I have defensible space.

And so, you know, to just, you know, piggyback on an earlier comment, that is why I'm working really hard with the Department of Insurance to make sure that all those mitigation measures you just mentioned that I know, and our firefighters know matter, that the insurance regulations incorporate those mitigations.

Aligning ourselves at the insurance industry level with researchers with us at CAL FIRE is going to be required for this solution. I think we are on the right track. Though obviously, people are feeling it today and want results tomorrow on their being able to access insurance.

But I'll just tell you that as the state fire marshal, I'll continue to be committed to working with Department Insurance, to being the voice of wildfire mitigation to make sure that these mitigations that matter are incorporated.

Because again, I'll tell you, it is somewhat of an incentive for homeowners to do the work that we're asking them to do if they can get insurance. But if we go and ask them, create defensible space, invest this money into home hardening, and then they lose their insurance.

The unfortunate part is they don't see that we're asking for it, because when the wildfire occurs next year or 10 years later, we're giving them an increased chance of that home surviving. But the shortened portion of it is their ability to get insurance. And so it's a very complicated problem.

But again, we just have to continue to stay focused on aligning ourselves on the mitigations that matter and making sure those are counted.

Yeah. And that's where I think it's going to have to take. Look, I'll be the first to say the industry does not like mandates. And the reason why we don't see, again, I'm getting a little astray here, so I'll bring it back.

But the reason why we don't see home hardening or community wide hardening or the billions that we spend as a state, state dollars in wildfire mitigation is because it would be a mandate in the industry. And the industry fights mandates. That's the bottom line. Feel free to fact check me on that.

But we're at this point where we've invested so much in public dollars and the public isn't seeing that return in the investment, whether their neighbors and taxpayers have made or they're making personally. I think that's the biggest piece where we need to be able to change because I think that's where CAL FIRE needs to go.

And I also know that Chief Tyler was participating in a town hall talking about all the good work. And I think he probably got for every one question on mitigation, probably 10 questions on insurance. So it's an issue that we desperately need to be able to resolve. It is. And I think we also need to control expectations.

It's not going to be overnight, but we also all have to compromise. And I think that's where I will share with my frustration the one bit of good news. If they do get those grants, they'll no longer be taxed since we're putting that into the budget on that. So that's good news on state wildfire mitigation funding.

Can you just talk to us a little bit about as we move forward in the 90% that you just said that's within the wowe? Your thoughts on that in regards to how we can quickly help those homeowners who may be on fixed incomes or they're just not able to achieve what the financial obligation is. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Well, I think we're on the right track. Right. We know what measures need to be done to harden a home. You know, we know, and I think are more better socializing the importance for homeowners of what home hardening really is.

The other piece too is that we're really partnered side by side with the building industry, with developers who again, are working for new homes. But again, back to that 90%, those existing homes, this financial assistance program, while right now, you know, we've done a couple homes. It will quickly scale up.

And this state, you know, unfortunately, we see disasters, and so we have access to hundreds of millions, some years, billions of hazard mitigation dollars through the Federal Government. And so if we can again refine this program and then tap into those federal dollars, that will be a huge amount of available public funds to help us.

But there's got to be some other pieces that we're not currently looking at ways to incentivize. And I won't go too much into detail, because there are you know, there is pending legislation, and there have been legislation, legislative bills in the past as well.

But we have to figure out how to not just educate, inform, and support our vulnerable populations, but how do we incentivize it for, for everybody? I don't know all the answers from a policy perspective of how to do that.

All I can do is make sure that when, when that policy is set by, by all of you, that we stand ready with the tools and the framework work for local fire officials and building officials and homeowners to know again which measures matter, which should be prioritized and how can they truly harden their home so when a fire does occur, they have a significant chance of that home surviving.

Thank you so much, chief. Let's see if there's any additional questions or comments from the Committee hearing scene. None. We're going to open it up, chief, to be able to see if there's anyone who would like to speak in support. So if folks can please come forward, if you could please give us your first and last name along with your organization.

You have 30 seconds. Please step forward to the microphone. We welcome you. Thanks for hanging with us and for your patience today. Good afternoon.

Good afternoon. My name is Todd Golden. I'm the business manager for Sprinkler Fitters Local 709 in Los Angeles. Sprinkler Fitters Local 709 would like to stand in support of Chief Berlant. We feel he's the right person at the right time for this job. So good luck, chief. Thank you.

Thanks for making the check up. Hi. Good afternoon. Nice to see you.

Good afternoon. Good to see you, too. Stacey Heaton with the Rural County Representatives of California, representing 40 rural counties statewide, and Chair Mcguire. When you said that Chief Berlant was the most patient person in the room, I think you're probably right about that in a lot of respects.

Our relationship with Chief Berlant started about 10 years ago with the governor's tree mortality task force, and he has been working closely with our counties ever since. He's gone out into our counties to help educate them on how to teach their residents about home hardening in defensible space.

He has championed programs such as the home hardening program that we've already heard so much about and is working out in our counties to get that up and running. He and I have become personal friends. I'm not afraid to say that.

And I don't think there could be a better person who cares more about the public safety and welfare of the people of California for this job. And we're proud to offer our support for his confirmation today. Thank you so much.

Good to see you. Thank you. Hey, good afternoon

Good afternoon. Melanie Perron, on behalf of the associate General Contractors of California, we are here in strong support of Chief Berlant. On a personal note, I used to work with him in the Administration for over 10 years and I can speak to his leadership, his compassion, his interest.

You talk about the knowledge in the weeds chair. It is phenomenal and beyond anything I could even comprehend. So, so grateful for your opportunity to work with you in that space.

And also now as being a part of this organization, the respect that you've already garnered from our contractors, your collaboration, your proactive nature, and your solution oriented how you are looking to solve complex problems, in finding solutions with us and trying to figure out how we can solve this altogether. So with that, we offer our strong support. Thank you.

Thanks Melanie. Good afternoon sir. Nice to see you.

Good afternoon, Senators. My name is Randy Roxton, I'm with the Sprinkler Fitters Association of California comprised of Sprinkler Fitters Local 43, 709 and 669. We appreciate the leadership of Chief Berlant and support his confirmation.

Thank you so much. It's good to see you. Hey, welcome back.

Hello. Thank you, Mr. Chair, Members. Meagan Subers, on behalf of the California Professional Firefighters would like to express strong support on behalf of my 35,000 members for State Fire Marshal Berlant. A lot has been said to hear said here today about his dedication to the fire service.

So I will just touch on one thing that hasn't been mentioned. The state office of the State Fire Marshal is the employer sponsor of the Joint Labor Management Apprenticeship Program, the statewide program that trains all the firefighters in California.

That is where those training things are carried out on behalf of, you know, new behavioral health training standards and everything else that comes with being a firefighter in California. We've appreciated working with him throughout his years of service on behalf of California and would appreciate your support at the appropriate time. Thank you.

Thank you, Megan. Good afternoon.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and honorable Members. My name is Tonya Hoover, the deputy United States Fire Administrator and a retired California State fire marshal. I'm privileged to have worked with Chief Berlant during my honor to serve as the assistant state fire marshal and as a confirmed state fire marshal.

And I have to say it's nicer to be on this side. During this time, he showed his abilities to bring people together and walk them through difficult conversations as he served as a key person in CAL FIRE's communication.

As the deputy United States Fire Administrator, I continue to work with Chief Berlant as he strives to bring California's fire service needs and prevention messages to the national stage by sharing the unique challenges of a large state and a very diversified population and landscape.

This includes his understanding and sharing of data that will help to address the increased national fire threats that include national wildfire threats. The sharing strengthens the nation's ability to tackle the increased fire losses across the country.

He continues his leadership in bringing people and groups together to strengthen fire and life safety issues that affect those that visit, work and live in California and throughout our nation. I look forward to continuing the collaborative relationship with Chief Berlant as he moves through the confirmation process for the California State fire marshal. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Grateful you're here. Hi. Good afternoon. Hey. Hi Ting.

Good afternoon, Mister chair. My name is Rebecca Leda and I'm representing the Northern California Fire Prevention officers. We offer our enthusiastic support for Chief Berlant to the position of state fire marshal.

He has been an outstanding contributor and collaborator in the field of fire prevention and we've had the privilege of witnessing firsthand his remarkable activity and dedication to fire and life safety in all communities and its citizens throughout the entire State of California. We hold heartedly support his confirmation. Thank you very much.

Thank you so much for being here. Good afternoon.

Good afternoon, Chair, Members of the Committee, my name is Timothy Spears. I'm here representing the Northern California Fire prevention officers and expressing our support for confirmation of Daniel Berlant as a state fire marshal. With several years of dedicated service as CAL FIRE chief, Berlant has demonstrated exceptional leadership and expertise.

His work as deputy director of community wildfire preparedness and mitigation, and his tenure as acting state fire marshal has been marked by improving wildfire and community safety. Chief Berlant's commitment to protecting lives and property makes him an outstanding candidate and wholeheartedly support his confirmation of state fire.

Marshal, thank you so much for being here. Hi. Good afternoon.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and Members. I'm Joe Morelli, I represent the California Fire Prevention Officers Southern California Division. I'm here to express our support for Chief Berlant in serving as state fire marshal. California needs a leader in the state and a fire marshal who will lead all of us in protecting our communities.

Chief Berlant has done exceptionally well as state fire marshal, leading us in wildfire mitigation, state fire training, co-development and other community risk reduction programs. Chief Berlant's presence, his fire service leadership and support of the fire service and our communities throughout the state, it's been palpable and we're here to express our complete support for Chief Berlant.

Thank you so much. Thanks for making the trip up. Hey, good afternoon.

Good afternoon. Catherine Freeman, on behalf of the California State Association of Counties, representing all of California's 58 counties, we've had an incredible time working with Chief Berlant and look forward to continuing to work with him. We encourage your approval of his nomination.

I'll just say, hey, he's entertained some very difficult discussions and has maintained humor and integrity both together and in difficult conversations and with counties. It can be difficult to talk about fire prevention, firefighting, those kinds of things. So we encourage you to approve his nomination and thank you for your time.

Thank you. Good to see you. Good afternoon.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, Madam Vice Chair. Dan Dunmoyer with the California Building Industry Association. We represent the home builders of the state. We are here in strong support of the confirmation of Chief Berlant.

So to echo his comments, as builders, we have personally walked property with him across the state to find ways to build our homes in a more resilient and fire safe manner. He's personally worked with us to develop the toughest fire standard codes of any building industry in America. Although he's tough, he's fair. We look forward to that collaboration. So we strongly urge you support his confirmation. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for being here. Good afternoon. Thanks for your patience.

Good afternoon. My name is Ruben Grijalva. I'm speaking for myself. I served as a state fire marshal and Director CAL FIRE in the Schwarzenegger Administration. And while I was director, Chief Berlant was hired as a young public information officer in our communications division.

Even back then, you could recognize his talent and his leadership. I've watched him in his career as he's risen to the ranks of the fire marshals officer office.

And I will say to you, having been in those shoes and dealt with the complex issues and, you know, the various issues the state fire marshal's office has to deal with.

And my 35 years experience in the fire service, I will tell you today, he is the right man for the job and he's going to be an outstanding leader and a good team member for Chief Tyler.

Thank you so much, chief. Appreciate you being here, bringing it home, Mr. Reed.

I don't know what I did. I had to follow the Lieutenant Governor. And now Reuben. Reuben, I'll tell you, is a great, great friend, longtime friend, helped us reconfigure the name CAL FIRE. And he's a great historic guy in CAL FIRE history.

I go back 45 years with CAL FIRE and I've seen and known almost all of the fire marshals, all the directors, all the chiefs, but this man, we just had lunch last week. We stay in touch. We're impressed with what he does.

Even though I do more of the work for the CAL FIRE, local 2881 and more with Chief Tyler. But I'm greatly impressed with your desire to work with the department, work with Local 281, and we appreciate this Committee's concern. You brought up the mental health of firefighters and thank you for that. It's a big issue.

They do work a month at a time, get one day off, go back for another month, and it stresses the family enormously. And I'm so happy to be here today to hear all of you recognize that. Thank you very much.

Mr. Reed, thank you for being here. We're going to do a last call for those who would like to speak in support. This is going to be our last call. We're going to now look to those who may be opposed. If you'd like to be able to advance, please do so at this time.

All right, hearing, seeing no one, we now would like to be able to bring it back to community to see if there's any. Just show discussion or debate. Yeah, please, Madam Vice Chair.

I have no discussion or debate. I'd just like to move this honorable, exceptional leader to the floor for a full vote.

Thank you so much. We have a motion by Madam Vice Chair. Madam Secretary, can you please call the roll?

[Roll Call] 5-0

Five to Zero. Congratulations.

Mr. Chair, just one comment. I know we took the vote, but I've been on this Committee for several years and I think you just beat Mark Gillarducci on support. I really do think you did.

I think that more people got up and spoke in behalf of your leadership, in your exceptional way that you handle problematic situations and look outside the box than Mark got last time.

I'm humbled.

I'll let him know that.

It makes him feel really good about that. So. I like that. Thank you. Chief, congrats. Next up is Senate Floor. We're grateful you're here, and I'm sure Jackson is so incredibly proud of you today. Thank you so thank you so much, ladies and gentlemen. We're going to take a 30 second recess.

Yep. And then we're going to come back and we're going to add on for our one item on call. And then we're going to go into executive session. So we're going to come back and do our add on here in about 30 seconds. Chief, thank you so much. Alright, ladies and gentlemen, we're going to bring it back.

We have one item on call. That's item one C Mister Pulse. Madam Secretary, can you please call the absent members?

[Rol Call] Five to zero.

That's a 5-0 vote. That item passes. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's public portion of the agenda. We are grateful that each of you took the time to be able to attend. The Senate Committee rules will now move to Executive session. We're going to allow folks to be able to clear the room.

We're going to be starting executive session shortly. Thank you so much.