Senate Extraordinary Committee on Budget and Fiscal Review

The Committee on Budget and Fiscal Review in the first extraordinary session will come to order. We're holding our Committee hearing at ... room 1200. We have a quorum, but I ask all Members of the Committee to come as soon as they're able. Public comment will be heard after all discussion items have been presented. Before we begin, let's establish a quorum.

[Roll Call]

Okay, we've established a quorum. The bills that the Committee will hear today are SBX1, numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4. Together, these bills represent a budget package designed to provide immediate support for wildfire response, authorizing a total of $2.5 billion to be provided to various recovery and support activities for the communities impacted by the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles in the coming days and weeks.

The Legislature will continue to work with the Administration in helping Californians to recover from these wildfires as additional needs emerge. And we'll continue to invest in making our state more resilient in the face of our changing climate.

This Bill package also provides a down payment of the resources needed to defend California residents and to protect our values and to protect the civil rights of all Californians.

The package includes $25 million for the Department of Justice and other state agencies to defend our nation, leading policies in areas such as the environment, health care and infrastructure against potential attacks seeking to undermine California's policies and values.

The package also includes $25 million to support legal and community based organizations that are on the front lines defending and supporting our most vulnerable residents.

The devastating wildfires currently affecting the Los Angeles area in particular highlight the need to ensure that California receives critical federal funding for disaster relief to support Californians during their time of need and through the entire recovery process.

I want to thank my colleagues in the Assembly and the Administration for working together and with the Senate as we take the first early step to prepare California for the months and years ahead. After hearing these four bills, we will have a public comment period before we vote. Before we start, Vice Chair Niello, do you have any comments?

Thank you for the opportunity. In this interest of time, let's just go ahead with the meeting.

Okay, thank you, Mr. Vice Chair. We will now turn it over to Stephen Benson from the Department of Finance.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair Wiener and Vice Chair Niello, Members of the Committee. Stephen Benson with the Department of Finance. I'm joined today by several of my colleagues and a few colleagues from departments as well to help with questions I'll present on the four bills that are in special session on November 7th, Governor Newsom convened a special session of the Legislature to bolster California's legal resources pending the incoming federal Administration and threats to Californians rights.

The special session includes $50 million for these activities. The Governor further expanded the special session on January 13th in response to the devastating fires in Los Angeles. The expanded special session now includes significant new funding for LA firestorm response and recovery, further boosting initial response and recovery efforts for that area.

The total funding for the fire related package includes the 2.51,000,000,001 time General Fund to expedite support for emergency protective measures, evacuations, sheltering of survivors, removal of household hazardous materials, post fire hazard assessments, traffic control and other necessary emergency response activities.

The package also includes $41,000,000 one time General Fund for the Department of Housing and Community Development to allocate to impacted local governments in Los Angeles area to provide additional planning, review and building inspection resources for the purpose of expediting building approvals during the recovery period after the January 2025 wildfires.

Finally, the proposal includes $1.0 million one time General Fund to provide technical assistance to impacted local educational agencies to recover and rebuild fire damaged school facilities. This funding is on top of the $2.5 billion already allocated for investment in wildfire resilience over the last several years.

Prior to Those investments, about $200 million annual from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund had been the primary ongoing investment in that particular policy area. The severity of the fires that we've seen in the LA area warrant swift and significant funding response. With that, I will do a brief overview of each of the bills.

SBX1 4 includes $1.5 billion General Fund for use by state departments and entities and those can be used for the activities that I listed up at the front, emergency protective measures and the like. The Bill also provides for legislative reporting and notification to ensure transparency in how these funds are being spent to assist in response and recovery from the LA fires.

Specifically, the report will be has to include funding provided for the full 2.5, so we'll talk in the next in a minute and that has the other 1.5 in it, but includes the reporting requirements for both bills and the full $2.5 billion as well as other state funding used for the response and recovery efforts.

The expenditure report shall be posted on or about February 7 and then updated on February 28, March 31 and April 30. SBX1 3 includes an additional $1 billion of General Fund for use by the state departments for the same purposes of SBX1 4. Sorry, it's kind of a mouthful. The Bill also provides for the same legislative reporting as SBX1 4 to ensure transparency in how the funds are being used.

This Bill also includes $250,000 to the Division of State Architect and $750,000 to the Office of Public School Construction to provide assistance to LA Unified School District, Pasadena Unified School District and other impacted charter schools located in those school districts to rebuild and recover school facilities damaged as a result of the fires leading to the State of emergency that was declared by the Governor in January of this year.

And finally, the Bill includes $41,000,000 on time General Fund for the Department of Housing and Community Development to allocate to impacted local governments in the Los Angeles area to provide additional plan review and building inspection resources for the purpose of expediting building approvals during the recovery period after the fires.

SBX1 2 this Bill provides $25 million General Fund for civil legal assistance for Californians. Specifically, it includes $10 million for grants to the Legal Services Trust Fund Commission to distribute legal services legal services nonprofits throughout the state for civil legal assistance.

It also includes $10 million to the Department of Social Services for grants to qualified nonprofit organizations, including immigration legal services providers throughout the state to provide immigration related services. And $5 million to the California Access to Justice Commission to augment existing grant funding to legal services nonprofits to protect access to justice in civil legal matters.

The funding will support pro Bono legal services for especially vulnerable communities and is intended to support individuals denied their civil rights. And then finally, SBX1 1 establishes a mechanism to provide up to $25 million General Fund to state entities to increase legal cost for increased increased legal costs with the Federal Government. So that concludes my summary of the bills. And as I mentioned, we have myself and others to help answer any questions.

Thank you very much. Before we get to. I know various Members are probably going to have questions. I do have a few questions from Senator Perez, whose district has been deeply impacted by the wildfires directed at Cal EPA. So are you able to respond for them or is Cal EPA here?

Depending on the nature of the questions, I may be able to help. But we do also have folks from DTSC and CalRecycle and EPA here.

Okay, great. So. And these questions relate to recovery and all of the challenges for cleanup and debris removal, et cetera. There's two questions. The first is can you provide. Excuse me, can you provide details on the scope of debris removal efforts and how they compare to past cleanup operations.

Specifically, what debris removal responsibilities will be left to homeowners to enable rebuilding? For example, will homeowners be responsible for clearing items such as cinder block walls, swimming pools, home foundations or sheds? So that's the first question.

I will invite DTSC and CalRecycle to help answer the detailed part of those questions. In terms of things have been handled in the past and things like that. In terms of the existing incident, the phase one debris removal, which is the household hazardous materials cleanup that's actively underway now.

And DTSC can talk a bit about their role in that activity right now. In terms of the sort of phase two where you get into more of the structural type of cleanup, those activities are still being coordinated in terms of like who will be leading them and what different roles will be and some of the scope of that.

So a lot of that detail we won't be able to speak to yet. It hasn't fully been decided, but they're of course talking through and working through how all that will work in terms of individuals when you get into the site. Phase 2 Debris Removal Cleanup there's really sort of two options for a property owner.

They can either decide to enroll in, I guess, for lack of a better term, the government run program to do debris removal or they can sort of decide to do it independently with their insurance company. And so you really have two paths.

And so the level of sort of responsibility they take on themselves is a choice they'll have some say in. But I will turn it over to DTSC and CalReycle to talk a little about their current roles and what they've done in the past.

And Cal, EPA is not here or.

Yeah, we do have someone from CalEPA if needed, but I think these folks will probably have most of the information.

Good afternoon Chair and Members Maria Soria with DTSC and with past fires, DTSC has been intimately involved in responding to the fires. As was stated earlier, we participate in the phase one aspect of the debris removal.

Examples of debris that is removed include asbestos, electronic waste such as TVs and computers, solar panels, household cleaning chemicals, mercury containing wastes such as thermostats if there are older cars, the light switches from the older cars if they're still intact. We also remove paints, solvents and household lithium batteries, as well as alkaline batteries and car batteries.

With respect to electric vehicles, US EPA takes care of those. They are also going to be taking care of the power walls that have the bigger lithium batteries attached with respect to like cinder blocks and other material that is something that DTSC does not remove during the phase one operation. But all of the removal is free to the homeowner. There are no costs at all.

But in terms of the cinder block walls, swimming pools, foundations, etc. Who is responsible for that?

Yeah, Mindy Mcintyre. I'm the Chief Deputy with CalRecycle and our Director Zoe Heller is down touring the fires right now and seeing the scope. And as mentioned, the scope of debris removal will be determined and it's unique to each event and the specific challenges of that event.

So typically in phase two, when CalRecycle has manage those operations, it's, you know, part of the mission task will define what the debris that will be removed will entail. And often it includes structural debris, wildfire, contaminated soils, ash and trees if they are considered a hazard. So again, it really depends. And as mentioned, the scope will depend on the event and the needs of the homeowners.

Okay, the second question from Senator Perez is how will state and federal debris removal teams address toxic materials that may have pre existed but were released or exacerbated by the fire? For example, will there be removal of asbestos used in home construction or lead in soil from ghost smelters or leaded gas pollution that was previously immobile but now poses a potential exposure risk to residents?

I can take it. So with respect to asbestos during phase one, DTSC takes asbestos that is smaller in size. It has to fit into a 55 gallon drum. If it's much bigger, if there's existing piping, for example, that is part of the phase two removal. With respect to lead in soil, that's also part of the phase two.

Yeah. Again, it really depends on the mission task and in cases where under the mission task, what we often do is test the soil to make sure that the ash and any impact from the fire has been removed. So it involves soil testing.

Thank you very much colleagues. Any questions or comments? Senator Allen.

Well, so tell me just a bit more about the format. We're going to be asking questions about all of the bills together. Yes, is that idea. Okay. Okay. All right. I wanted to ask first of all about air testing and quality.

I saw that there was, you know, a line item on a line on SBX1 4 relating to air quality and water and other environmental testing. How much is anticipated for that? Is it federally reimbursable? Yeah, love to get a better sense.

Yeah, so for all of the different types of activities, we don't have it sort of scheduled out or allocated amounts per activity. So much of the operations right now are sort of real time and sort of evolving and whatnot.

And so the way that the allocation of the funding will work is they do assessments, figure out needs, magnitudes of needs that cost reporting. Cost is reported and collected at a unit within Cal OES who then coordinates with finance so that we can take a look at all that stuff.

And we'll make the allocations based on as those needs come in. So we don't know exactly how much right now will be needed for air quality and water quality testing. But that is an activity that is underway actively.

And as we get costs in, then, you know, that's an eligible use of the funding that's in SBX1 4 and 3.

Okay, so it's your understanding that they are testing quality is reimbursable,

So it's eligible for the funding that's in these bills. FEMA eligibility I'm less certain of, I think for initial response types of things. So emergency protective measures is one of the things that FEMA will reimburse. And I think so long as the testing activities that are going on fit FEMA's categories of emergency protective measures, then they should be reimbursable.

So I expect that they would be. But Cal OES of course, will be the experts on that. And then, you know, with every incident, when we submit what we believe is eligible to FEMA, there's a FEMA review and they of course opine themselves on what's eligible and what's not.

And we're happy to provide additional information when we go back and check with our Cal OES partners. And I know that they are down on site as well. So some of these questions are best answered by them. And we can absolutely coordinate with them and get you some more detailed responses.

I'd appreciate that. Okay. Now, we've discussed public infrastructure reimbursability. I mean, I guess it's at 75% under the federal formula.

So the baseline is 75%. But President Biden actually announced 100% for 180 days on this particular incident when he was here. But that applies to again, FEMA categories, categories A and B, which is emergency protective measures and then debris removal activities. Oh, sorry, yes, those are the other categories. Yes, that would be 75%.

Now, does that include utilities, both IOUs and public?

I believe those are eligible. I would need to follow up, but yeah.

Okay, so that would include something like DWP, presumably.

I'm not positive, but we can certainly follow up.

Okay. Now, I wanted to ask I saw there's a 4 million which has to do. I mean, obviously this is primarily about cleanup, most of this money. But there is, you know, there's an allusion to expedited recovery. There's obviously the 4 million that's going to go to local governments to help them get their processes going for expediting building approvals for homeowner rebuilding.

Are we looking into ensuring that as they do that we're incorporating best practices from fire science, defensible space, home hardening, that sort of thing so that we don't repeat some of the same mistakes?

Absolutely. And I would say this, we actually have the State Fire marshal here and I could ask him to add some detail into that if you'd like. But I mean, absolutely, when they do the rebuilding, it'll be to current building codes and defensible state standards like that.

There have been some somewhat vague permit streamlining announcements made both by the governor's office and also the mayor that don't really touch upon, or at least they don't touch upon fire safety issues.

And I want to, yeah, I'd love to hear from the Fire Marshal and just get a sense of what we're, what we're putting into this $4 million line item to make sure that the local governments are taking fire safety into account when they're doing the expedited building approval process first.

Good afternoon, Chair, Members of the Committee. Daniel Berlant, California State Fire Marshal Let me reassure you that as we begin the rebuilding process, while the Governor is very intent on, on making sure that we are streamlining to make it faster and easier, and there is a full review to see are there some elements of the overall building code that can be removed.

Fire safety and wildfire mitigations are not going to be part of that discussion. They are ongoing. So we're still working with our partners of the California Building Standards Commission and Housing and Community Development.

But I'll note that within the governor's Executive order, specifically he actually asks the departments, and mine as well to provide recommendations of potentially additional mitigations that might be needed.

And so while it is somewhat open ended in the Executive order for ensuring streamlining of the building code, let me reassure you that wildfire safety will be a component of the requirements for those that are rebuilt from these fires.

Okay. Okay, that's helpful. All right, I'll circle back with some more questions, but thank you.

Great. Mr. Vice Chair,

Thank you. So there's, we have two bills that are seeking to spend $2.5 billion and first of all, I'm wondering why two bills?

We divided it into two bills. It's still the same. No particular reason. No, just they could have been one. I mean you can. Everything could have been one. And we decided to break it into separate pieces. So it was just a decision that we, that we made. Okay. And I, I will note for the record that.

Anyway, I will proceed.

I heard you just say all of the funding is General Fund. That's correct. And the anticipation is reimbursement. But we're talking about General Fund of the 2425 budget. Correct. And we don't have any extra money in the 2425 budget. Budget.

Well, there's the, the General Fund reserves, SFEU and so that this, that's essentially, you know, where the funding will come.

So that's, it's. You're, you're drawing money out of the. Reserve again, in addition, fully reimbursable money. Right, I understand, but there is a float there and just wanted to have a clarification. Now the Governor, I thought the Governor had stated that some of it, a significant portion could come from the climate bond funding, but not.

That's changed. So I think the idea was the climate bond funding could be accelerated to help with like wildfire resilience types of activities. There's not money in the climate bond that can be used for sort of this, most of this immediate response like recovery type activities, those will be inconsistent with the bond act in most instances.

There may be a few exceptions, but.

I thought maybe I misheard. I thought him to say that it would qualify for that, but I guess not.

So on the issue of accountability, you mentioned that there will be an accounting, but I'm wondering in what detail will there be accounting of the funds of the individual activities that the money is funding or accounting for the local entities to which the money went. How granular will this accounting be?

Our current anticipation is that we would identify the departments that received funding, how much they received and what activities they received it for. We weren't anticipating posting on there all of the recipients. That would probably be. In many cases we wouldn't know that when the transfers are happening and that would, you know.

So that would be very difficult to do, but we'll absolutely be compliant or providing what activities it's being provided to the departments for.

What you're addressing is two activities of planning and then spending. So you indicated that you'll track the activities that the entities to whom the funding goes plans on doing. And that's important.

But what I'm hearing you say is that there will not be a Detailed accounting of all of the activities to which the money was allocated by the local entity. Did I hear you say that?

That will still be accounting? I guess what I was thought, thought you were asking is the reporting that's required in the bills, the reporting that we plan on posting on our website, especially given the timing of it, will be who funding is transferred to and how much is transferred and what it's being transferred for.

Obviously, once a Department receives the funding, they will still do the same accountability they do for any other funding in terms of how they spend it. But that all happens sort of on the back end, right?

That's after the fact. I get that. The reason I'm asking the question is because we learned in the infamous homeless audit that very similar activity, money being allocated from the state to local entities and the Auditor was unable to construct and create the specific activities that the money was spent on, only to whom it went.

And it sounds to me like we're headed down that road in this particular case. I don't want to hold things up. This is important work that needs to be done and it needs to be done urgently.

But at the same time, we need to make sure that we know the specific activities to which the money was allocated in the field, obviously after the fact. But without that, we'll have a little. We won't really have enough information to be fully accountable as we weren't with regard to the homeless spending that the audit covered.

We expect that the departments receiving funding will do that accounting. You expect or you will require? I believe they are required to do it and we will expect it to happen as usual.

Yeah. Okay. I think that would be an important activity.

So those are my questions for now. Thank you, Mr. Vice Chair. Madam Majority Leader, also known as Senator Gonzalez.

Thank you. Thank you so much for this. I'm just really grateful for this Committee to be hearing these both of these issues, which seem to be a crisis upon a crisis from Los Angeles myself, certainly not one of the impacted Members directly, but also Chair of the Latino Caucus on the other front.

So hearing many of the stories, both on the. Those have been affected on the wildfires. And then of course, with many Latino families feeling very frightened right now in their communities here in the State of California. So this is very, very welcomed. I have a first, the first question on the LA wildfires.

The LA fires, I should say, not wildfires. We should be very specific about that. Schools.

Now, having been in a few meetings this past weekend with Senator Allen and Senator Perez, I think the time horizon that was estimated for paradise was like three to four years to get schools back up and rebuilt, whether they were partially damaged or fully completely gone. We have 12, at least 12 schools that we know of.

I think between both Altadena and Pacific Palisades might be too early to know now, but do we have, is there anything unique about rebuilding of schools in this situation and do we have any preliminary estimates as to what that would look like in terms of when they could be rebuilt or fully back up and running?

I don't think we have like estimates in terms of when that will all be completed. I do have colleagues here over the education area who can probably speak a bit more to to the status of where discussions are now.

Obviously there's again Cal OES is leading a very broad group of state agencies coordinating with locals and federal partners. This is one of the active things that they're talking about and doing planning on.

My colleague Michelle and then Rebecca is here as well, can also provide some probably more detailed insight in terms of exactly where things are at now.

Hi, Michelle Nguyen, Department of Finance Actually, I don't have I was going to defer to Rebecca at the Office of Public School Construction. Yeah, the natures of the fires are obviously different with paradise being in a more sparsely populated area and the LA fires being very a much more dense urban area.

But I'll defer to Rebecca to give a more detailed response.

Sure. Thanks. Rebecca Kirk, Office of Public School Construction. Thank you for your question. Assemblymember, we have from our office. I'm so sorry, Senator, two hearings in one day. My apologies.

We have at the Office of Public School Construction as staff to the State Allocation Board been able to provide state facilities funding to assist the Paradise Unified School District to rebuild a number of their schools that had been destroyed in the campfire, as well as funding to assist the Berry Creek Elementary School in Butte County to rebuild after a fire that they had experienced that destroyed their single school in that school district.

And unfortunately there's another school district in El Dorado county that's Pioneer Union Elementary School District with their Walt Tyler School that we've been working with as well on trying to access state funding through State Allocation Board programs for reconstructing a school that was destroyed by yet another wildfire.

So to your question, we have seen based on that pattern of experience, it's typically been three to four years from the time the fire occurred and destroyed a school to when they've received state facilities funding via our programs and then been able to complete reconstruction.

Looking at what happened in paradise, looking at what happened in Butte County as well. That said, the unfortunate silver lining, perhaps, of having had some of this experience is that everyone can kind of learn from that.

And, in fact, one of the really inspiring things in this process that I've seen so far is that the Butte County Office of Education, which oversaw the school districts in paradise, that oversaw also the school that lost its sole facility in Butte County, they've learned a lot in this process and assisting those school districts through those traumatic events and trying to help those communities heal through the rebuilding of the school facilities.

And we've seen, in fact, heard, not this past weekend, I think the weekend before, that they were in touch directly with some of the impacted school districts in the Los Angeles County. So we know there's a lot of collaboration and information sharing, both at the local level as well as state level of government at this point.

And so we are certainly hoping, with all of the challenges that are being faced right now in Los Angeles County, that everyone stands ready to assist, and at least we have the benefit of learning from some of those prior experiences in trying to respond as expeditiously and as efficiently as possible.

Great. Thank you very much. I'm going to just pivot really quickly on the issue of the $50 million for our legal defensive communities.

Obviously immigrant communities on top of my mind, having obviously represented them for so long, but also being chair of Latino Caucus and I think building off of what Senator, the Vice Chair Niello had mentioned about wanting more transparency, and I will say this on sort of a, in a different frame, is we do have obviously some precedent there with one California and have, I think, to your point, having the details of which nonprofits were given dollars and the amounts and figuring out like the other part of it is, yes, we do have that data online, but also ensuring that it gets to the right hands and it's done in a way that's also regionally diverse.

So I'm wondering, any lessons learned on that? I know that there had been talk about ensuring that we fill in some of the gaps from the last round when we, you know, had Trump in office back in 2016.

Do we have anything top of mind this time around of what we can do better, both regionally and just with these very sacred dollars that are going to, you know, be spent so fast?

Yeah. I've got a colleague, Chris Cook, who can help address that question.

Chris Cook, with Department of Finance. So with regards to the allocation for Department of Social Services, the additional $10 million that currently, currently Social Services has 45 million ongoing funding through their immigration services funding program, which is allocated throughout the state, as you indicated, this would provide an additional $10 million to supplement that program.

As far as, like, lessons learned. They've been doing a lot of network information building throughout the state to address some of the inequities regionally throughout the state. So they, they have, as part of the dollars, there's a lot of money that goes out to providers to kind of help inform and provide technical assistance and network broadening.

So they've been increasing. A lot of the, a lot of the providers in the Central Valley, in particular in Northern California, have been expanding since prior allocations, I would say, depending on the region, upwards of like 2015 to 20% increase in those areas from the last round of funding.

So they have been working through those regional collaborators and technical assistance to increase a lot more of the network, the network of the providers. But I would say that the program is competitive and it's also based on the capability or the providers available in those areas, which has always been difficult.

So, so, you know, they've really been just trying to build up that infrastructure as best as they can.

Well, thank you and I think we'll continue to stay engaged on this, obviously as a Latino caucus, but for myself directly, just given the need. We know that there have been deportations happening now as we speak. We just spoke with the UFW United Farm Workers.

There have been deportations of farm workers and various central industries, of course, and agriculture being sent to Mexicali. They're not even from Mexicali, they're from Oaxaca, they're from El Salvador, they're not even from Mexico. So it's dire and this time feels very different.

So I'm glad we're doing this and I'm sure there'll be a lot more questions and more engagement that we'll have with you. So thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Senator Gonzalez. Senator Wahab, thank you.

Well, first, I just want to give my deepest sympathies to the victims of these disasters. I also want to typically defer to my colleagues that actually represent these areas that are devastated right now.

I do want to highlight that I personally think that the Governor has been moving very swiftly on this and appreciate his leadership in this moment. And I think that moving quickly is incredibly important for what we are doing. Highlighting a couple of things.

Number one is the fact that this will impact lower income communities at a greater level than, you know, more affluent communities. And granted, everyone is affected. But I just want to highlight this because when we're talking about addressing some of these concerns, I really want to highlight some of the concerns I have.

Number one, can I understand why we have only about 2,500 National Guardsmen? Why we didn't deploy more, why we didn't have more? The State Defense Forces kind of doing this because they can do debris cleanup. They can do a lot of the things that we're talking about.

So I can't speak to the specific decisions that were made. As I said, Cal OES coordinates that with a group of departments. Department of Military and many other departments are a part of that. And they discuss as a group what resources are most needed for specific tasks that need to get done.

And so I don't know exactly how that decision was arrived at, but Chief Berlant is back, and he is very involved in that group, so he might have some.

And I specifically want to highlight the State Defense Forces because they are retired volunteers that are deeply, deeply interested in this. There has been many reports of individuals in the ranks saying that we want to do more. Right. So I just want to understand kind of the mindset there.

Yeah. If I can start out. As part of our base staffing, we partner with the California National Guard with firefighting resources. These are Guards Members that are trained as firefighters. They were part of the initial attack of these fires. We quickly, as the fires continued to grow, increased the National Guard representation, bringing in their helicopter pilots.

We activated the entire national fleet of military C130 aircraft to assist us. And then outside of the firefight, the National Guard were quickly deployed to assist with the evacuation areas, manning the road closures and other things like that. So I can assure you that there's been significant early deployment of the National Guard resources.

Now, as we speak, we are just finishing up our, what we call our Watershed Emergency Response Team assessments of the fires, specifically identifying what we call values at risk for the potential of mudslides and debris flow.

We are already using our own fire crews as well as National Guard Members to build sandbags, and they will likely in the coming days and as early as this afternoon, be working to mitigate many of those concerned areas that we've identified in anticipation of the rain.

So the National Guard and the military have been heavily activated from the very beginning of these wildfires.

Okay. And what I want to stress again is the 2500 versus what, the 18,000 National Guardsmen that we have. A lot of the complaints from the area were highlighted in the press of, you know, there are regular people escorting people out. You know, we have seniors and people who have mobility issues and much more.

And so I really want to stress that as like a deep concern because these wildfires and I'm going to highlight, even in my district, you know, in the Bay Area, we're concerned with faults and earthquakes as well as flooding and, you know, potentially even attacks in this great state.

So it is, you know, no surprise that disaster can happen. And I feel that oftentimes where every single time a fire happens or a disaster happens or an explosion, you know, people are pausing and it doesn't seem like, you know, we know the next steps. Right.

And so volunteers are coming in and stepping up, obviously local law enforcement and, you know, different agencies. So I really want to stress that because Again, we have 18,000 National Guardsmen. We also have the state defense Forces and, you know, we can put them in play right.

Now the other piece that I am deeply concerned with is the fact that, you know, we're talking about a timeline of 100% reimbursement versus 75%, depending on what we're talking about. But what is the timeline if it's up to 180 days, what is the timeline if we're going to get this handled and situated and cleaned up.

Until we're completely done with cleanup? I mean, it'll take longer than 180 days. Yes. So do you have an estimate? A year, Six months?

I'm not going to speculate that the Cal OES is coordinating with the Army Corps of Engineers, the Federal Government locals in terms of who's going to play what roles and what that timeline is going to look like. I think we'll have more details on that very soon.

I know it's something they're actively working out because they're getting ready to transition into that phase of the debris removal cleanup. But I don't have an estimate right now.

But do you see my concern? It piggybacks on the last piece is that there is no plan. So if we're figuring out who's going to take what on, that should be already pre established. My personal opinion. Right.

Part two is like an estimate we're putting in this money, which is very much needed and obviously probably just a down payment on what is to come. The accountability of when is this going to be done?

And I highlight this again because those individuals that are renting and staying at a loved one's home or whatever want to make sure that one. Do they have something to return to? Do they have to make their life somewhere else? Where are their jobs? Where am I Going to shower? Where am I going to drink water?

Clean, fresh water? Where am I going to put my kids into school? Right. So they're on pause and we don't have an estimate. So I do just want to flag that as a concern and I will move on to the next topic. If I could respond briefly.

It's not that there's not a plan. I'm saying that there's not information that I can share right now with the Committee about what that plan is that is very actively being worked on and it's by people who have done this in a number of different situations.

But every incident is unique and they will develop the plan around the unique circumstances of this incident. And so there will be more information that can be shared out in terms of the timeline. Soon it will be as quickly as possible, that I can say for sure.

And you know, my other concern is the hardening, right? We talk about this often. There was one fire that was, you know, still not 100% identified, but potentially through transmission line or, you know, some failure there. You know, we consistently hear that.

And I just had a meeting with, you know, My provider of PG&E this past week that the Natural Resource Commission has kind of slowed down what they're allowing to be undergrounded. These particular wires. You know, you know, you travel to a lot of other countries, everything's underground. We are still having thousands upon thousands of miles not undergrounded.

Right. My concern here is this. If there is a bottleneck in the Natural Resource Commission and the approval of this, that's a concern of mine. But the hardening, if PGE is telling me in the last couple years, every year they do 2 to 200 to 300 miles of wires that they put in the ground.

They've identified 10,000 plus miles of critical lines that need to be undergrounded and they have nearly 100,000 miles of line. You know, if we were to tick that up from 200 to 300 to 1,000 a year, it would take 10 years to just do the critical piece.

And so I highlight this, not to just highlight this particular investor owned utility, but across the board, right. That I understand it costs money. I understand that there's a huge investment, but it needs to happen yesterday, right? So just flagging that, whatever we can do through this Administration.

And again, you know, whether it's fire, earthquake, flood attacks, anything like that, it's not news, right. This has happened before, right. So we keep seeing a repeat of these disasters and so forth.

I do want to highlight again, you know, we've seen for example, I'm going to bring up Hurricane Katrina Rita and some of the efforts and the collaborations with the Federal Government and funding. And again, prioritizing our most vulnerable community.

There has been, you know, this program called Road Home that provided grants calculated based on the value of the home prior to the disaster. Right. Or the cost of repairs. And they would give the grants out to whichever is less. Right. So the cost of the home, and if you're a homeowner, great. But if you're a renter.

Right. What is that going to look like? So I do just want to flag it. I understand that we're not there yet, but I am deeply concerned about the vulnerable communities.

Those on fixed incomes, those that have lost their jobs in addition to losing their homes, those that are not going to be able to advocate for themselves or, you know, wait for a massive payout, but are just renters. Right.

And then as far as accountability, I think that it was mentioned by some of my colleagues, you know, fraud and just absorbing money. And the fact that bad actors do exist is terrible.

I do think penalties need to be significantly increased at a percentage and a more punitive approach on that to ensure that we have limited bad actors. Right. And far more accountability.

So I highlight all of these concerns just on the wildfires and again, you know, with our new President, I do just, you know, want to highlight that these are Americans that deserve all the attention, all the support that they can get from the state, from the feds, from their local communities.

I know we're all in partnership there, and, you know, I would just like to kind of see, you know, what else can we do? So thank you.

Okay. I'll go back to you in a moment. Senator Allen, Senator Ocho Abogue.

Yes. So President Biden approved 100% of category A's and B of FEMA. So what that results or equates to, sorry, is emergency protective measures and debris removal for the first 180 days. So whatever costs are incurred within that 180 days that fit those categories, those are eligible for up to 100% reimbursement for other categories of response.

So I think there was mentioned earlier about like public infrastructure and things, roads and bridges and all that kind of stuff that is not part of the 100%. So that would be at the baseline 75% currently. And then once the 180 days ends for the emergency protective measures and debris removal, that would return to 75%.

So until we have a better handle on what the full expenditures will be, we can't do the calculation to come up with dollar amounts. But that's the cost share that's approved right now.

And for the remaining 25% per se after the 185 days, are we talking about comes out of our coffers. Out of.

Yeah. So the portion that's not federal share is state share. So it would just remain an expenditure from the General Fund. From the General Fund. Okay.

General Fund reserves, I'm assuming?

Yes, yes, 24 budget. And since the budget's completed, any additional funding at this point is from the reserves.

Okay. And I have a follow up question with regards to assistance to the disaster victims in this case. Now, historically the state doesn't give direct funding to victims of our disasters. Normally the state assistant goes to the local jurisdictions, governments to help with the response, the cleanup and the rebuilding of the infrastructure.

Has there been any discussion included or within this budget, within these bills with any funding to be included that can help our families directly and those, I mean, from those that did not have insurance for their homes, for their vehicles or any other assistance that we have for. Because they've lost everything.

So just out of curiosity, has there been any discussions or anything included there for direct financial assistance to the victims themselves?

No, these bills do not include direct individual assistance.

What is the thought process behind potentially helping individuals, individual family Members or individuals moving forward?

So I Think part of that conversation is going to need to be the federal FEMA has an individual assistance program that's active. And so there are folks, I think, that can enroll for benefits in that.

I think part of the conversation is going to need to be figuring out what those needs are and how the state wants to go about approaching those needs. But as far as I'm aware, that's not been a conversation as part of these bills in the special session.

Okay. And then changing the subject a little bit with regards to the funding that's going to go towards our undocumented individuals. Question for you. It's my understanding that the Federal Government is trying to impose the deportation of folks that are currently potentially pose a safety threat.

So people who have been convicted of crimes in our state, and being that we are a sanctuary state, it's my understanding that their approach is to come in and in pursuit of these individuals because they can't work with their local law enforcement agencies, they are being allowed to go into our communities to actually try to pursue these individuals.

And in that process of going towards trying to access those that pose a safety threat to our communities, other family Members that are undocumented but do not pose a safety threat could be liable for deportation as well.

Has there been any assessment as to the cost of what it would take for the state to continue as a sanctuary state in basically putting other individuals who do not pose a safety threat?

The cost of trying to Deport and trying to get them the legal services that they need versus just perhaps removing the sanctuary so that they can actually just go directly and Deport those that do have a do pose a safety threat?

I'll defer to my colleague Amy Jarvis to help address that question.

Hi, Amy Jarvis with Department of Finance. And unfortunately, I'm not able to speak to that issue directly, but I think that one of the reasons we're investing in our legal aid programs is to help address some of these issues. So we'll have to get back to you after we assess this a little bit more.

Okay.

I just want to make sure that we assess the cost of perhaps either removing the sanctuary state so it doesn't pose a more costly impact and undue stress on families in our state versus whether or not we remove that and then just participate and get those that have a safety threat designation be removed and not be a cost or a undue stress to others that do not pose that stress to our communities.

Thank you. I just want to say that in terms of what's causing stress in immigrant communities right now, personally, I don't think it's, I don't think the existence of California as a sanctuary state is what's causing stress.

What's causing stress is that the President of the United States has indicated he wants to Deport more than 10 million people, which is dramatically more than the number of undocumented people who've committed crimes. That includes all undocumented immigrants. And so that's what's causing stress.

That is what is causing people not to go to work because they're scared of being deported. And that certainly impacts the recovery. It's what's causing people not to want to report crimes because they're scared of being deported. So it's not, in my view, the sanctuary state status of California that's causing stress.

It's the President of the United States indicating that more than 10 million people are going to be rounded up and deported, which is a very stressful, to put it mildly, situation for our immigrant communities. Senator Trojo.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

So on that point, you know, I've been listening very, very carefully to the language that's being stated on the federal level with regards to their plan on deportation, because I have, I do live in California and I do a lot many constituents who are undocumented but are law abiding and pay taxes and work within our district.

So my concern is, you know, their safety and doing that, they're well. But the clarification that I received and that I've been listening to very carefully is the fact that their number one priority is to go after those that are, have and do pose a safety threat.

Our designation as a sanctuary state puts those folks that are working and are undocumented, but are working towards the process of getting their paperwork done, but are in the process of doing that, but they're technically still undocumented.

They're being posed, they're being subjective to these deportation because we're not as a state directly working with immigration to connect and with those folks that have and do pose a safety threat because of our sanctuary status.

So my concern lies in the fact that because we're under that umbrella, it's posing a threat to those that are actually here that do not pose a threat in our working.

So that's my concern and I want to make sure that that does not have unintended consequences towards the folks that are working towards getting their paperwork done and the cost that that might entail for the rest of the state.

Yeah, and then I'll recognize Senator Gonzales, but he can say, zero, he's focusing on undocumented people who pose a safety threat.

But when you say over and over and over a thousand times over, we're going to Deport more than 10 million people, that's all of the undocumented people living in the US and that goes exponentially beyond the very tiny percentage of undocumented immigrants who pose a safety threat.

We know that immigrants have lower rates of committing crimes than people who are born in the U.S. and so, you know, they've been very clear that this is about all of the undocumented people and what they.

And they mix that in with safety threat, which is a way of saying that anyone who's here, who's undocumented must be a criminal. And it's causing unbelievable stress and fear. And that's not because of California's sanctuary state status.

It's because of the President of the United States creating unbelievable terror and saying, we're going to Deport all of you. And what that does to many families, including mixed status families, it's just horrific. And that is harming California's economy.

If people don't, if people are scared to go to work, if people are scared to report crimes, if people are scared to send their kids to school, that is what causes fear and that is terrible for the community and for our economy.

Senator Gonzalez and I will say that I don't want this to be a back and forth debate, but I do respect your comments. I just, I think we're aligned in the sense that, you know, mixed status families, I think make up nearly a quarter of Californians and their families here.

And you think as it stands now, just the reports we've been getting in terms of the Latino caucuses work, we've met with 20 stakeholders so far, the CSUs, the UCs, the farm workers, not just Latinos, any immigrant that's being deported. Now there's Ayes and Border Patrol waiting outside of schools as we speak, outside of hospitals.

The threat is absolutely real. I think these dollars, although we would love to have triple the amount, quadruple, the amount will go a long way. We know that the farm workers that were just deported to Mexicali did not have criminal background, criminal records whatsoever.

They were just threatened and deported, some threatened with violence in some cases, and sent to Mexicali. They were from Oaxaca. So between the two or three of them that were deported, they had six or seven children under the age of 10 years old.

So they're leaving behind these families, which, you know, I think we know the stories, but it's very Very real. Now birthright citizenship is being upended. We've got focus on schools and hospitals. That was just announced by the President today.

And so on top of it all the mixed status households, of course, this country also, really just the state also having a history of deporting US citizens too, which we don't often talk about in our history books. So there's like a layer upon layer of trauma and of threat for these communities that is real.

And this, this is a drop in the bucket of what we can do. And I don't believe it's because we are a sanctuary state. In fact, the deportations are happening now with sanctuary state. And I think it's an opportunity for us to start looking at ways that we can really defend our communities.

And I think that's what we're doing here is finding these, these really realistic ways to do that. You upend the agriculture community, you're upending this economy that has really allowed California to flourish. So we have to think about that too.

And we're, you know, the Latino Caucus is going to be engaging with the Farm Bureau, with other industries to really talk very deeply about federal immigration reform, but also how we can work together because this is going to be a long road ahead for many of us. So thank you.

Thank you, Senator Gonzalez, Senator Cabaldon, thank you.

And Mr. Chair, I want to say thank you to you for just the sheer effort and tireless work that you've been doing to put this package together and also to divide it in four bills, as had been requested by some of our colleagues. I wanted to first pick up on Senator Gonzalez's line of questions about the school.

The school reconstruction, the paradise examples are compelling, but they're not unique. And they are not unique to the most rural and isolated parts of California.

In my own district in Sonoma, for example, the same timeline, seven years, we could rebuild the 10 freeway in a couple of months, but we can't rebuild an elementary school year after year after year after year.

So I'm curious about a couple pieces around this because in the school bond, the Legislature inserted language that gave the allocation board additional authority to make allocate and sort of unspecified amount allocation for disaster. So my question, first question is how does that work and how is it working?

Or are you deploying that in this particular case, that was partly motivated because of the poor experiences that we had in other places. And then the hope that things would get better because we were so committed and focused and intense was true in these other disasters as well. And we didn't really learn how to get faster.

We might have.

We worked really hard, but we still required you go to the Department Division of State Architect and spend six months there and then go to go over to the fire marshal and then go to CDE and then go to OPSC and then Estate Allocation Board, and lo and behold, six years later you just maybe you have a chance of getting a check soon.

And so I'm curious, either do we have a new game plan that is more than just we're going to work a little harder and collaborate a little bit more. And second, how we might learn from our deployment at this scale to more fundamentally redesign our school construction program, particularly in the disaster, but also more generally as well.

Rebecca Kirk, Executive officer for the Office of Public School Construction, you touched on a number of points, Senator, so I'll try to take them kind of one by one. Firstly, you did reference correctly the provision in Proposition 2, which was just passed by by voters in this past November.

It does grant new authority to the State Allocation Board to provide assistance to school districts that have had school facilities impacted by a natural disaster for which the Governor declared a State of emergency, which is clearly the case here in Los Angeles County. You're right.

It's not a designated amount out of the Proposition 2 bond that is specified for that purpose. We would anticipate that funding would pull from the two biggest pots of money in the bond, which are for new construction or modernization.

So we do also have a program for facility hardship which addresses imminent health and safety issues at school facilities, which could include the absence of a facility in some cases which poses a risk to students that don't have a facility.

The authority in Proposition 2 in those particular provisions is for the board the board's ability to provide assistance to those districts with interim housing, procuring interim housing, or interim school sites. And then there's another provision that allows the board to consider providing any other assistance in that circumstance.

Fortunately, even though the bond was just passed by voters in November, in December the State Allocation Board adopted recommendations for initial implementation of Proposition 2.

And one of those recommendations that was put in place by the board just last month was on an interim basis until we've developed regulations around those disaster assistance provisions, the board will use its existing appeal process to consider any such requests from school districts on a case by case basis.

So we do, right now, only a couple months after passage of the bond, have a process in place to consider that. That's certainly a message we've been sharing with the impacted school districts. We're Also part of a multi agency work group that's been convening with each of the impacted local educational agencies.

So that has about eight different state entities that are involved. I'm pleased to say that we've made direct contact at this point with both of the school districts as well as four charter schools that have been impacted and had students displaced from facilities as a result of these fires.

I know you spoke to frustration around the timeline with school construction funding and the school construction processing. General, it is admittedly a state process that requires involvement of the Division of the State Architect, California Department of Education and my office.

To the extent a district is seeking state facilities funding, that process can be a bit to navigate at times. I would say in part, there's good reason for that. At least in, you know, kind of the Division of the State Architect having oversight of structural safety, holding schools to Field Act standards.

Certainly the last thing we'd want to see is reconstruction of a school site that then poses hazards in seismic territory in California moving forward as well. That said, and you know, the other agencies have their roles and oversights, of course, as well.

That said, at least with the individualized outreach that we've kind of started the process of, with the new authority and funding available in Proposition 2, we're hopeful that that will help facilitate the process.

And the one other thing I'd notice is that some of what we've seen with paradise and with Berry Creek is that sometimes the school districts have opted when they're building a new school to replace one that was destroyed in fire. They're opting to build back better than what they had before.

So in some cases they're not looking to build a carbon copy of the decades old facility necessarily. And as they're looking to enhance that, as well as navigating the additional processes involved with insurance, with FEMA reimbursements, et cetera, that can elongate the timeline. But I think for good reason in some cases.

All right, well, I know we'll all be paying attention to it.

I think one of the things I learned in local government was the best way to design a regulatory regime is by doing something, by doing the thing and learning from the process of the thing what needs to be regulated, as opposed to trying to in advance contemplate every possible thing that could ever go wrong.

Unless you're building a nuclear weapons plant or something else. But if all you're doing is trying to rebuild Marquez elementary soon or Franklin elementary before the kids are in high school, that it's worth experimenting with our own processes to make sure that we're getting that right and we can do it on an individual scale.

12 Schools is a lot, but it's tiny in terms of the overall school program. So it's an opportunity really to try and then for us to get better at our job too.

The second thing I wanted to ask was about the hardening and the fire safe and the other issues that have been raised by both Senator Allen and Senator Wahab. But mine's more wonky, which is the data side of the equation.

We've gone through this in my district in Napa and Sonoma extensively and a lot of communities and a lot of homeowners are doing the practices that are necessary for wildfire resiliency. And a lot of communities are implementing fire safe practices, firewise practices. They're not standard. We have no common data.

We all wish the insurance companies would pay more serious attention to those issues other than just the drones flying over our houses telling us that they see something that's not there, but there isn't.

This is, this is a time when we will be rebuilding at scale within a defined time envelope with a lot of these specific agencies coming out of it.

Do you have a plan at all or thinking yet about how we might use this rebuilding process to build our systemic, our structural resilience through systematized firewise and fire safe practices and you know, other infrastructure improvements at the community level that will that we can then plan for reward and hopefully insurance companies also pay attention to in the future.

Thank you for that question, Senator. Again, Daniel Berlant, California State Fire Marshal we have actually learned a significant amount in the last several decades related to how our structures are being destroyed by wildfires. In 2008 we implemented the first of its kind nationally, a specific building code for those homes built in wildfire prone areas. Fast forward now.

We have seen over 60,000 homes and other buildings prior to this month be destroyed by wildfires like the North Bay fires that you mentioned. And we have collected significant data on all of those homes and analyzed them and that has actually informed our building standards and our building code.

And so I would argue that we have one of the most robust set of mitigations, but that is for new construction, for new homes that are built again.

As part of the Governor's Executive order, we will be working with many of our state partners to not only take this code that is already in place, but look at are there additional things that can be done community wide. Again, the rebuilding, as I mentioned, will occur to this standard that we know works.

But even in the fires in Pacific Palisades, in Altadena, we have completed over 16,000 inspections from those homes that were destroyed. And that's a significant loss, don't get me wrong.

But we've also been collecting data on the homes within the perimeter that survived to try to again figure out not just why did those homes burn, but why did these others survive.

I would also quickly note that in our analysis over the last decade from these wildfires, we know that homes that are built to this standard, that have adequate defensible space around them, have a double digit increase of surviving wildfires. And so a little bit of what I assure you is that the standard works.

And I will you briefly mentioned it and that is related to insurance. And we've actually worked very hard with the Department of Insurance to ensure that these standards are the standards the Department of Insurance is using as part of the requirements that insurers provide. Because this is a base level that does work.

But let's come back to the current fires. We will analyze that data and we will inform our building standards, our building codes and look to make potential recommendations if we learn anything new out of it.

And we will quickly work with our friends at the Department of Insurance to also make sure that any of those standards or best practices are also incorporated in their regulatory framework.

So that's great and we have learned a lot. And this, this disaster is an example of where that learning can be applied better as we rebuild.

The aspect of this, I'm trying to get to that I hope you'll think about as we go forward, not today, but is not just are we learning, but then as you're going through and reviewing all the permits and people are rebuilding at this, you know, at these new standards and the county or the city or some local district is doing the firebreaks, removing, Rerouting Creeks, the whole thing that we do not have a systemic comparable way of identifying who has done what for the purpose of identifying where should we make more investments and what can insurance companies.

So it's, I'm more asking about how do we, how do we generate a system for the date for data, a data system that accounts for the implementation of those practices as opposed to what should be the best practices? Because you're right. Then my last question is not fire related. And it's about SBX12.

And on Monday, one of the Executive orders that the President released essentially said to our transgender Californians and transgender Americans, you don't exist. You never did. It's forbidden for us to Mention your existence. You have no rights, Everyone is free to discriminate against you. And I know you know the chair's been extremely active on this as well.

My only concern about this is if you imagine yourself in that position where your country has declared you to be a non, a non person and you go to an organization to get aid. And the answer is, well, you're not indigent.

You know, you're working poor, you're middle class California, you're not indigent, you don't have the resources to defend yourself otherwise. And it seems to me that the other test that's in SBX1 too, which deals with, you know, are you in danger in some form? Is the more important one.

And so I hope as we go forward, with which I fully support and really appreciate the leadership of the Chair in moving this forward, that we attend to this and keep track as we're getting inquiries and that we're looking at the landscape because legal support and services for Californians that are under attack, that are intended to be protected by SBX 12 don't only visit upon indigent Californians.

And we need to know that. We need to know that we have their back too. So I appreciate the legislation. I'm in full support of it. But I hope those in the DOJ and Finance will be looking at this issue to make sure that we're not leaving anyone behind at their hour of most critical need.

Thank you, Senator Cabalt. And I want to second those remarks. I know it's increasingly including in some Democratic circles, increasingly unfashionable to support Trans people. And there are some really bad narratives out there about Trans people and the last election and so on and so forth.

But it's really important for California to stand strong with Trans people as they are literally being like being told by the Federal Government that you do not exist in the eyes of the law. Imagine saying that to an entire class of people. And that's what's happening. Senator Laird or Senator Wahab and then. Senator Laird, thank you.

Just, you know, you stated that you believe that the new structure that is being developed should be have appropriate defensible space. Right. Could you elaborate on that?

Yeah. So our defensible space requirements, it means removing dead or dying vegetation around the home, but also looking at some new best practices that the state has been working to implement within removing all flammable items, even some landscaping within the first five feet of the home.

But there's also education and other requirements within what type of plants that you use as well.

And so I guess my point here is that the science has showed us and our research has shown and these fires, the data we've collected has shown us that it's not just how we build the home, it's what's around the home as well that's just as important.

Okay, so I just want to flag so on like multi family complexes when a fire starts in the middle of a home. Right. Any remarks on that?

Our goal in the building code for single family, multifamily, commercial, all structures is to build it with materials that embers and flames don't actually ignite the structure on fire. Once the structure catches on fire, it's 90% likely to be fully destroyed. And so the goal is to Harden it so it doesn't ignite.

Now this may not be where you're going, but let me just add really quick. Our biggest challenge is not the new construction of buildings. It is how do we retrofit the existing stock. 90% of homes and buildings in wildfire prone areas were built before this code. And that is something we've been working.

And in a later date we'll talk about funding for home hardening out of the climate bond. But I just stress that that is a key component as well as how do we retrofit the existing homes.

I appreciate that. I also want to extend that to not only just wildfires and so forth, but again in my district it is about flooding. You know, I'm in a fault zone, so it's earthquakes.

And you know, I would like to see a little bit more robust discussion on what's the responsibility of the property owners and making sure that they, you know, retrofit their, you know, existing buildings and much more, especially as more and more people are, you know, higher density multifamily complexes, things like that. So just wanted to flag that.

I also just want to echo some of my colleagues comments regarding to be very Frank, you know, this budget move is largely to protect our most vulnerable community Members across the board. Right.

Whether we're talking about those individuals that are being attacked in a wide variety of ways, whether we're talking about immigration, whether we're talking about defending the rights that we currently have and going above and beyond for the victims that, you know, are currently dealing with some of these crises.

With that I will move the Bill set and appreciate the chair for this. Thank you.

Thank you. And now recognize Senator Lehrer. I'll now recognize Senator Laird. Sorry for getting the order messed up.

Thank you very much. And I-in Senator Cabaldon's comments and your comments about Trans. We all just spent time on Martin Luther King Day hearing the quote about the ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands in times of challenges and controversy.

That's the Trans issue personified and that's what we have to do here. I have a comment and a question on allocation and then a comment. And the difficulty of this hearing is we've been veering into policy of fire prevention and everything else when we are really talking today about disaster recovery.

And yet it's really hard for people in their mind to separate this. And we will be having these discussions. I think there's even bills coming over from the Assembly in the next matters of days. And we work together on legislation that actually does document.

I mean, before it passed, you had to just guess how many acres had been treated or what done. But it actually allowed in real time data for people to know what the results are of our fire prevention programs.

And what's happening in this discussion and out of these fires is we know what we have to do to fine tune that.

And we in this Committee discussed in the last couple of years how much of the money goes to locals and how much comes to state agencies in a way that if people on the ground at local level are doing fire prevention, we know we will be providing state support to help them and then have a measure to measure it.

My question, and I'm sorry for talking for a moment because I'm making you and I late to the state allocation board meeting that is right up against this hearing. My question is I'm very sympathetic to Senator Cabaldin because I watched.

I was at the school in Paradise a couple days after the fire where the jungle gyms were the only thing that were standing there. We in transportation do what's known as design sequencing. And it doesn't mean you go from the application to the permit for this to the permit for this where it takes seven hours, seven years.

It's you stack them on each other so that you remove them. The time in rebuilding and when the bridge went out in Big Sur and people were cut off for 41 miles from the outside world, the Caltrans built that bridge in five months by ordering the steel before the design was final.

By really stacking the processes on each other. Is there consideration to doing that in the rebuilding of the schools? Why do you go to the fire marshal and then go to a certain permitting agency? Is there a way to stack them so that we can give Some urgency to the reconstruction of the schools.

Thank you for the question, Senator Laird. I would say the typical process. I'll explain sort of the typical process and then. And then, as you'd said, you know, potential alternate model.

But typically we encourage school districts, when it comes to state agency involvement on their facilities projects to go through the California Department of Education first, their School Facilities Planning and Transportation Division. So they have more of the oversight of the appropriateness of the school facility from an educational standards perspective. Is it the right size?

Does it have what it needs? If you're looking at younger pupils, is it too close to an airport or some other hazard? Those types of things that are covered in Title V. Generally we encourage they go to CDE first before going to the division of the State Architect.

Sometimes they go the other way, but then it's more time consuming. If CDE has an issue. I know I'm losing you in the weeds. I apologize.

No, no, no, you're not losing you in the weeds. I'm frustrated by the weeds process. Yes.

So typically CDE has their oversight of the educational adequacy of the school site. DSA has more of the building Department role for. For schools. So structural safety, fire life safety.

Let me ask a quick follow up. And it is to be able to have everybody in a room and try to figure out how to do it in an expedited way rather than one right after another. Could you do that administratively or do we need to have statute to tell you to do that?

I would say we certainly work together very closely. My colleagues, the State Architect and then. I know you know them as well, but my colleagues, the State Architect and then colleagues at the Department of Education over the school Facilities Planning Transportation division, we talk all the time.

Excuse me for interrupting. I've been a witness. It's not pleasant sometimes, but that's what took seven years to have a school rebuilt, is that process. And so what does it take to intervene with that process to make sure that we could expedite this?

Sure. I would note in part, at least, on the school funding side of that equation, we do at the State Allocation Board, as you know, as a Member, we do have existing regulations that expedite any application under the facility hardship program.

So as I mentioned, that program is intentionally addressing facilities issues that pose an imminent health insurance safety issue. So those are automatically prioritized. As soon as our office gets one of those applications, we start processing it, we bring it to the board for their consideration in advance of other projects.

I think I would like to see if there's a way that we can be true to those needs and expedite the process, because there's got to be a way to do this quicker.

And, and that doesn't mean you build an earthquake, unsafe school, or you do whatever, but there's got to be a way to check those boxes in a faster way, in a more coordinated way.

And maybe we can follow up on that, because we're still a month from the Bill deadline, and even the talk of doing a Bill might motivate you to try to divert from it. But I think we have to do it. And it's a matter of public perception. They watch this and they think government can't act.

So anyway, and then a last comment, because what's happening in the debate here about sort of the money to empower the Attorney General in the lawsuits we are losing, Sort of what it's about, except for a couple of topics.

If you look in the environmental area, there's an Executive order in the last day that immediately stops offshore wind in lots of places in the country. And it doesn't yet quite speak to the places where leases have already been awarded in federal waters. And this is where everybody talks about capitalism.

This is where capitalism has made millions of dollars of investments relying on the leases. And it's where we as a Legislature have said, if we're going to meet our climate goals, the next big tranche of energy is from offshore wind.

So I would want to vote for this and appropriate this money to make sure that we have somebody in the field making sure those investments are not lost and our commitment to those climate goals can be met. And that is also true. I mean, I cut my teeth 40 years ago on the fight about offshore oil drilling.

And Governor Biden changed the playing field about 10 days ago by protecting federal waters. And what he really did is whether then an Executive order could move ahead immediately. It is going to move the matter to litigation. We are going to try to uphold that protection in court.

And we can't uphold that protection of court if we don't Fund and empower our Attorney General to be at the table when that happens. And so that is why this is very important. And then there is the confluence of fire. We are sitting here with disaster recovery, which is at the heart of this Bill.

And yet what do we do on federal efforts related to fire? And one of the things that is lost is that Of California's forests, 57% are federally managed and 3% are state managed. So my statement in a past time when people said we weren't doing the right thing about our forests is with regard to federal officials.

If they want to know who's responsible for 57% of California's forests and they don't think it's being cleared adequately, they should get out a mirror, plant it in front of their face and stare directly into it. And that is what is lost in the debate.

And there were times five years ago where the state was spending state money to go onto federal forest land and do fuels prevention. In fact, we had a program where one year we were spending 45% of the state money on federal forests because they adjoint state population areas and state places and we wanted to protect our citizens.

So if there is a matter of litigation to enforce federal responsibility with the safety of state residents, I want the Attorney General at that table. And so I think that is what we're talking about. A few high profile issues.

This is issues across the board where we have state laws and state policies and we need somebody at the table to protect the state interests. That's what this Bill does. And that's why I will vote for the motion. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much. Senator Laird. Senator Allen.

Yeah. Just a couple more questions. Air quality monitoring and testing, is there a pLan for it under. Can you tell us about the pLan for it under the Bill and then also whether the data will be made. AvaiLable to the public? That's been a major issue in La, which is basic concerns about air quality safety right now.

So I'd love to get a sense of what the public facing aspect of the air quality and water and other environmental testing that's in SB1 for seeks to do.

So the bills allow for those activities to be paid for with the funding that's provided in the bills, those activities are happening. I'm not able to speak to whether or not the test. Like how assume you're asking about the test results being made public. I'm not certain on that right now.

So I was happy to follow up and ask, but I don't want. I don't know the answer to that.

Okay. Do you know the General kind of reason for including testing in an allocation like this?

It's a very important part of being able to do risk assessment and determine what activities need to be taken. And so given the Bill is focused on immediate response activities for public safety, we want to make sure we can continue to Fund those testing activities and make sure that the air and water quality is safe for folks.

So presumably the focus would be very much on the burn area. As opposed to air quality, more broadly speaking, in the region. Is that the suggestion?

I'm not certain. I think that initially, yes, the focus is on the burn area and where the impacts are most direct, but of course, there are probably broader impacts and the testing may go into that. But that's something I would need to follow up on.

Okay. All right. And then the only thing I wanted to ask about was about, you know, Senator Laird is right, that this is absolutely primarily about the cleanup.

But there is, you know, there is an allocation in here relating to cities, you know, expediting building approvals for homeowner rebuilding, which I think is a good thing, allowing them to prepare for that process. You know, part of getting back to my earlier question about.

About fire code, you know, I think everybody here knows that we passed AB 3074 a little while back, which was the defensible space Bill. And it appears that we still haven't gotten those regulations down from the Department Fresh start from the Board of Forestry, the Zone Zero regulations.

You know, are we surely we want to incorporate that kind of the core tenets of that Bill, which was passed, I think, four or five years ago now, into the rebuild and that it should be incorporated into the building approval examination that's happening right now.

I mean, there was some piece on the news this morning that showed that a house basically suggesting that those houses that had the kind of five feet of defensible space had a much higher chance of surviving and that the requirements associated with that that are at the heart of AB3074 ought to be considered as part of the rollout of these building approvals.

So thoughts on that, Chief?

Yeah. While the board continues their work in developing those regulations, let me just highlight two things. For almost two to three years now, we have really been surging our educational messaging, our resources to homeowners on implementing the best practice for that Zone Zero effort.

To an earlier point that I made as part of the governor's Executive order, he is tasking us to come forward with additional mitigation requirements and components. So that will be an element that we look at as part of our overall review.

But do we have a sense of the status of the Board of Forestry's regs? Are they going to be finalized in time for these rebuilds?

I can't speak for the board. I know that. I think that it's fair to say that the beginning of the public regulatory adoption process is very right around the corner.

One thing I will note, and again, I realize there are two different topics here when we bring back the climate bond discussion, we've allocated dollars specifically to provide financial assistance to implement those for vulnerable Californians to specifically implement the new requirements.

So the goal is to connect the board's regulatory work this coming year with some financial assistance program. And so while, again, I can't speak for the board, we know that it's urgently needed.

I mean, do you think there's at least a mechanism whereby they could come out with some sort of emergency guidelines under 3074 to at least guide this expedited building process that the cities are going to be tasked with implementing under the money we give them?

Again, the Governor has charged us with looking at additional mitigations that are mitigations that matter and making those recommendations to him so that, yes, as part of the rebuilding, we're not, again, only, as I mentioned earlier, making sure that these homes are built to the standard that we know matters, but if there's additional mitigations that should be incorporated, including Zone 0, that we take action to make a recommendation of how to implement that sooner.

All right, thank you.

Okay. Any further questions or comments? Seeing Mr. Vice Chair.

I just want. To emphasize a point. Re-emphasize the point because when I asked about accountability, I didn't get the sense that you were contemplating a line item detail of report back from the entities to whom money will be allocated.

And I just want to stress, I think that's absolutely crucial and piggybacking on a comment that Senator Wahab made too, that I am expecting that the after the money is spent, admittedly not ahead of time because you don't know, but a line item detail of where and how that money is spent by the entity to whom you allocate it.

Yeah. And I can clarify maybe a little better. I think initially I was confused by what was being reported on Finance's website as a part of the bills. And I think we clarified that we're talking more on the back end. There is very detailed information required on the back end for a couple of different reasons.

It's good business. But in order to do FEMA reimbursement and things like that, that's the type of documentation that has to to be collected, reviewed by Cal oes, provided to FEMA. So there is that detail accounting being brought in. It's required for various processes.

Yeah. Any further questions? Comments? Okay, seeing none. We'll now proceed to public comment. For folks who want to make public comment, you can line up at the microphone to my right here. We would ask that people keep your poll comments within a minute. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Catherine Blakemore, I'm the chair of the California Access to Justice Commission and I want to just thank all of you for meeting the moment. California is having quite a time of it at the moment and both Wildfire Relief and the funding for legal aid and the Attorney General to address the other crises that are facing.

Individuals who live here are so important. And as a proposed recipient of that funding, we've carried out the funding successfully for four years now and will take seriously our obligation to meet the needs of immigrants and other marginalized and vulnerable communities. So thank you.

And I stand here also representing my other Legal services colleagues who are out doing the important work today to work with individuals who've lost their homes and otherwise facing desperate legal circumstances. So thank you.

Good afternoon. Linda Way with Western center on Law and Poverty. Echo the previous speaker's appreciation for funding for legal aid organizations through the Eco Access Fund grants through One California and the California Access to Justice Commission.

We know that legal aid organizations are often the first defense for Low income and immigrant communities facing legal issues, and so this funding will be critical.

In addition, we appreciate the swift action on the funding support for fires and would just ask to ensure equitable access and recovery that prioritization be focused on vulnerable communities, including older and older adults and people with disabilities. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Mark Ysidro, on behalf of the County of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, here to share our support and deep appreciation for all funding and statutory changes to aid the county in our response and recovery to assist our residents and look forward to the continued partnership with the county and the state.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. Kiara Ross, on behalf of the City of Pasadena. We also appreciate all the efforts that have been that have gone on already and would urge your support very specifically for the 4 million for the rebuilding and permitting that we think will be very helpful in getting getting ourselves, our folks back into their homes. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Yasmin Peled with Justice in Aging. We're in strong support of the additional funds for legal services in the state and echo the comments made by my colleague from the Western center on Law and Poverty.

I'd also like to express our appreciation for the swift action that the Legislature and the Administration plan to take on recovery from the LA fires. But I would like to make the point that we would really like to see an investment and a focus on where the need is for older adults and people with disabilities.

Tragically isolated older adults and people with disabilities are the people that suffered the most in these fires. They lost their lives disproportionately to other people and now face those older adults and people with disabilities are also now severely displaced.

As I'm sure many here are aware, older adults are the fastest growing population of people experiencing homelessness in the state and there's a real fear that these fires will exacerbate the housing insecurity that older adults in the state face.

And lastly, I'd just like to make the point that it's also critical that these Low income older adults and people with disabilities who rely on home care like IHSS continue to get the care that they need in this recovery and rebuilding process and ideally getting that care in the community rather than in institutional settings.

Look forward to the opportunity to work with you all as this is an ongoing conversation. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Carlos Marquez on behalf of the County Welfare Directors Association, we support the package and just wanted to make Members aware of the responsibility that often falls on health and human service agencies at the county level to respond to natural disasters.

In our provision of providing mass care and shelter, which we're happy to report, the LA County Department of Public Services has helped stand up eight shelters serving at the height of the disaster, 800 families, while also making sure that there's not a disruption to core benefits for vulnerable residents in LA, including CalFresh, and all the while making sure that vulnerable constituents like foster youth and elder in our care are protected.

So we will be putting forward an ongoing funding proposal to address mass care and shelter needs this year. Thank you Mr.

Chair Chris McCauly on behalf of my clients, the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce and Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, we support ESPYs 3 and 4 and your ongoing efforts to assist both our companies and of course our workers in these affected areas.

Our boards are working on a series of recommendations for near term, midterm and long term things that we can do further to help those affected by the fires. Thank you Mr.

Chair, Hon. Chair and Members, Amy Hines-Shaikh representing the California Community Land Trust Network. They and their 15 affiliated CLTs in the LACLT coalition, the Community Land Trust Network coalition have eight defined things that we need to make sure are top of mind in order to ensure an equitable and just recovery.

One is to defend and protect measure ula. The other. The next one is to establish a Tourism Emergency Preservation Fund modeled after Lahaina Maui. The next one is to monitor speculative activity flagging trends that will indicate price manipulation. The next one is extend Executive orders that ban unsolicited property purchase offers.

The next one is monitor and regulate rental markets post disaster, mostly to avoid quote unquote FEMA fever that led to significant rent increases at Lahaina Maui with median rents rising up to 44% from early 2023 to June 2024. We don't want that FEMA fever. The next one is to enable a disaster recovery.

Additional funding for the LA County Land bank, please. And we need investments to restore mobile home. There were two communities having 420 mobile homes. We need to also enforce the Mello act there. And finally, we need to enhance emergency communication networks by making sure all future emergency alerts are translated into various languages.

The bare minimum is Spanish, Korean, Tagalog and Mandarin at the minimum. Thank you.

Hi, good afternoon. Jackie Gonzalez, Policy Director at Immigrant Defense Advocates. I'd like to thank the Senate for its leadership in putting forward this Bill. Like to actually direct my comments to the questions and conversation posed earlier regarding the One California funds.

I'd like to clarify the One California dollars that are put into this proposal and historically have actually been used not just to serve undocumented people, but annually have actually served 38% of the dollars have been used to help lawful permanent residents become citizens of the state.

So the 10 million that is in this special session Bill, if it is used as it has been used historically, will actually help a significant number of individuals in California that are not undocum.

That is a positive thing, but it's also a sobering reality that that money is not actually going to address the militarized threats that we have coming against our communities. Last week there were raids in Kern. county.

And while Ayes and CBP will say that it was to go after criminals, we know from the facts that there were upwards of 150 collateral arrests and racial profiling of citizens and of documented residents of the state. The reason for this is not our sanctuary laws.

Our sanctuary law actually has, I think it's hundreds of except for criminality that enable law enforcement in the State of California to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement. If the Trump Administration really wanted to go after criminals, they wouldn't need to threaten us with the military, the National Guard and ICE's budget and CBP.

So I respectfully would say that if we were to analyze anything from an economic perspective, it shouldn't be to remove our sanctuary law. It should be to really take a look at what would happen to our economy if our workforce is actually impacted and deported to the measure that this Administration seeks to pursue.

Because truly we're addressing the wildfires here. Who will be left to rebuild Los Angeles, thank you.

Hello Members. Yesenia Jimenez here on behalf of the End Child Poverty Coalition and my colleague Shamika Gaskins, whose home was tragically lost in the Eaton fires and California families who face real terror under our current federal Administration. While we are grateful to Governor Newsom and the Legislature's efforts to rebuild, we urge you to do so equitably.

Survivors of the LA fires are already being denied FEMA aid and facing constant appeals. Black communities like Altadena, with its rich history of resilience, must not be left behind. We cannot afford to repeat the mistakes of Hurricane Katrina, where black families were disproportionately denied FEMA assistance and were unable to rebuild.

We also stand in solidarity with our childcare workers and centers who have over 300 centers that were partially or fully impacted by the LA fires. One of my colleagues will share a little bit more about that.

The End Child Poverty California Coalition strongly urges your support for robust multi sector legal defense to protect immigrant and LGBTQ families from harmful federal policies. I know firsthand the trauma of deportation. My father was deported to Mexico even though we are Guatemalan and was denied opportunities to rebuild his life.

The cruelty of the deportation system followed him even to his unjust death. And the only way he ever returned and reconnected with his family was when we buried him here in Whittier, California. We must do everything in our power to protect our communities so they don't share the same fate.

We applaud the California State Senate for a strong start to addressing this moment and urge your collective. I vote.

Good afternoon, Chair and Members. My name is Anayely Martin with the California Immigrant Policy center and I'm here to support the Legislature's proposal to provide 25 million in state funding for immigration and civil legal services.

State funded legal services programs help thousands of students, workers, families and vulnerable individuals access immigration and other key legal services every year across California. This past December, CIPC was proud to partner with over 140 organizations to submit a letter requesting an increase in funding for legal services to protect immigrant communities from deportation.

Our state is home to the largest immigrant population in this country. Nearly 11 million Californians are immigrants and 2.7 million are undocumented. As the Trump Administration pledges to enact the largest deportation program in US History, it is critical that California increases public funds for immigration legal services to protect our neighbors, children's workers and families from deportation.

Publicly funded legal services keep families safe and secure. We respectfully request you to pass a proposed 25 million for immigration and civil legal services that Thousands of California families rely on. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Members, Kathy Senderling Mcdonald here, representing the California Penn Ethnic Health Network, CPenn is in strong support of the $25 million proposed for legal services for our immigrant communities.

We also support the funding being provided so quickly and so, and although it has been discussed as just a first start, so generously for the devastating wildfires that so many have suffered, and also, like others have and like the conversation have had today, urge that that be equitably distributed so that all communities can benefit and none are left out.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and Senators Pamela Gibbs, representing the Los Angeles County Office of Education. First of all, it's a pleasure to see all of you in person today. And for those of you impacted by the wildfires and your district staff, our hearts are with you. The Los Angeles County Superintendent of Schools, or LACO, Dr.

Deborah Duarteau, is a social worker and is providing mental health services through our agency for staff who have been impacted. One of our requests is to provide flexibility for some of our employees regarding leave and other issues. And you'll receive a document if you haven't already, to address that.

LACO has also been providing immigration services through workshops throughout the county for those who may be impacted by the Federal Government seizures, seize seizures, and activities against those who may be fearful of immigrants. One of our priorities, of course, is to address the needs of our students.

So in addition to making sure that they are safe and well and healthy, we also support the funding for facilities. So all of these things we think are going to impact not only our students, but our employees, many of whom, my own colleagues have lost homes.

And so I know many of you are dealing with that as well. Throughout the state, you may have families as well. We support all of the bills presented today and look forward to working with you. Consider us a resource in education, and we look forward to working with you in the coming days and weeks.

Thank you very much.

Hello, Chair Wiener and fellow Budget Committee Members. I am Dr. Lawanda Wesley with child Care Resource center and also representing my partner, Child Care alliance of Los Angeles, who's also working on the child care response for Los Angeles County.

We just want to let you know that child care providers continue to be essential business owners and workers in the community who hold up and are dedicated emergency responders. And we're also asking also that they become dedicated. There's a dedicated Fund source to support them as a part of the infrastructure and ongoing natural disasters that happen continuously.

We know that child care providers are predominantly women and women of color that are impacted by these disasters. And they are also the anchors to the families who are now looking and searching for employment. They're looking for housing. In order to do that, they need to be able to have their children in safe care.

These are also the same centers that also some of them have burned down and were able to, you know, safely evacuate children. But I want to give you just a few numbers really quickly.

As of yesterday, Community Community Care licensing reported that 320 childcare facilities that were licensed, which includes 262 of them being child care centers and 61 being child care homes, meaning it's done out of their homes were impacted by the fires and 41 of those actually were destroyed, meaning they can't return. They'll have to be rebuilt.

Of those 40 ones that were destroyed, 22 were childcare centers and 19 were home. So it was their home and their business. And additionally, 262 facilities are non operational, meaning they weren't destroyed, but they can't be operated because they are in poor condition.

So we want to just let you know that we want to make sure that child care programs as business owners and providers are part of the infrastructure and that you see them as part of the response.

And I haven't heard much of child care mentioned at all in this hearing and we didn't hear it much in the Assembly either. So just making sure that that's part of it. And I conclude my statement. Thank you.

Good afternoon, chair and Committee. My name is Tanya Mcmillan. I am with black Californians United for Early Care and Education. I am also a retired licensed family child care provider of 29 years of service and now a family friend and neighbor provider residing in the City of Compton. I echo what Dr.

Wesley said and I wanted to share some of the effects on the burn area adjacent cities. We know that black communities were already battling environmental issues. Now these underserved cities, many that have a high percentage of child care homes and childcare centers, have to deal with even poorer air and water quality.

Air purifiers and clean water options are desperately needed in these areas as well. Please don't forget the black and brown children and families who are indirectly impacted by the fires.

Good afternoon, chair and Committee Members. My name is Tita Bladen. I'm a Senior Assembly Member representing the California Senior Land Legislature. We support your efforts today in beginning funding for the Los Angeles fires recovery process.

Justice Sini Jing the California Senior Legislature and 124 organizations have through correspondence to the Administration and legislative leaders this week raised awareness of the impact the Los Angeles fires have had on the older adult population. We urge you to keep this vulnerable population in mind in your recovery processes and future fire prevention efforts.

And we really thank you for these bills today. Thank you.

Good afternoon, chair and Members. Nick Brokoff from Sacramento advocates here on behalf of the Immigrant Legal Resource Center. You've heard from so many other of my colleagues, so I'll keep it short and suite just here to extend our appreciation and support for the 25 million in funding for immigration and civil services. Thank you.

Good afternoon, chair and Members. Alejandro Solis on behalf of Chila in support. California is home to the largest population of immigrants in the United States with approximately 10.6 million immigrants who contribute vastly to our state. Undocumented immigrants alone contribute nearly $8.5 billion in state and local taxes.

We know that current federal action will unjustly target and negatively affect all immigrants in the United States. And as such, it is our responsibility to do everything within our means to protect those that call California home.

We are appreciative of the Legislature's proposed augmentations to the budget for legal services and immigration support given all immigrants in all sectors, from education to the workforce, will feel the impact of federal actions. We hope to continue to work closely with the Legislature to mitigate the detrimental impacts on California. California.

We're also supportive of the inclusion of fire relief and implore the Legislature to ensure all Californians have access to emergency relief in times of need. Immigrants have been impacted by also having lost their homes and their income if their places of employment were destroyed by the fires.

For California to effectively recover from the fires, we need to ensure that all Californians have access to emergency relief. Thank you very much.

Good afternoon, Chair, Senators, my name is Lisa Coleman. I'm with the California Commission on Aging. The Commission is grateful to the leadership from the Governor and from the elected officials for taking quick response.

And to that end, the Commission met yesterday and has directed staff to start the process of meeting with stakeholders, state agencies, advocates, providers, older adults and adults with disabilities, with the aim of identifying regulatory solutions and policies that can help us as we move forward in future events affecting future catastrophes that we know impact older adults and adults with disabilities at higher rates than other Members of the community.

But as you're meeting today, it's about what we're going to do right now, and the Commission wants to draw your attention to a program you already have, the Community Care Expansion Program. This is a program that is already established with Contact in the impacted areas.

The goal of CCE is for the procurement, construction, rehabilitation and preservation of residential care facilities for the elderly who serve Low income residents. This is an example of a program we can Fund today. Get dollars out to the community in a quick way that is already proven to be efficient.

So we urge your support and we thank you for the budget that you are proposing today.

Thank you Mr. Chair Members. Alice Kessler. I'm here representing Equality California. I wanted to join in with the other legal services organizations that gave comment. We very much appreciate the funding that's being allocated to Judicial Counsel, in particular the California Access to Justice Commission.

That funding is going to support legal services for some of our most vulnerable California, including Members of the LGBTQ community, our immigrant communities and many more. So we appreciate it and thank you for your work on it.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair Members. Terry Brennand on behalf of SEIU California.

We represent about 750,000 workers in California, among whom are all the workers In LA County, 13 LA cities, tens of thousands of healthcare workers in the LA area, all the classified employees in LA Unified School District and well over 100,000 home care and childcare workers in the LA community.

So on behalf of those workers, residents of LA County, our fellow public servants in the first responder community, we urge your. I vote on this package. Thank you very much.

Good afternoon, Chair Wiener and Committee Members. My name is Obed Franco, here on behalf of the Asian Law Caucus, a nonprofit civil rights organization providing legal services in the Bay Area. Asian Law Caucus supports the Senate's proposal to provide 25 million in state funding for immigration and civil legal services. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair Members. Christopher Sanchez with the Mesa VE Group here representing Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California Inclusive Action for the city and in the Central American Resource center in support of the Immigration Legal services. Thank you.

Good morning. Good afternoon. Rather Mr. Chair and Members Karim Drissi with the California Building Industry Association. I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank the chair, Vice Chair and Committee Members for their leadership, particularly with respect to the wildfire and recovery issues.

Very much appreciate it and look forward to continuing continuing to work with the Committee on Wildfire Insurance and housing Issues more generally. Thank you so much.

Good afternoon. I'm Fozia Farouk. I'm speaking on behalf of the Council on American Islamic Relations. I'm here to support the Assembly and Senate's proposal to provide 25 million in state funding for immigration and civil legal services. We commend the Committee and Administration for prioritizing the funding in these Bills.

Equally important are the 10 million for the Equal Access Fund, 10 million for One California, and 5 million for the California Access to Justice Commission. These funds support frontline organizations offering vital services, from DACA assistance to wage theft protections, especially in underserved regions like Central Valley.

We're ready to ensure that these resources reach those who need them the most. And we respectfully request you to pass the proposed 25 million increasing to state funding immigration, civil legal services that thousands of California families rely on. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Chair and Committee Members. Thank you so much for introducing the funding in the form of $25 million to support immigration and other vulnerable populations. My name is Barbara Schmitz. I'm here on behalf of First Five California.

Those individuals who are at risk of deportation and who have other threats that are being issued to them right now also have families, and that often includes young children. And that's where we come in. Those are the folks that we're here to protect. And so we do urge you to follow through and help with that funding.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much. Is there any additional public comment? Seeing non public comment is closed and we'll bring it back to the Committee. We do have a motion by Senator Waha moving all four bills. And so we have a motion on each of the bills on the table. I believe it's okay to do a mass motion, Mike.

Right about that. Or do we need a separate one for each? Separate. Okay, we'll do it separately. Sorry, Senator Wahhab. Okay. Seeing no other comment, we will. I'll ask for a motion on item one. SBX1 4 motion by Senator Laird. And we will call the roll.

[Roll call]

[Roll call]

Aye.

Okay, that is nine votes. We'll put her on call. Next we go to item number two. SBX 13. May I have a motion moved by Senator Richardson? And we will call. It's okay.

[Roll call]

[Roll call]

Aye.

Aye. That has nine votes. We'll put her on call. Next, item number three. SBX12. May I have a motion. Motion by Senator Gonzalez, and we'll call the roll.

[Roll call]

Okay, the vote is 7 to 2. We'll put that on call. And then finally, item number four, SPX11. May I have a motion? A motion by Senator Cabaldon, and we'll call the roll.

[Roll call}

No.

[Roll call]

Seven to two. Okay, the vote's seven to two. We'll put that on call so we have the four items on call. Senator Wahab is on her way back, and we'll open the roll to close things out as soon as she gets here, which should be momentarily. Thank you so much, colleagues.

And also thank you to our staff and everyone for today. Thank you. You too. Okay, we're going to open the roll on. So item number one. Excuse me. Item number one, SPX 14. Please call the absent Member Wahab.

Wahab, Aye. Okay, on a vote of 10 to nothing, that Bill is out. Item number two, SBX 13. Please call the absent Member Wahab.

Aye.

Wahab, Aye. On a vote of 10 to 0, that Bill is out. Item number three, SBX 12. Please call the absent Member Wahab. Aye. Wahab, Aye. On a vote of 8 to 2, that Bill is out. Item number four, SBX 11. Please call the absent Member Wahab. Aye.

Aye.

On a vote of 8 to 2, that Bill is out. That concludes our business today. Thank you, colleagues. Thank you to our staff and to the Administration for working with us today. And Elisa, welcome to adjourn. And with that, we are adjourned.